As a fellow chatter once said, "A common URL doesn't constitute community." Some chat sites evolve into such, depending on a special magic that occurs between regulars willing to invest a certain level of honesty and vulnerability to their connections. Some, either because of too large a transient flow, or the negative energy of some participants never make it past the nightclub stage. And sometimes, regardless of the best intentions of the regulars and volunteer administrators, all it takes is one deviant or two to undermine an entire group. When Jeffrey Dahmer moves in, there goes the neighborhood.

From what I've experienced, true community on the 'Net has a frontier mentality to it. People bond for various reasons, the foremost being shared time together. Chatters loyal to one site soon find other regulars to greet with the requisite asterisked action: *hug*, *smile*. As time goes on, they share things: the purchase of a faster modem, or a new car; the arrival of a baby; the decree nisi of a harrowing divorce. These people may initially have nothing more in common than online access, and a desire to communicate, but eventually they build a history together, and emerge as a diverse and complimentary society. It's a lot like moving into a new neighborhood without ever having to carpool.

This concept is throwing anthropologists for a loop, in that the primary definition of "community" is shared location and/or background. Net communities have anything but. We worry about monsoon season in Malaysia, and whether El Niño will stop battering the Eastern Seaboard long enough to give Northern Alberta enough snow for tobogganing. We bemoan the treatment of women in Afghanistan, discuss the relative merit of Dodge Neons over Ford Escorts, and admit to the stupidest clothing fad we've ever succumbed to — all in the course of an evening's conversation.

We celebrate the straight As of children we've never met; we send "virtual chicken soup" to sick friends; and we tease people mercilessly over malapropisms and typos. We send each other zany snail mail cards, birthday presents, and Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa gifts. We observe Yom Kippur, Ramadan, and Groundhog Day. We are sixteen years old, or maybe we're sixty-three, and it doesn't matter. As long as one can express him- or herself in an interesting manner, there is a level playing field. In fact, in our town, an ability to punctuate properly wins out over a body that won't quit any day of the week.

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