wtf a crazy brazilian invasion - orkut

7/30/2019 WTF A Crazy Brazilian Invasion - Orkut

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FRAGOSO, Suely, WTF a Crazy Brazilian Invasion. In: ESS, Charles ; SUDWEEKS,

Fay ; HRACHOVEC, Herbert (orgs) ; CATaC 2006 - Fifth International Conference on

Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication, 2006, Tartu. Estonia.

School of Information Technology - Murdoch University, 2006. v. 1. p. 255-274.

WTF A CRAZY BRAZILIAN INVASION

SUELY FRAGOSO

Universidade do Vale do Rio do Sinos, Unisios

So Leopoldo, RS, Brazil

Abstract: This work attempts to provide some insight into the BrazilianInvasion of Orkut, a Social Networking System. This is an Internetphenomenon which started in 2004 and in 2006 still shows no signs ofletting up. To this end. the paper examines some data concerning Internetuse in Brazil and then proceeds on to a brief description of the SocialNetworking Software Orkut. To address the Brazilian Invasion, the paperuses, above all, the records of Orkut itself, which bear witness to a highlevel of hostility between users from Brazil and from the United States ofAmerica. The aggressiveness of the posts, contrary to the image offriendliness and pacifism of that Brazilians have, lead to some of the mostviolent battles in the clash of cultures set up in Orkut. In an attempt to

understand the Brazilian protagonism in on-line aggression, somehypotheses are formulated which indicate that there are issues relating tomodern day national identities, in general, and, in particular, theformulation of the Brazilian national identity.

1. Introduction

The initial uptake of the Internet in Brazil was rather late, as the Internet has only

been legally available for public use since 1995. Ten years later, the number of

Brazilians with access to the Internet is still relatively low1 and they are highly

concentrated in the richer urban parts of the country2 The intensity of the

1 The number of domestic users active in Brazil in December 2005 was estimated byNielsen/Netratings to be 12.2 million (Ibope/Netratings, 2005), which corresponds toabout 6.6% of the approximately 185 million Brazilians that IBGE estimated to exist atthe end of the year. This figure doubles when access through terminals located at work,place of study or that are open to general public use. (Saito and Valim, 2005).2 According to a study by GAID-FGV, in 2003 the two richest regions of Brazil, Southand Southeast, had respectively, 13.5% and 10.41% of homes equipped with computerswith access to the Internet, compared with 3.68% in the poorer North region (GAID-

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FRAGOSO, Suely, WTF a Crazy Brazilian Invasion.In: ESS, Charles ; SUDWEEKS,




appropriation of the Internet by Brazilian users, on the contrary, has been

exceptionally high: in June of 2005 Brazilian users stayed on-line for longer

than the users in any other nation included in the study by Nielsen/Netratings,

exceeding the averages for the Japanese and the US users by more than one and

two hours respectively3.

A good part of the on-line time of Brazilians is taken up using applications for

one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many computer mediated communication

(Leite, 2005, s.p., Ibope/Netratings, 2006a) Instant messengers (MSN

Messengere ICQ), blogs and fotologs, the sites of cellular telephone operators

(used to send torpedoes without having to pay the charges for doing so from acell phone) and chat rooms are particularly popular in Brazil (Magalhes, 2005,

s.p.), indicating that Brazilians are much more interested in the potential of the

Internet as a relationship tool than as a means of distributing content.

The lengthy on-line times and the concentration of users on a few types of sites

(particularly synchronous communications systems, blogs, photologs and ,more

recently, social networking services - SNSs) favored the occurrence of the

Brazilian Internet Phenomena, a specific category of Internet memes4 in

which, for no apparent reason for this happening, the number of Brazilian users

of an online service greatly surpasses the number of members of the original

nationality of the service. The first record of such an event dates back to June

2003, when the number ofFotolog (http://www.fotolog.net) Brazilians users

surpassed the U.S. contingent by a few members5. At that time, a cultural clashconcerning the correct mode of appropriation ofFotolog was already well

under way. The majority of U.S. Fotologusers were reported as high-minded

amateur photographers, who publish serious photography, whilst most

Brazilian floggers were said to be teenage girls posting saucy webcam

portraits of themselves, their friends, their pets and the like (Kahney, 2003,

s.p.). The battle reached its apogee when Fotologstarted charging its members

FGV, 2003, p. 43).3 The average connection time for home Internet uses in June 2005 in Brazil wasreported to be 16h54min, compared to 15h35min in Japan and 14h46min in the USA.

