It is the fall of 1996, I am surfing a disability web site when I see a virtual community for people like me with spinal cord injuries. By my own surprise, there were an alarming number of us chatting away on subjects such as how we were injured, rehabilitation, sex, as well as others. After a few months of just looking on, I decided to chime in, and a lot of them were giving good advice to help adapt with my new life. While I found this community to be of some help, there are a lot of people who differ in that opinion. Some people say we should be alarmed by the concept of virtual communities however my own experience and observation tells me this is not the case. The reality is these virtual communities provide a valuable service to a lot of people who need it.
Virtual communities are groups of people with a shared interest in a hobby, profession, or a product who get and share ideas online. While this is true, many observers argue that we should be alarmed by this as they claim it is not real and how are we to trust someone we interact with. When I tell people that I go into these virtual communities, the immediate response I get is "how do you know it's safe to talk?" or "can you really trust the other people there?" My response to them is in my case many could go in exact detail of what I am either going through or went through. Most of the time one will not really give out too much personal information as to put them at risk. Also, in some instances, you would have the chance to meet members of your community at some point. I myself had the opportunity to meet members of my spinal cord community at a disability expo, with some coming as far as Brazil, England, and Nova Scotia.
One of the reasons people choose to enter virtual communities is to socialize with other people. Many people choose these virtual communities as a means of meeting people with similar interest. For them, they can do this through bulletin boards or chat rooms.