What Is a virtual gathering? It is the general consensus that gathering is a form of community and the virtuality of such a community is the lack of physical presence. However, many different people and studies had distinct opinions about these virtual communities. One distinct opinion was that a virtual community was fundamentally a traditional community, albeit without the actual physical contact; in ‘cyberspace’  (Peter Kollock & Marc Smith, 2003, Communities in Cyberspace, Routledge London) In literature, they share a similar stance, that it is almost like an idealist traditional community, imbued with positive moral values.

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 There are some fine nuances that debunk this opinion. Virtual gatherings share common major points with traditional gatherings but the technology, knowledge and usage of such spaces make up the finer points that arguably places virtual gatherings in its own category. One distinct behavioural difference is that these virtual gatherings tend towards are more lax and neutral forms of communication, probably largely due to the lack of personal identity immediately visible to the community. The gatherings virtually occur largely from shared common interests through the mediation of bulletin boards and networks. The human behaviours from such interactions would be based on humanity and not technology (i.e. hardware and software). Moreover, the realisations of such gatherings are through the ‘uniquity of world telecommunications network together with information-structuring and storing capabilities of computers’ (edited by Linda M. Harasim, Global Networks: Computers and International Communication, 1993, The MIT Press)