The other countries included in the survey were Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain,Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. (Ibope/Netratings, 2006)4 Internet phenomena or Internet memes are events in which the popularity ofsomething relatively obscure increases geometrically or exponentially, often suddenly,supported by the propagation of content through the Internet. It has been noticed thatInternet memes tend to have a short life spam.5 In 2004, the number of Brazilians was estimated at around 50% of all Fotolog users(Alerigi, 2004, s.p.)

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http://www.fotolog.net/http://www.fotolog.net/


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for many posting privileges which resulted in the site being flooded with images

entitled fotolog free or the like, most of which were posted by Brazilian users.

Social networking software are particularly prone a this type of event and, in

fact, one of the largest and probably one of the best known of the Brazilian

Internet Phenomenon events has been the recent Brazilian invasion of Googles

social networking service Orkut, which started in the services early days and still

shows no signs of letting up.

The Brazilian Invasion of Orkut

Orkut(http://www.orkut.com) is an SNS that was launched in January 2004 by

Google. As with its more famous predecessorFriendster, and most other social

networking applications, Orkut is based upon Milgrams small-world model

(1967, as described in Barabasi, 2002) and works by collecting and recording

connections between users to form a large interconnected database. Orkut is an

invitation-only system: in order to join Orkutone has to be invited by someone

who is already a member of the service. Having received an invitation by e-mail

to join Orkut, to join one must register with Google (this requirement has

recently been added) and build ones profile. Orkut profiles are organized on

three layers: social profile (composed of features such as relationship status, age,

gender, nationality, languages spoken), professional profile (education,

occupation, job description and the like) and personal profile (eye color, haircolor, looks, best feature etc). All of the information requested is optional,

which means to say that a user could set up and maintain a profile giving

absolutely minimum information; practically just the name under which they

registered. A picture can also be associated to the profile. Once the profile is

declared completed, the user gains access to his or hers Orkutpage. At the top

right corner of the personal Orkut page, a windows shows the picture of the

friend who has sent the original invitation, whose name is a link anchor to that

persons profile.

In the his/her friends window at the top right corner of ones Orkut page

(Figure 1), thumbnails and links to the profiles of friends are available clicking

on them leads to the profiles of those people, and so on. On the page of anyOrkutuser, the system displays the chain of friends which connect the viewer to

that specific person. When a user encounters the profile of someone they know,

selecting the option to add as a friend triggers an internal invitation which this

known Orkutuser will find the next time they log in and accept or not (or

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ignore if they so wish). Any Orkutprofile can be read at any time by any other

user6.

Each user has also an album, capable of holding up to 12 pictures, and a

scrapbook, where other Orkut users can leave messages. Both the album and the

scrapbook are fully visible to all users. In contrast to other SNSs, such as

Friendster for example, Orkut does not provide information about recent

visitors to a profile. The possibility of snooping around other peoples profiles,

albums and scrapbooks unnoticed is certainly an major attraction of Orkut.

Perhaps, however, the most fascinating aspect is that which is a basic

characteristic of social networking software, which is almost making concretethe links between people. This means that with a few minutes of hopping from

friends to friends of friends one is faced with a representation that makes

obvious Milgrams notion of six degrees of separation (Barabasi, 2002). The

network of people that thus becomes visible is nearly always exquisitely diverse

and highly interesting.

Figure 1: Someones Orkut profile.

Adding to the voyeuristic entertainment value of reading strangers' profiles

without being spotted, another advantage of Orkutis the possibility of creating

6 Some restrictions can be applied to the public visibility of some specific subsets ofinformation of a profile.

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thematic communities. This facilitates the identification of users with common

interests, regardless of the degree of separation between them or between their

geographic locations, which whilst it is typical of computer mediated

communications does not cease to be one of its principal benefits. This feature

adds the potencial for knowledge building and knowledge sharing activities to

Orkuts capability as a business networking and dating service.

