FanFiction: The Lunch E-Table

Many girls, and boys, are familiar with the move Mean Girls. In this movie, which is about a girl coming home to America and having her first experience in an American High School, there is a scene about lunch tables. In this scene, all of the tables are labeled based on who is sitting at them. There is the jock table, the "plastics" table, the music group, the smart asians, etc. This idea relates to the subject of girls and the virtual world because of what the idea represents. The idea of the kunch table cliques is about people expressing thier identity and "hanging out" with the people who are most like themselves. We have discussed these issues throughout the semester. The main idea, and in my opinion the most positive, of the virtual world is the ability of young girls to express themselves and experiment with their own identity. One of the best examples of this are the girls who participate in FanFiction. These girls create new characters or new plot lines for their favorite novels and stories, such as Twilight and Harry Potter. When I first read about these it struck me about how easy it could be for people to express themselves with no inhibitions because they are creating a character. There is not need to worry about whether people think you are "weird" or not. You can be anyone and still stay anonymous. In fact, one of the girls interviewed expressed this idea. She was a former model who expected to be pretty and act "cool," but when she signed into her FanFiction account she could be as "nerdy" as she wanted to be. Also, it talked about how people on these FF sites create "cliques" and groups within themselves. They all relate in some way, either over mutual respect for writing, or ideas of how plot lines should play out, or just a love for the same books. This is a lot like the lunch table groups. Each table represents a group of students who all have many of the same interests. The relationship between the Virtual FanFiction site and the real life scenario of the HIgh School lunch tables is very interesting and yet just another example of how the new social networking online is becoming a Virtul High School.