A Healthy Alternative; How Queer Identities are Formed in a Virtual Space.

Abstract

Queer identities have spent decades being formed and analyzed in the physical world, however, the growth of virtual spaces has begun to modify these concepts. In the modern technological age a new "world", virtual space, transcends the physical restrictions of time and space and brings with it new languages, cultures, and identities. This cyberspace is a highly accessible and largely used extension of, or, alternative to the physical world. Within these digital spaces, queer individuals have found certain "escapes", a place where they often form unique or influenced identities based on the communities they interact with. Healthy Alternative demonstrates how queer identities are uniquely formed within virtual space thus opening a dialogue about what that means for the development of these spaces in the future. Through a thorough process of survey and analysis this study will create a guide to virtual spaces whose main ideals focus on Accessibility, Anonymity, and Moderation. The survey connects with queer members of various virtual communities in order to gather a general consensus of the state of these spaces at present. The guide itself is situated within its own virtual space, an HTML website. This website connects users to not only the guide but to supplementary materials such as a Discord forum, social media feeds for updates, and a quick overview of the topic at large. The guide, Virtual Space Queer Community Guidlines, outlines 3 major sections: Accessibility, Anonymity, and Moderation. It's main ideological focus is adaptability and communication and, as such, is just the beginning of a major speculative shift in the understanding of coding with community in mind.