One supposed advantage of SNSs that work by invitation only is the presumed

reliability of all the members of the service. This factor, combined with the

woefully restrictive concept of personal on-line identity that appears to guide

Orkuts design, explains the deterrent to the creation and maintenance of

unrealistic profiles. Orkutusers can flag someone elses profile if they suspectit is false (that is, if the user identifies themselves with a name or image that is

not consistent with their off-line identity) or if the user is suspected of having

violated the Terms of Service Agreement. Despite having been considered quite

strict by some of the services early users (Hempell, 2004), Orkuts managers

were always much more easy going with users who create fictional profiles than

had been the case withFriendster7.

Other interesting features ofOrkutinclude theNews page, which gives access to

two different sections: announcements (the news strictly said, basically

information about changes in the system, updates of the regulations and features

and so forth) and demographics, a set of bar graphs with the daily statistics of

Orkut users (Figure 2). The existence of demographics has proved to be an

important attraction of Orkut: following the changes in the user statistics over

time has become a passtime for many users of the service. In March of 2004 a

community dedicated exclusively to recording and discussing Orkut Statistics8

was created, which, in January of 2006 was still active and had 1.463 members,

who were responsible for more than 150 subject threads, totaling thousands of

posts.

7 Johnatan Adams, creator of Friendster, was particularly strongly opposed to the so-calledFakesters. He launched a crusade against them, trying to bring order back to thesystem by deleting profiles named as legendary or historical characters, profiles who didnot portray realistic pictures, profiles named as or using inappropriate words or imagesto describe themselves or those linked to absurd numbers of other users. A crisis wasthus created, as amongst the Fakesters were some of the most enthusiastic, if also themost anarchic, users ofFriendster(Anderson, 2003, s.p.).8 http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=34264

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Figure 2: Orkutsdemographics page on 30 of January 2006. To the left, from top to

bottom, the graphs classify the users by the following categories: age (18-25, 26-30,

31-35, 36-40, 41-50, 50+), here for (friends, activity partners, business networking,dating) and relationship status (no answer, single, married, committed, open marriage,

open relationship). The larger graph, to the right, shows the users by percentage by

country, Brazil, United States (the link beneath this, which reads details, leads to

another graph which classifies the number of users by US State), Iran, Pakistan, India,

Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, Estonia.

In its two years of existence, Orkut has grown to have millions of users at an

incredibly fast pace (Figure 3). As the number of Orkut users shot up the

membership profile started to shift from the an initial US majority to

internationalization. In the middle of February 2004 more than 60% of the users

of Orkut were from the United States, After these came the users from the

United Kingdom and Canada, each with a little more than 3%. Other countrieswhich at first appeared to have strong user bases were the Netherlands, Germany

and Sweden. In mid-April, the US share was reduced to less than half of the total

number of users, while Japan and Brazil had grown to 7,4% and 7,2%

respectively (Hempell, 2004, s.p.). In May, USA users were 43% of the total

and the proportion of Brazilian users (15,02%) had nearly tripled the percentage

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of the Japanese, which had decreased to 5,66%. Close to the end of the month of

June the percentage of Brazilian users overtook those from the United States.

From then onwards, the percentages of Brazilian and American Orkutusers has

evolved as an inverse proportion to one another.

Figure 3: Graphical representation of the total percentages ofOrkut users by

nationality over the period from May 2004 to Jan 20069. At the top, data about the 13

nationalities which have figured amongst the top 10 in that period of time:UnitedStates, Brazil, Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom, India, Canada, Estonia, Germany,

Spain, Iran, Pakistan and Portugal. At the bottom, without users from Brazil and the

USA.

9 At the start of May 2004 members of the Community Orkut Statistics started to recordregularly the percentage of users reported in Orkuts demographics bar graph. Dataavailable from this community has shown itself to be reliable over a period of severalmonths of observation. Orkut Statisticss Topic Next change in nations top 10? (607posts by 02/05/2006, started at 4/21/2004) was the main source for Figure 4.

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As the number of Brazilian users increased so too did the number of

communities with names and subject topics in Portuguese: the first of which

appears to have been Eu ando com meus ps10, created soon after the service

started (January 23, 2004, having 9,702 members but only 30 topics in

February of 2006). One week later, January 30, 2004, another user created what

appears to be the oldest community that defines itself as Brazilian and which is

also one of the most active in Orkut with 549,842 members and more than

10,000 topics in February 2006. Entitled simply Brasil11, as of February 2006

the community description was a forum for Brazilians and anyone else with an

interest in the country and its culture and the community is defined as being inPortuguese. However it is known that the definition of a language for

communities was only included in Orkut in June of 200412, probably as a

response to the protests of users from the United States about the rapid

proliferation of communities in Portuguese. While it could be relatively easy to

solve the discomfort caused by non-English-speaking communities (the option

to search for communities solely in one language appears to be a sufficient

solution), it was practically impossible to prevent Brazilians from entering

communities that were totally in English and, without ceremony, start sending

messages and creating topics in Portuguese.

