Going Offline, Order and the Environment
This chapter describes two historical points when the online community members became aware of the notion—and necessity—of order: First when they realized that a basic chat order could regulate the conversations and affect how members behave in the offlin
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Going Offline, Order and the Environment
It was on a Saturday evening at a street food stall, or what is popularly called ‘lesehan’ in Javanese, when I joined the Solo Kaskusers’ offline meet-up for the first time. After establishing f=160 as a chatting forum, Solo Kaskusers began having weekly offline meet-ups there every Saturday where they could order local finger foods, snacks and drinks. The food stall is located directly in the city center and is considered a strategic meeting point that most Solo Kaskusers could reach. It is only 300 meters away from one of the largest malls in the city, Solo Grand Mall, as well as shops and various city landmarks, and 200 meters away from the mayor’s official residence. Directly facing the city center’s prominent street, Jalan Slamet Riyadi, the food stall shares a corner wall with the city’s oldest football stadium, next to the oldest recreational park complex, Sriwedari. It occupies the pedestrian sidewalk and is illuminated only by street lights. Every Saturday night, the lesehan manager reserves a spot for Solo Kaskusers to hang out starting at 8 p.m. It was one of those Saturday nights when Armin and I arrived a little bit earlier than the regularly scheduled time. As the first to arrive, we had the duty of preparing the plastic mats for sitting, just two meters away from the condensed city center’s Saturday night traffic. Armin reached his Blackberry and tweeted, ‘I am already here. Get moving!’ He ended the tweet with the KRS hashtag, mentioning @KaskusRegSolo. He then strolled through several forums on Kaskus to get himself up-to-date.
© The Author(s) 2017 A. Seto, Netizenship, Activism and Online Community Transformation in Indonesia, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5397-9_3
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3 GOING OFFLINE, ORDER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Minutes later, KRS members started to arrive. With the exception of Kris and Surandy, who are older than forty, most participants are younger, ranging from teenagers to those in their early thirties. Half an hour later, we were a group of eighteen, six of whom were women. Kris had asked his wife and daughter to come, while Harya, the Regional Leader, came with his girlfriend. We all sat on the floor making a circle and started to chat with each other. The conversation would usually begin with the currently trending subjects in f=160 or from Kaskus general forums. Solo Kaskusers exchanged actualities from the threads and forums where they dwell while also chatting about other random subjects. Coming to such an event is always beneficial for keeping up with the news from other threads and forums. During the offline meet-ups, Solo Kaskusers also sometimes chit-chat about their personal lives, a subject that sometimes does not surface in f=160 but comes up during personal communication. Some Kaskusers often offer rides home to those who came on public transport. Thus, over time, Solo Kaskusers began to learn where the others live in the city; information that would not normally be obtained if the conversation remained online in Kaskus’ shielded-ide
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