technoculture314-09

The ‘compensation hypothesis’ states that new media like the internet allow previously socially or physically inept people (whether hindered subjectively [e.g. shyness] or objectively [e.g. disabled]) to circumvent an often unforgiving real world and through anonymity allow them to gain confidence in pursuing relationships online. The ‘recreational hypothesis’, on the other hand, states that people already socially engaged use the internet as a further string to their Cupid bow. I think it would be reductionism to posit just one of these theories as correct, because their validity fractures on which website one is talking about.
I believe more scandalous, swinger sites appeal to those already ‘socially able’ because they have as their sole goal mobility, literally as quickly as possible, out from the internet screen back into the real world of the bedroom. Sites based around love and romanticism discourses on the other hand, like Match could be seen both ways, as their emphasis on heavy screening (of interests, looks) and their yellow pages, phonebook-like simplicity, appeals both to the shy ones and those so experienced they could make a C.V. of their conquests. Sites like Match also have as their goal mobility back out to the real world, but in a more courting, romantic way.
Where I think the pendulum shifts to the compensation hypothesis is Second Life. Rather than set it itself up as a boat that transports the single/alone peep to sex/a date on the other side of the river in real life, Second Life actually constructs itself as a full-blown, 3D alternative to reality. Sure, some people would have met in Second Life and got together in First Life, but I believe for most the attraction lies in having sex, firting, hiring prostitutes etc in a world within a world. The programme is a triumph for hyperreality because, with peoples’ social or physical shortcomings now obliterated or at the least ‘levelled’, they begin to invest as much or more time and effort into their Second Life than their First life (and the crucial point is that with this many see no point in exchanging their new social capital in Second Life for First Life capital – real life relationships, real life sex, real life friends etc, they are happy to ‘renounce’ the world in this sense). I think this link , although uncompassionate, sums up the stigma many in First Life have about hyperreality situations like this (be it adults immersing themselves in Second Life, or adults playing video games and still living with their parents at 40)