The first communities dedicated to discussing the high number of Brazilian

users were created in the first few months of Orkutbeing available. It was not

long before some communities acquired a tone of protest against BrazilianOrkuteers, which did not go unnoticed by the Brazilians, who then set about

creating anti-USA communities. Table 1 lists some examples of such

communities that were created during 2004 and that were still active in February

2006.

Table 1. Examples of Communities created during 2004 to discuss the high number of

Brazilians in Orkutand which are still in activity in 2006.

NameCreation

Owner Language N Members

United States of Brazil 04/25/04 Huy Zing English 4,317

WTF A Crazy Brazilian Invasion 05/07/04 Gera Dikarev English 2,696

10 I go on foot, http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=240 .11http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=4249 .12 Initially there was an option for multilingual communities, which was removed inJanuary 2006.

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http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=9787185331006929981http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=240http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=4249http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=240http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=4249http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=9787185331006929981


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Too Many Brazilians in Orkut 05/16/04 John. English 1,211

WTF a Crazy American

Implosion?06/15/04 Huy Zing English 120

USA Sucks 06/20/04 Giuliano Griffante Portuguese 65

Brazilians, the Plague 06/18/04 Marcio Wilheim Portuguese 507

Eu Odeio os Estados Unidos 07/16/04 Victor Brasil Portuguese 8,174

Why do you hate Brazilians? 07/18/04 Jags R. English 292

Brasil Sucks! 07/17/04 J0nkatz /. Troll English 20

Brasil 08/01/04 July Fernandes English 2,422

Amazon is only Brazilian! Ok? 08/07/04 Babi Barbara Portuguese 3,114

Eu odeio quem odeia o Brasil 08/30/04 Bruna Peres Justino Portuguese 6,407

No Americans, Yes Brazilians! 09/11/04 Diego Romo Portuguese 80

Americans & Brazilians 11/18/04 Elias Chamoun English 161

Brasileiros: Vergonha do Orkut 12/23/04 Eric Saraiva Portuguese 118

In the same mold as had happened in the first months of Orkut, when the

Brazilians set about trying to outnumber the US users, the second half of 2004

saw a significant push in search of an even more ambitious objective: that of

obtaining such an overwhelming majority of Brazilians that Orkut would be

taken from the Americans. Created in March of 2005 and having 3,959

members in January of 2006, the community Brazilians Own Orkut13 calls for

the Brazilian users to Click on Invite Friends and invite all of your friends to

enter here!14 so as to bring into the community the greatest possible number of

Brazilians. In this the community intends to be a way to show all the world how

big Brazilians are and prove that we Own Orkut! because We are patriots and

hate everyone who says we are a plague! Let us show our power! (Pedro Braz!,

February, 2006). Other similar communities were created throughout 2005, for

example O Brasil dominou o Orkut15 e O Brasil lidera o Orkut16.

13http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=1643152 .14 The text available in January 2006 is in Portuguese and reads: Misso: Clicar emConvidar Amigos e convidar todos da sua lista de amigos a entrar aqui!15 Brazil controls Orkut http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5632216 ,criada em 8 October, 2005.16 Brazil leads Orkut http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=6901646 , criadaem 7 December 7, 2005.

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http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=6981095306764629468http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=871685786757074503http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=1643152http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5632216http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=6901646http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=6981095306764629468http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=871685786757074503http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=1643152http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5632216http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=6901646


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From the first signs of proximity between the percentages of Brazilian and US

users the Brazilian media has colaborated in boosting Orkutas the latest trend

amongst Brazilian internet users(for exampleFolha de So Paulo, Eu quero ter

um milho de amigos, Caderno Teen, 24/05/2004; Veja, Gincana da

popularidade, 16/06/2004 andFantstico, Um milho de Amigos, 01/08/2004).

