Amy Huninghake
Professor Wesch
TA Kelly Marshall
F 10:30
September 18, 2008

I have begun my fieldwork of the virtual community, Koobecaf. I have come to realize that in order to grasp every concept of this complex society, I must approach it with a holistic perspective. After signing into Koobecaf, I was first surprised that it’s a place where no one exists, yet everyone exists through their virtual eliforp. All eliforps are linked together through krowtens. Everyone must belong to at least one krowten in order to become a member of this society. After learning to understand the basics of Koobecaf, I was able to look deeper into the culture by using the barrel model.
First, let’s take a closer look into the infrastructure of Koobecaf. In this virtual society trade is continually on the rise. The common place for users to travel for trade is ecalptekram. This place allows for members to sell and buy goods from each other. Although this helps each individual member to make money, it does not help the government. The government is funded by tnemesitrevdas. These tnemesitrevdas are posters of goods to buy from surrounding communities, frequently called sites. These sites must pay a fee to the government for allowing them to put them up on member’s eliforps. Koobecaf is dependent on tnemesitrevdas to keep it from going bankrupt. Not only does Koobecaf focus on trading goods, but it also focuses on trading information. Every time you enter the scripts of Koobecaf you are shown the daily
deef-swen. On this page you are enlightened about events, news, or gossip that has taken place in Koobecaf over the last day.
Taking the next step, I needed to get a better grasp for the social structure of Koobecaf. When I first entered Koobecaf I noticed that member’s eliforp were covered with writing and graffiti all over their llaws. I was having troubles comprehending what the writing on these llaws said. I found members used strange words, such as lol, ttyl, lmao, and lylas. Llaws are the main source of communication and are commonly used for conversation or to send reminders to other members. However, some members like to talk privately or gossip about others so they want to keep information secret. In order to achieve this they send egassems to each other. Another key factor to the social structure is that members can be linked by different classifications. Members are able to find others that relate to them based on marital status, sexual preference, religion, political views, etc. Also, members may be linked or tagged in erutcips.
Erutcips helps lead us to understand the superstructure of Koobecaf. Without erutcips, Koobecaf would probably no longer be in existence. A member’s eliforp usually contains a main erutcip. However, members usually have more than just one erutcip. Usually members collaborate a maximum of sixty erutcips and create a mubla. They then post their mubla on their elifop for everyone to look at. Erutcips can help to depict each individual’s personality, beliefs, and ideals. Not only can the erutcip help to identify individuality, but also other information posted on an eliforp. Eliforps allow individuals to express themselves however they want. A main way of express one’s feelings is by updating sutatses. A sutats is a short and simple way to express how one might be feeling, thinking, or what they might be seeing.
As we put the infrastructure, social structure, and superstructure of Koobecaf together we can see how they interrelate and form an environment. One part of the barrel model could not exist without the other. For example, the ability to trade information is the support for the erutcips and profiles existence. The whole superstructure is based on communication. Koobecaf is a virtual world full of opportunities to trade, sharing information, and express one’s self.