Online Fan Clubs: Group mechanics, emotional addiction, and
separation anxiety Kathleen Johnson 10/14/03
Online communication strips emotional cues from conversation:
tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language amongst
others. This creates anonymity which hastens intimacy. People
become bonded in mailing lists. The regular contact creates a
sense of a relationship. Real time chats increase the rate of
information exchange and the software architecture allows for
transposing the event into a book form to be read and digested
at a later time.
The virtual neighborhood Virtual contact promotes support,
encouragement, and sharing thus overcomes isolation. The Group
becomes the neighborhood, a community, the coffee shop, the
Saturday night drag down main street to “see and be seen“. In
groups at first there is the honeymoon period where all is wine
and roses, then comes the disenchantment period where the
boundaries are tested, and finally there is cohesiveness. Early
provocateurs challenge the group leader and then depart to form,
sometimes, hostile communities that thrive on “fight and
flight”.
The Fan Club These “fan clubs” are the newly identified school
yard gangs that are operated by, primarily, cyber bullies. These
“fan club” members had prior been emotionally addicted to the
Group they have exited from (exit is either voluntarily or
involuntarily). Their detrimental emotional dependence on the
Group had been brought on by loneliness, lack of emotional
support in their personal lives, lack of self esteem because of
lack of socially productive activities. In real life boys tend
to use their “fists” to resolve arguments, and girls tend to use
“friendship“. This trend follows into the Group setting online.
You will find that the males tend to “flame” but remain static
on the boards, and the females tend to use flight into cliques
on other boards from where they use “friendship” as a weapon by
exclusion and flame from a distance. It is a fascinating
phenomenon. When these two types of Group member become hostile
they often use language as a weapon rather than to explore
ideas. Flaming results from inadequate empathy for other
individuals. The solution to flaming is complex but, industry
wide, the only real known solution is strong group guides,
moderators, and structure.
The anxiety in separation Once it is determined that the members
behavior within the group confines has become detrimental to the
Group, and all other avenues have not worked, then the only
solution is to remove the member by banning. Then a more
interesting phenomenon develops. The banned member, or members
then develop a type of severe anxiety separation disorder. They
use any means available to re-join the former Group. This can be
in the form of volumes of email to the moderators personal email
box, the solicitation of continuing members for empathy thru an
email campaign, a campaign via Instant Messenger, and sometimes,
in the more overt cases, the formation of an online group from
which to launch an “attack”.
The attack can either be in the form of flaming, plans to
ostracize of the perceived perpetrator, or repeated vain
attempts to circumnavigate the blocked board via spawned ISP
addresses or newly created identities. Why is it that members,
who had previously expressed sincere displeasure with a Group,
would go to such extremes to re-join the group they were
previously flaming? This type of separation anxiety is common.
Reality is that there are millions of groups out there for these
individuals to join. The only one they are seriously concerned
about is the one they were just removed/banned from. This
separation anxiety can be brief, or can escalate to years of
hostility in the online environment.
These “fan” clubs are quite common. Since most violate the Terms
of Service for ISP’s as being primarily “hate groups” they, in
short order, find the website removed by the ISP. But, of
course, then the group just moves onward and forward to other
campsites on the internet sometimes as a group, sometimes as
individuals.
Conclusion Each Group and group member emerges from a cocoon,
both different in acquired skills exiting than they entered. The
process of initiative and creativity only determines a starting
point. Learned life skills determine the balance. The Fan Club
is one outcome. There is a more positive one but those involved
in this activity rarely grow to solve interpersonal problems as
they do not recognize or understand the dynamics that lead them
down this path.
Kathleen Johnson
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