This study explores the online embodied experiences of gay men which challenge societal notions of beauty, health, and eroticism. Examining discourses emerging from three distinct Internet Relay Chat channels -- gaymuscle (an online community sensualizing extreme images of male muscularity), gaychub (a community celebrating male obesity), and gaymusclebears (an erotic space formulated from the complex intersection of the obese and muscular male bodies) -- this study seeks to understand how individuals utilize computer-mediated communication for the exploration of non-normative sexualities. 

[The complete text of Andreas Kitzmann's paper is available.]

Domestic web-cams provide a new twist in the social practices oriented around the distinctions between private and public space. On the one hand they are located in the most public of mediums -- the Internet, which by design is available to anyone with the right technology. Yet on the other, domestic web-cams allow the pretense of entering into the most private spaces of home life. This presentation examines the nature of this mediation between the private and the public made possible by web-cam technology. 

In this presentation, I want to theorize how users experience the internet as a site of performance. Participants enter a site as performers and the interface determines what kind of role they perform. Exploring this theory through The Blair Witch Project's homepage, it can be seen how the designers of this site use scientific tropes in an attempt to make the fantastic seem real. Using various performance theories, I hope to explain how the interface helps shape the participant's experience/performance, which causes fantasy to blur into reality. In addition, I want to explore how this web site extends the story of the film itself.