Scrolling Through Reddit

Scrolling Through Reddit

Flanuers are a huge basis of the social networking forum Reddit. Scrolling through the online community and having a hidden identity with no one knowing who you are is the main drive of the network with commenting, posting and sharing many sources with no real intent.

Reddit supplies you with the main purpose of cyberflanuering by leisurely scrolling through posts with no real intention or particular purpose. A click onto a subreddit leads you into a new network which spirals into a never ending world of searching the web with endless limits to browse upon. Online a flanuer is presented as a cyber-flanuer someone who can enter online and scroll through multiple online networks and develop a virtual identity to then slip away as unknowingly being there. As Gaylene Barnes states the flanuer as “an explorer who finds their identity among the realisations of the city” (Gaylene Barnes, 1997) where as online this can be done easier and more sufficiently.

Being hidden away from the person you perceive to be in reality and exploring the virtual spaces of Reddit results in many opportunities for people in the communities to draw attention to themselves of true or falsely presented information. Either true or false posted subreddits from the anonymous members shows that “The sheer size of the city was a threat to the individual” (Richard Prouty, 2009) with regards to the online networks they stay hidden online which makes it systematically easier to falsely portray themselves as someone else or present misleading information. This then leaves me to wonder if any of the subredditors online are stating real facts and stories posted by themselves as true, or just as a detached observer scrolling through the internet with no true intention of providing purposeful context.

 

                                                                                           Hidden Identities, hiding who they really are.

                                       http://www.socialitelife.com/photos/celebrities-hiding-their-faces-from-paparazzi-photos/shia-labeouf-220109 

References

Gaylene, B. (1997). Passages of the Cyber-Flanuer. Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html

Prouty, R. (2009, October 28). A Turtle on a Leash. Retrieved from

http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html