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Question: Are Virtual Communities Real? Answer: Can Virtual Community be regarded a real community? A community is comprised of people who remained bonded together via beliefs, characteristics of location which make them have a feeling of acceptance and heard. This remains true for both face to face and virtual (online) community. Nevertheless, some differences exist in dynamics of both, and this is able to affect the quality of friendships we build and attempt to sustain with a community. Considering the dynamics and benefits of face to face community, as opposed to a virtual community, we observe that virtual community falls short in ways which make people query whether, indeed it is a real community or not (Reuter, Heger and Pipek 2013). People currently depend on virtual community because of convenience of socialization at any time or place in the course of our busy lives. In virtual community, communication remains restricted as people only relies on the other individuals words on Facebook, Twitter and Snapchats to mention a few. In writing, however, we are only able to put across our thoughts but not attitudes alongside tone of voice that remain as vital behind the written words. Building effective relationship is limited by lack of social cues in virtual community. People give a false sense of pride in life which is self-edited and really not the one they really are living making virtual to be a deceiving platform (Liao, To and Hsu 2013). A face-to-face community enjoy various qualities which are missing in virtual community. For example, the ability to get to know individuals one is interacting with, not merely who they seem to be as in virtual community. Communication remains clear with utilization of tone of voice and body language (Kunz and Seshadri 2015). Moreover, physically being there with an individual makes a great difference. We can build memories as well as strengthen our relationships with individuals we are getting together with in a community and sharing a meal. However, in virtual community, we are unable to enjoy many events like birthday parties, beach barbecues and weddings in a manner we do in a real context like face-to-face community. The ill-fated reality stays that people are a culture deprived of a real community. Even currently with all of the means to remain connected virtually, people are still never getting enough real community. People are continually seeking to fill the gap of experiencing a culture which emerges from spending time as well as partaking in life with family and friends in a face-to-face community. This remains unfortunate since as human beings, people crave real interactions with others and albeit the virtual communities are providing the increased accessible means to remain in touch with family and friends, virtual communities are never providing people the desired real human interaction. Having weighed real and virtual communities against each other, it remains essential to conclude and determine whether virtual communities can hence become real. In fact, the primary distinction between virtual and real communities lies in common place of living as well as communication face to face. Real community members see one another daily, inhabit same territory, and hence their communication stays sort of unavoidable. Things appear difference with virtual communities as member never meet, yet might own same close relationships (Grabher and Ibert 2013). From my viewpoint, virtual community cannot become real absolutely, since individuals can fathom nature of one another solely when they see one another and communicate face-to-face. Nevertheless, contemporary virtual communities have made some advances at this juncture via the use of web cameras, microphones amongst other gadgets permitting them to develop close relationships. References Grabher, G. and Ibert, O., 2013. Distance as asset? Knowledge collaboration in hybrid virtual communities. Journal of Economic Geography, 14(1), pp.97-123. Kunz, W. and Seshadri, S., 2015. From virtual travelers to real friends: Relationship-building insights from an online travel community. Journal of business research, 68(9), pp.1822-1828. Liao, C., To, P.L. and Hsu, F.C., 2013. Exploring knowledge sharing in virtual communities. Online Information Review, 37(6), pp.891-909. Reuter, C., Heger, O. and Pipek, V., 2013, May. Combining real and virtual volunteers through social media. In ISCRAM