ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some reflections on what these virtual playgrounds of the erotic reveal about the physical world people inhabit. It examines the implications of embodied identity online, noting how some of the discourses emerging on these channels unsettled naturalized understandings of the body. Of particular interest is Foucault's understanding of the generative quality of power and how that is manifest in these cyberspaces. The chapter focuses on the debate surrounding the use of ethnography in cyberspace, confronting the question of whether a meaningful ethnographic account can be constructed solely through online inquiry. It presents some of the sociological implications surrounding claims to nativeness in this narrative. BigJoe sees a clear decline in the state of Internet Relay Chat (IRC), believing that newer modes of computer-mediated communication are superceding this older model of online chat. Certainly in terms of numbers, America Online is the predominant method of online chatting for those residing in the identity online.
