Post 3: Community history

Within the social networks of specific gaming-focused groups, there is often some kind of relationship between itself and other groups with a similar focus. These relationships can be positive, continuing on a message across the inter-connected web the groups make up, or it can be negative, and incite aggression and negative emotions towards a specific type of person idea, etc...  Within the Monster Hunter Hell group, the group itself acts as a hub for most of the negative attitudes toward other groups, however it provides a large amount of 'social capital' to every member, providing them each the right to ask questions, and describe themselves, as Pierre Bourdieu described. ( Kuttainen, 2015). The negative attitudes were focused at aspects of other groups, not the members specifically, but the administrators of these other groups for not allowing the same level of social capital that  members of Monster Hunter Hell allow each other. These negative attitudes were conveyed to each other without mentioning the names of other groups directly, but with pictures of the comment sections, comments that fostered attitudes of an elitist nature, but mainly showed a lack of unity, or social cohesion in these groups due to restrictive rules. The Monster Hunter Hell group presents itself as a fairly confrontational group, however much like Yi-Fu Tuan (1991) explains about geographers, non-members can see the metaphorical 'farmers' of group content creating, but what they do not see is the discussions between group members about topics that has become 'so routine as to be almost instinctive' (Tuan, 2003, pg 684). The group creates its own sense of place, but criticizes the lack of a similar sense of place amongst other groups. This occurred very frequently in the first incarnation of the group, during the time where anyone could join, however this occurs at a much smaller rate, to try and maintain the last vestige of the original group.


An example of the kinds of content created in the group. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=927043930685110&set=gm.1685846674970605&type=1&theater

 References:
Tuan, Y. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach. Annals Of The Association Of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696.

 Kuttainen, V. (2015) BA1002, Our Space: networks, Narrative and making of place, week 5 lecture slides. Retrieved from http://www.learnjcu.edu.au