Despite there having been records of the sale of invites for Orkut through on-

line auction sites (Bad, 2004, s.p.), the generosity with which the Brazilians

provided invitations to other people forOrkutincreased as the competition with

the US users grew and this was certainly an essential factor in the green-and-

yellow invasion. It was not and it is still not uncommon to see requests forand offers of Orkut invites in Portuguese spread across newsgroups, mailing

lists, blogs etc. (Figure 4). In addition it became common to encounter Brazilian

user profiles with hundreds of friends in fact, some users have thousands of

friends. As each Orkutprofile does not support more than one thousand (and an

apparently random few) connections, it is not unusual to find Brazilian profiles

with names followed by I, II, III etc. This is a workaround strategy to bypass this

restriction so as to be able to obtain at maximum levels the social prestige

implied by characterizing oneself amongst the most important connectors in

Orkuts network17.

17 Accumulating as many connections as possible is far from the most efficient way tobecome a central connector, but it is certainly a very good way of appearing to be so orto be thought of as such.

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Figura 4: Examples18 of offers for Orkut invites taken from Brazilian sites in 2006. At

the top, (a), Z Orkut announces that time of having to beg for an invite to Orkut has

come to an end, just ask Z Orkut ([email protected]) and your wish will come

true. Underneath, another post on the same blog comments: Z Orkut is a flop, but I

am not and Be my friend and lets explode this closed circle!!!!! Lets break down

Orkuts door. At the middle, (b) shows a topic named Quem quiser entra no Orkut

(Whoever wishes to enters Orkut) from an online forum, with offers and at the bottom,

(c) shows the access to a form for an automated Orkut invite sender from a site named

Im in Orkut.

The ease with which Brazilians send Orkut invitations and the fact that they

accept even unknown people as their friends has to be, without doubt, anotherfactor that irritates more circumspect users. After all, part of Orkuts original

charm was due to its club priv character and the making explicit of the six

degrees of distance between users , which has now been ruined by a flood of

Brazilians who thought it amusing to invite in almost anyone and to link to

everyone else in the service, collecting hundreds of orkut friends.

So what?

The fact that an on-line service that was originally based in a specific country

has been taken over by users from a different nationality is not a shocking event,

given that anything that is published online can be accessed by people physically

located anywhere where there is an Internet connection. Certainly the appeal of

any web-based service will vary in different regions around the globe according

to the cultural specifics of the potential users.. Because they favor the desire to

accumulate connections (as a demonstration of social prestige), SNSs are

particularly prone to be taken over by users from some types of pre-existing

groups. So much so that independently of and parallel to the Brazilian invasion

of Orkut, several other similar services which were expected to grow in the

United States before expanding overseas have also been flooded with members

from other nationalities. It is known that LinkedIn, for example, grew further

and faster in Iceland, Finland, Israel and the Netherlands than in the US, while

Friendster was first taken over by members from the Philippines (Glasner,2005, s.p.).

The fact that Orkut was severely abused by a profusion of fake profiles,

spamming messages and unauthorized uses of the service, including illegal

18 All examples were found via a Google search carried out on 9th February, 2006 (thesearch terms were , search was limited to pages from Brazil and returned186.000 results within 0,06 sec).

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activities, is nothing new either: the same is known to have happened before in

several other computer mediated communication services, giving rise to some of

the most widely known legends of the internet culture. It is difficult to find an

experienced internet user who has never heard of the rape in LambdaMOO

(Dibbel, 1993, s.p.), of the male user who presented himself as an old, lonely

and crippled woman and under this character conned several other users (Stone,

1991, p. 82-83 apudBechar-Israeli, 1995, s.p.) or of the email asking for help to

avoid the fortune of an African belated husband, client or friend from being

confiscated or frozen by some unfriendly African dictatorial government.

