October - Wingspan

22 WingspanOctober 12, 2009lccc.wy.edu/wingspanUnderground culture becomes mainstreamTheundergroundculture hashidden underthe radar foryears, butVampireFreakshas brought itsinfluence upto the surface.By TravisShermanPhotography EditorAs the Internetbecame a haven forfriends and relativesto meet, greet andshare, social networkingsites becamenormal practice foralmost everyone.Some help find familyand some help findfriends, but whatabout finding the obscureones, the peoplewho have a “dark side”to their lives?Enter VampireFreaks,http://www.vampirefreaks.com.Started in 1999 byJethro “Jet” Berelson,VampireFreaks wasoriginally a culminationof industrial/gothic music forumsthat expanded to afull networking Website with 2,122,161registered users.VampireFreaks hasessentially become ahaven for the occult,the strange and theunderground. It isnow the MySpace ofthe dark and has beenorganized as such.When you create aprofile (in my case forthis review I createda page for my band,Something MAD), itis similar to that ofMySpace or Facebook.You give basic detailsabout yourself, createa username, and uploada picture or two.Pretty simple, huh?From there, the optionsare endless. Youcan find people andbands, join “cults” andchime in on forumdiscussions, all, ofcourse, involving thedark, occult and thestrange.Some of youmay be concerned Imentioned cult, butdo not be alarmed.Cult, in this manner,means a forum groupdedicated to onesubject. It could be asingle band, a genreof music, a figure ofimportance or even areligious deity, so don’tfeel panicked when itcomes time to acceptan invite from a cult.Pertaining to thedark, occult andstrange sections of theweb site, it all dependson you and somesearching around.The main page ofthe Web site shows afew interesting itemsusually pertaining toan event sponsoredby VampireFreaks, yetall the dark, occultand strange parts takeplace on each user’sprofile page. It couldbe a picture they have,the lifestyle they follow,or the music theyenjoy, but it’s there,and it’s meant to befound and seen byusers such as you.I had to do a littleresearch online aboutsome issues that pertainto VampireFreaksand came across afew. A review of theWeb site from XomReviews, http://www.xomreviews.com,said the biggest issuerevolves around themoderators and usersnot following the set“Terms and Service,”primarily towardmonitoring, as well asracism toward otherusers. The monitoringissue concerns certainitems such as forumchat and instantmessaging within theWeb site. If the talkis within acceptablerange, then it still isbeing removed, andthe user, or users,becomes punished.OK, since this isa review of Vampire-Freaks, I’m going tomake my suggestionto try it out and seewhat kinds of peopleyou can find. I canguarantee a surprisearound every corner,so watch your step,or mouse-click in thissituation. It has a fewgood things, but youhave to be carefulwith what you say,too, or you’re liable toget booted.