Building Social Capital Pt.1

One of the interesting aspects of the TOMB is how relative unknowns within the community can rise quickly to a position of prominence through sharing of unique recording knowledge or experience from which others in the community may benefit. This can take technical forms, such as how a certain microphone placement, using a specific but inexpensive mic, resulted in a killer sounding guitar track or vocal take. Or it could take more of a social form, like how a full-time studio engineer or producer stays positive day in and day out even while working on projects with bands whose music he or she doesn't care for one whit. One entire recent thread, titled "do you ever want to just quit the whole deal?", addressed the discouraged attitude the initial poster admitted to having about working on so many projects like these. Nearly all the numerous respondents replied with varying degrees of empathy, words of encouragement and advice, and generally supportive feedback.

This example seems to contradict Wellman's assertion that strong, intimate ties foster greater levels of emotional support (Wellman and Frank, p.235, in Social Capital), for the message board members in this thread were obviously not close friends or even casual acquaintances. Yet by later in the thread, the original poster wrote how much he appreciated all the good feedback and how it had really made him question some assumptions he had. In fact, by page two of the thread, about 30 posts in, a new poster wrote: "I hardly ever say something "rules" but TapeOp'ers absolutely rule. You guys are the most REAL virtual people I've ever not met." If that's not a reflection of real emotional bonding and a shared sense of community, I'm not sure what is!