DigiRaces

(Free online games, 210)

    Cybertyping is the same as stereotyping but on a cyber-level. Cybertyping describes how cyber culture is promoting stereotypes more so than helping to break them (Nakamura, 2002). Identity tourism often times promotes Cybertyping. Identity tourism is when someone uses a cyber-identity to explore a different culture, race, or part of the universe (Nakamura, 2000). The problem with identity tourism is people do not research the race or cultural they are trying to portray. This results in inaccurate pretrial of that race and generally people fall back on the stereotypes. People tend to represent themselves as stereotypical caricatures of the race or culture being portrayed. For example in the game street Fighter 2 an Asian female with black hair, straight cut bangs, with her hair in a bun, and chopsticks holding it in place, while wearing a kimono. In reality most people in Asia do not walk around wearing this in everyday life just like the stereotype that all Asians know karate which also is not true. The game Street Fighter 2 demonstrates several types of identity tourism. The first type is gender exploration you can choose what gender of character you would like your fighter to be. The second form of identity tourism that the player can choose the persons race. The race you choose in this game can also dictate the way your character looks so the race you choose is coupled with the attire the character will be wearing. This limits that amount of choice available to the player to control the amount of identity tourism. The third factor of identity tourism is that as you fight other players the setting changes to different locations around the world. So although people do not mean to promote stereotypes they do often times without even realizing it. Just by doing the simple act of choosing of an avatar to represent them in a game they promote these cybertypes.

References:

Free online games, . (Photographer). (2010). Street fighter 2. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/

Nakamura, L. (2000). Race in/ for cyberspace. London, England and New York, New York: Routledge.   

Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: race, ethnicity, and identity on the internet. New York: Routledge.