What is really interesting about the invasion ofOrkuthas been hinted at by thetypical responses given to a question that has been asked repeatedly in different

places and circumstances: why Brazilians? The overwhelming majority of

attempts to answer this question invoked the Brazilian stereotype. An item called

Top ten reasons orkut is popular in Brazil, published by OrkutNews in

February 2005, summarizes some of the causes most commonly given for the

massive presence of Brazilians in Orkut: we [Brazilians] know lots of people

because we go out more often [than people from other countries]; we are

really a fun and different people and we love to . . . bring some warmth and

"real stuff" to this virtual community Finally, we're a nice and friendly people

and we're not afraid, like most other orkut users, to interact and exchange

experiences with everybody else, no matter what country (Silva, 2005, s.p.). In

another item available at the same site, the reputed beauty of Brazilians has alsobeen included, as OrkutMedia editor G. Tachibana considered that photobooks

should be a popular feature amongst Brazilian users because they are more likely

to be attractive or beautiful perhaps someone can write in why Brazilians look

so good. Is it the sun, the beaches, exercise? (Tachibana, 2005, s.p.)

Scholars also tended to resort to such stereotypical descriptions when trying to

explain why Orkut is so successful in Brazil. Interviewed by Reuters, Dr. E. N.

Saad Corra attributed the phenomenon to the fact that Brazilians are by nature

gregarious (Alerigi, 2004, s.p.). Talking to Universia Brasil, the sociologist A.

F. Testa also found that the Brazilian nature, a very inquisitive and sociable

people, was the principle reason for the affinity for on-line relationship tools

(Testa in Marques, 2005, s.p.). Even Dr. M. Coutinho, who provided severalfactors of distinct natures for the popularity ofOrkutin Brazil, did not forget to

mention that applications for computer mediated communications in general

tended to be popular amongst the Latin people, such as the Brazilians, as these

are more communicative than the Anglo-Saxons. (UOL, 2005, s.p.).

Across several Orkutcommunities, a large number of users (most often from

Brazil, but not always) have also repeatedly linked the flood of Brazilians to

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http://media.orkut.com/articles/0089.htmlhttp://media.orkut.com/articles/0089.htmlhttp://media.orkut.com/articles/0089.htmlhttp://media.orkut.com/articles/0089.html


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Orkut to positive characteristics such as friendliness, cheerfulness and a good

sense of humor. Observing the behavior of Brazilian users of Orkut, however,

such descriptions would appear to be, at best, sarcastic. Many communities,

topics and posts created by a significant sector of the Brazilian Orkut users bear

witness to a frightening level of aggressiveness and intransigence toward in the

main (but not exclusively) non Brazilians, and most notably toward the

Americans. (Figure 5).

In placing people with distinct cultural backgrounds in contact with one another,

SNSs offer themselves as privileged arenas for the exercise of cultural

hybridization as described by Garca-Canclini (2003) as well as for the

enactment of the Clash of Civilizations announced by Huntington (1996). Notthat the trans-cultural interactions on Orkutare, or even could be, just one type

or the other. Certainly there are variations that range from effective co-operation

to outright conflict that can be found. What is significant is that the nationalist

tone to the confrontations between Brazilians and Americans on Orkut is a

typical event in zones of intercultural contact and, as such, a predictable

outcome of the cultural interchanges made possible by SNSs. Going beyond the

confines of Orkut, the age of globalization is also the age of nationalist

resurgence, expressed both in the challenge to established nation-states and in

the widespread (re)construction of identity on the basis of nationality, always

affirmed against the alien (Castells, 1998, p. 27).

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Figure 5: Examples of anti-USA posts and communities. At the top right, thecommunity Eu Odeio os EUA - I Hate the USA19, created on June, 15, 2004. The

description says (in translation from the Portuguese)For those who simply HATE THE

NORTH AMERICAN WAY OF BEING. Arrogance, disrespect and stupidity This

phrase is written in president BUSHs toilet. This is followed by FOR THOSE WHO

SIMPLY HATE THE AMERICAN WAY TO BE!!!! in English).

A little lower and to the left, the community Eu Odeio os Estados Unidos20 , created

about a month later on July 16th, 2004. The description says (in translation) For those

who think the same way as me. Lets send those sons of @#$%&* to the fifth level of

hell).

19 The Community has 27,039 members in February 2006, when the official language isPortuguese. http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=95875.20 In English, I Hate the United States. As of February 2006 the official language isPortuguese and there are 8,536 members.http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=174663 .

