rhetorical criticism reading

This reading was about how criticism of public discourse has to change from the old ways when one is looking at rhetoric online. I feel like we had been talking about some of these ideas before -especially when talking about the idea of identity  - but this reading was still very informational.

As usual I found the ideas of identity particularly interesting. Especially how once again a paper brings up the fact that you can technically play as another gender online. I had never really thought about this when I am just on the Web; the idea that a person could tell me they are a woman or a man and I would just have to take that text at face value. But it seems to be an idea that plagues rhetorers because I have read about it in several papers. I would have to think some more about how I perceive and anonymous identity online but my first thought is usually to think of them as male. This is because I see most faceless people online as highly assertive, often-times destructive, and many times powerful people and I've been taught socially to view these traits favorably in men.

One thing that fist stuck out in this reading for me was the part they quoted on reading hpertext. The point made about how one can't fully research the quantity that the internet provides and that online rheterors have to work with chunks and samples reminds me of the paper we just had to write. Ten pages, trying to contextualize all the work that has been done on World of Warcraft, and I felt like I had barely scratched the surface. That's a normal feeling on the internet; the understand that I will only be working with a small sample of what their is to offer. I never thought before about how this effects my rhetoric. It has to, on some level, because I have to understand that I will never be a 'master' of the knowledge that I am studying; or at least in the way that it used to happen.