The Virtuality of Food, Cultures and Origins

 

# Blog 5: The Virtuality of Food, Cultures and Origins.

Image From:  http://newspagedesigner.org/photo/food-origins?context=user#!/photo/food-origins?context=user

Food isn’t just food; it is a symbol that can represent a transformation of a culture and ethnic groups that may be associated with various regions, allowing adaptations and change to be dependent on the virtuality and reality of food as well as its culture. (Kuttainen, 2013). Habbo Hotel has the ability to allow the virtual avatar to eat, drink, and socialise with others in many different arenas and rooms associated in the hotel. Some of these rooms and arenas include cafes’, night clubs, and restaurants. This is defiantly a key factor which Patel talk about in this week’s reading; that Habbo Hotel can be viewed as a large corporation of power through the consumption of food advertisements that are associated throughout the websites home page and the socialization towards other virtual characters and their environment. 

Drawing on this week’s reading of Atkins & Bowler (2001) they discuss that “ironically, there is no guarantee that food which has place in the association of mind to the consumer can be found amongst its true regional specialities.” This allowed me to look at my social network and discover how and why food what present and its impact on the virtual character I have created to social in an online community. This has showed me that all types of food as well as the different cultural food are being used in Habbo Hotel.

Like all social networking sites they all had to start somewhere, fond, a creator and be known through the virtual world. Google is one of the most well-known sites around the world that has been the key base of common social networking sites. And now within the company Google you are able to access web mail through what is called “Gmail”. Habbo Hotel is not only a socially, global network that allows users to interact online it also forms an identity (ID) that can be less recognisable, making it the virtual world seem somewhat optimistic. Habbo Hotel is owned and operated by Sulake Corporation; which also co-funds other virtual networks such as lost monkey, niko and press. On http://www.sulake.com/habbo/ is a further detail explanation of what the creator of Habbo Hotel and other social networks that Sulake Corporations have interconnected.

Reference List:

Atkins, P., & Bowler, I. (2001). Food in Society: Economy, Culture, Geography. London, England: Arnold. a member of the Hodder Headline Group

Kuttainen, V (2013) BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narratives and the Making Of Place, Lecture 7: Part 2/3 Food Networks [PowerPoint Slide Notes]. Retrieved From: http://learnjcu.edu.au

Image Credit:

Douglas Okasaki (27.06.2011). Food Origins. Retrieved From: http://newspagedesigner.org/photo/food-origins?context=user#!/photo/food-origins?context=user