Cybertyping

The focus of Lisa Nakamura’s article “Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction” is the way that the Internet “propagates, disseminates and commodifies images of race and racism.” She coins the term “cybertype” to define this idea; in other words, it’s the new media version of a stereotype.

I think she makes a lot of interesting arguments in her discourse. It is easy to think of the Internet as a utopian entity, where everyone has equal and homogenous Internet presence. But this is clearly not the case. I know personally, whether I intend too or not, I continuously purport myself as a middle-class white girl in her twenties. What will I do when these are no longer true descriptors of myself? I am always able to chose representations of myself that make me look smarter, richer, wittier, blonder, and happier than my true self. On the Internet everything is a copy and I’m doing my part to be the best version of that “copy.”

Nakamura states that her research has shown that “when users are free to choose their own race, all were assumed to be white.” So not only are we falsely representing ourselves on the Internet, but we are falsely perceived.

Another interesting idea she has concerns the “targeted” web content available today. Although, there is more and more content out there that supports people from every subset of society, much of it is manipulated for commercial reasons. Nakamura notes of these specialized sites “view women and minorities primarily as potential markets for advertisers and merchants rather than as coalitions.” I have found, in my own experience, that this is absolutely true. When I worked as a Sales Rep for CBS Radio in Dallas, we would hold twice-weekly brainstorm sessions to come up with ways to put our clients in front of their desired demographic. This included creating websites dedicated to beauty tips and fun activities for “Women 25-34” to participate in simply so we could sponsor it by Cadillac. It’s amazing how much of what we are exposed to was creating for the sole purpose of getting us to buy something. And all this does is perpetuate our “cybertypes” because we continue to support it.

So, does one propose we have a Black Google? Do we give every race and gender specific web portals so we no longer assume everyone is a white male? Rushmore Drive was a search engine that was created as a destination for Black people. However, this concept proved to be a failure and it was shut down a year after it’s launch. Indeed, marketing content by race has proven to be more difficult than one might expect. Despite the existence of countless race-based social networking sites, none even remotely compare to the popularity of Facebook.

This fact has some bearing on the Foucault piece we read for this week: as the internet itself becomes more complicated and involved, the easy methods of dividing people up, categorizing them and controlling their online experience becomes more difficult. The truth is, a search engine for Black people sounds rather absurd today. Yet, I don’t know what the answer is for dealing with the question of race or gender in relation to the Internet. Do we assume everyone is a white male or do we force everyone to pigeonhole themselves within their own stereotype?