Within the past four years a vast phenomena has drastically reshaped the on-line community. The advent of the World Wide Web in 1993 brought with it a new set of jargon. Almost overnight hypertext became the medium of choice for on-line communication. American society was bombarded with television advertisements from on- line services and Internet service providers that promised communities without the constructs that ruled physical reality. Sex, race, age, and nationality did not exist in the progressive frontier of cyberspace. No longer would the Internet and on-line communities be the guarded possession of a select group of academics and hobbyists. It was to become a liberating tool for the masses. If the service providers were to be believed the Web opened up a whole new world of information and experience to the masses. It is my assertion, however that the growth of the on-line community as made possible by the Web, in fact, does exactly the opposite. The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) has grossly enlarged the on-line community. Along with this growth has come a vast diversifying of interests and alienation within the on-line community.
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