Since this one's going to be an essay-like one, it's gonna be a little boring for some of you who are reading it... lol
Well, pardon me about that, who aren't essentially relating to the course itself! XD;;;
***
First of all, what are the best and the worst part of the Internet? Everyone who are using the Internet might have thought about that at least once.
And the question itself seems simple, however, it is not that simple as long as the Internet itself has multiple aspects. Multiple aspects, such as information-source, individual speaking-out tool, networking system, etc.
But anyway, Internet absolutely is a flood of information, and that is what makes the system both greatest and worst.
Therefore, in this blogpost, it will focus on people who often are positively trifled by this flood of information; sexual minorities in Japan.
Referred to sexual minorities, first of all, it has to point out what are the greatest goods for those people in the Internet.
They are the points introduced below;
1. Easiness for them to speak themselves out (Japanese blogs by LGBT people)
2. Easiness for them to get information about people like themselves (Brief introductions about LGBT-related terms)
Those goods are obviously attractive for them, because they oftentimes never have chances to speak out what they are, or to know what they are.
About those goods however, they are not always the best, but cause some things almost the worst sometimes.
Therefore, referred to the goods above, here, it will try to point out what the best and the worst aspects of the Internet are.
Firstly, what is the best aspect of the Internet?
That totally could be said that it is the frequency for people's communicating with information.
Here is the example below;
asking Google (Japanese Ver.) the question, "what is gay? (ゲイとは)" → ■
As it could be seen in the link, there are about 19,300,000 results for the keyword, and in the top of it there are some answers which actually respond to the question itself; Wikipedia page for example.
There, people can easily access to the general meaning of the term "ゲイ (gay)".
Also, there is another way to access the answer for the question; there is Google Scholar if people want some deeper or academic information.
There, it also offers about 3,760 links (since the put keyword is in Japanese those results are all in Japanese) which might be responding to the keyword, and many of the links which are available show articles those deeply refer to the question.
Thus, it absolutely is clear that the Internet is highly useful for people who want to ask a certain question and collect answers for it.
Focusing on the fact of the usefulness of the Internet however, people should not forget that the usefulness could cause a grave trap at the same time.
Because of the massive amount of the information in the Internet, people might believe in wrong information without any doubts by accident --- accidents those can easily happen.
Here is a blogpost that points out how sexualities are misunderstood by people.
So, let it once shift its point of view to how people without certain sense of their own sexualities try to understand what they are.
First, if the people had doubt about their own sexualities, they first try searching for tools for investigating themselves.
In the Internet, they are able to find those sorts of tests really easily; such as the image below.
People who are confident with what they are barely can believe this test, but people who are dying for anxiety can easily be wavered by it.
And here is a similar-level ridiculous one, which was made as a joke.
Same for the Internet viewed from mobile-phones, too; there are some mobile-phone FLASH applications for knowing one's own sexuality for extremely cheap.
The provider of this application describes this test as something psychological and useful for solving minds; which never makes sense for many people.
Of course, there are some useful analytical tests and articles for analyzing one's sexuality online, but they are not so easy to find one without a clear aim or a certain level of knowledge.
(* In fact, when trying to find the link right above, it had to be found based on knowing the existence of the website in advance.)
That way, many homosexuals mistake themselves as gender identity disorder, and also reverse accidents happen, too.
Thus, it is obvious that the Internet can provide way too much information that can cause people to gain wrong knowledge.
So, what can Internet users without calmness, confidence and knowledge do to protect themselves from incorrect answers to their question?
What can they do in order to make good use of the goods of the Internet?
Here is the answer for those questions;
They only need to know that they have to be careful never to swallow the whole stories written online.
They need to understand that they are not having knowledge enough to judge which information is the correct one, so that they will get to know what kind of questions they have to ask the Internet before getting to the answers they want.
For example, in Japanese sexual-minorities' case, why not they first try to understand what all the referred terms mean before they start analyzing themselves?
Or, they will simply get to wrong responses to their questions; what they really are.
