... Online 'Tribes'

So Habbo.co.uk have done some research which revealed some pushes away from what I considered my teen life to consist of – tribes.


Apparently kids today don’t ally themselves with one group like punks, ravers etc, but move between them.


I remember at my school you had the neds (that’s chavs in Scotland) then the moshers, the sporty kids, the pretty popular girls, the geeks, and then ‘everyone else.’ I had a brief foray into ned life, hitting ‘the skating’ on a Saturday night… never went to the under-18 nightclubs that went along with that lifestyle though. (the dancey, trancey ones… plush and archaos!) I also dabbled in mosher/goth life, and that lasted longer and still stands a bit today, the heaps of eyeliner, hanging round the Glasgow art gallery, going to underage rocky type clubs (cathouse!) Eventually I settled on just being a normal, everyone-else type person, dressing my own way, going to the normal underage clubs, the rnb/poppy ones like Trash (RIP!) Most kids in my school allied themselves to one group and spent their weekends acting accordingly.


Now though, Habbo are claiming research shows this isn’t the case. They have coined the term ‘tribal tourism’ to describe modern-day teens. Apparently… “teens now pledge allegiance to a number of different groups simultaneously and 61% don’t feel bound to the same tribes online as they do in real-life while half of teens believe that you can belong to more than one tribe online and offline.”


The net is allowing ‘tribal freedom’ and teens can express themselves easier and more creatively. Digital tools like music and photo sharing are suggested as the stimulus for this, also giving them the confidence to explore different groups and interests. Social media is making it easier for teens to interact with likeminded people, encouraging more niche groups to form (it’s all about the long tail eh?!) According to the research, 75% of teens globally believe the Internet has made it easier to find people with the same interests and tastes. This is fab, especially for those kids who may have been considered ‘outcasts’ at school if they were, e.g. the only emo. At least they have a good support structure online at the end of the day.


For my final year New Media project at Leeds Uni, I created a promotional flash website for a cosmetics brand, aimed at young girls age 11-16 (ish.) I decided to base it upon these ‘tribes’ that I was most familiar with during my time at high school. In the end I went for Sporty (chav was a bit too far…) Emo and Girly. I did a lot of research and focus groups with my target audience and these were the tribes that came out the strongest so I decided to roll with them. In the end, the website represented 3 girls in these different tribes, all friends, sharing a love of the cosmetics brand. The site design was changeable according to what tribe the viewer clicked on, and ‘hidden’ areas provided either emo, sporty or girly hangouts for further tribe interaction. So I guess even though my site encouraged differentiation between the tribes, it also led to users being able to explore each one, encouraging this ‘tribal toursism’ that Habbo have now pulled out of the bag. It’s 2 years old, and totally student, amateur standard, but to see my site ‘tribalism’ in action click HERE.


I think there will always be a part of you, no matter what age, that belongs to some form of ‘grouping.’ I’m always going to be an indie kid at heart. And although I don’t always dress like the indie kids ‘dress,’ I think that’s the group I most ally myself to and belong with. So the Habbo tribal tourism thing is pretty sound I reckon, and applies to everyone, not just teens; although I know I ‘belong’ to one tribe, I like the chance to explore other tribes online, in a non committal way, picking up the bits of each culture that I like and want to make my own; I’m making my own sub-tribe ;)