MENU DRIVEN IDENTITY WORKSHOP-My response

1.Which categories are available for users to choose from when signing up for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or in order to use the Second Life gameworld? What presumptions do these categories make about users, and what does the absence of certain categories of identity say?

As observed by many from this tutorial group, Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail provides the categories of language, country/region, gender, birth date and occupation for users to choose from. Yahoo! Mail, for advertising purposes, provides a more extensive range for occupation including industry and specialisation for users. This is to funnel the massive range of advertising to suit the user’s needs as presumed by the service provider based on the choices selected(interests, career etc). The categories available seems to place little importance on the race of the users as they are differentiated by geographic locale rather than by ethinicity or colour.

Second Life provides “Second Life First Name”, “Second Life Last Name”, “date of birth” and “gender”. The game offers a selection of preset last names that are uncommon and allows for a unique in-world identity that seems to be race and colour free.

4.Are any of the websites you've visited inherently racist? Why or why not?

One must question the definition of the term racism in attempt to answer this question. If racism is defined to be an animosity towards other races or a belief in racial superiority then perhaps many of the sites are racist towards the minority races or less affluent races, as there is exclusiveness in categorization. However, I do not believe that the intent and motive of the sites were to condescend and marginalize these other races. As an Asian myself, I never felt ‘marginalized’ by Yahoo! and Hotmail, as I find it more of a hassle to deal with a long list of tick boxes and columns “about me”. I believe that most of the sites probably started by providing their service to a targeted user group based on market research and statistics. However, as the accessibility of internet increases resulting in a greater diversity online, these service providers must begin to take responsibility to ensure that more groups are accounted for.

To be honest, I did feel tangibly isolated while browsing through Lavalife due to the overall design of the site, which seems to have adhered to a default set of identity categories (namely age, location, colour, star sign, religiousness , height, physique, smoking/drinking habits). Colour (mainly white) seems to be an important aspect of the Lavalife ‘identity’ thus creating an obvious segregation between other races.