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http://c/Papers%20e%20Apresenta??es/06/CATAC/!Enviado/%20when%20the%20official%20language%20is%20Portuguese.%20http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx%3Fcmm=95875http://c/Papers%20e%20Apresenta??es/06/CATAC/!Enviado/%20when%20the%20official%20language%20is%20Portuguese.%20http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx%3Fcmm=95875http://www.etcetcetc/http://www.etcetcetc/http://c/Papers%20e%20Apresenta??es/06/CATAC/!Enviado/%20when%20the%20official%20language%20is%20Portuguese.%20http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx%3Fcmm=95875http://c/Papers%20e%20Apresenta??es/06/CATAC/!Enviado/%20when%20the%20official%20language%20is%20Portuguese.%20http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx%3Fcmm=95875http://www.etcetcetc/http://www.etcetcetc/


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Below these are examples of posts made in the community No Americans Yes

Brazilians21 under the topic O que vcs mais odeiam nos Americanos? (What you

most hate about the Americans). The first post, originally in Portuguese, say:

11/10/2004, 10:45 PM What you most hate about the Americans? Say what you most

hate about this little people who think that they are better than the rest of the world

why then dont they build a wall around their country and separate themselves from the

rest of the world???

12/8/2004, 4:42 AM The nationality... the simple fact of their being Americans.

And below, the two more recent posts read

11/7/2005, 9:55 AM I hate them for being retarded!!! / The North-Americans are idiots,

I hate them because they think that only they make up America.../and for their thinkingthat we live in the middle of a jungle and hunt monkeys to survive... / also I hate them for

thinking that they are the best in the world, whilst Russia has much more destructive

power than the USA... / because they are racists(not generalizing) / because they are

STUPID!!!!!!!!(generalizing)... / because they are full of themselves and they are crap... /

because their president is a S of a whore.../ because the only good US presidents were

assassinated !!! / because they think that they are the most superior race on the planet ...

/ because they think that they will rule the world !!!! / I Hate the North - Americans !!!!!!

2/10/2006, 6:57 PM Because they are a bunch of rednecks (this last Word is in English

in the original, followed by an explanatory translation in Portuguese in parentheses)

Understood as the belonging to a specific Nation State, nationality is far from

being the primary source of identification. The modern Nation-States, after all,

resulted from the relatively recent and often violent processes of the suppression

of differences with the intent of constructing an apparently cohesive national

community. It is just because of the association between nativity and rulership

that the Nation-State has become a fundamental, but not for this any less

artificial or agonistic, source of meaning for modern cultural identities.

(Bauman, 2005, p. 25). In the case of the confrontations between the Brazilians

and the users from the USA on Orkut, national identity appears to be a

particularly fragile point of support. Both Brazil and the USA are the result of

the relatively recent unification of territories in the New World, whose native

inhabitants were subjugated to the point of completely losing all significance

when compared to the colonizing populations. New World people are almostexclusively composed today of the descendents of European colonizers, African

slaves and other more recent immigrants of more diverse ethnicity. That the

voices of these multi-ethnic, and to a great degree multi-cultural, crucibles

should be raised taking their respective national identities as the basic motivation

and war cry is, at the very least, paradoxical. More surprising still is to see

21http://www.orkut.com /Community.aspx?cmm=409912.

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emerge from the Brazilian side of this some of the most violent xenophobic

manifestations in the Orkutcommunities. We are dealing with, after all, a people

that pride themselves in their friendliness as much as they do in the national

culture which boasts a multiplicity of cultural hybridisms which, in fact,

permeate and constitute the experience of Brazil (from the culinary to the

religious, including the national language and the racial blending).

The national identities appear in the topics and posts in the Orkutcommunities

as the rallying call of a defensive fight, in which a smaller and weaker group (in

this case, the Brazilians) are resisting the yoke of a larger and more powerful

(the US users) group. This construction draws on a historical consistency thatmakes it almost inevitable to accept as an explanation, thus seen, for the

aggression of the Brazilians against the Americans on Orkut, the expression of

the resentment cultivated by American Imperialism over many decades. In fact

some anti-USA manifestations express relatively direct resentment of the

international policies of the G. W. Bush administration, such as the inevitable

references to the invasion of Iraq and to the non adherence to the Kyoto

Protocol. It is also not hard to find posts that relate the antipathy to the USA to

the American interference in Latin America during the Cold War

No to Kyoto? Have a Katrina22

Torture in Iraq, shame on you!!23

Imperialist SOBs!!!

24

A more systematic observation of the aggressive manifestations of Brazilians in

Orkutallows it to be seen however that in the vast majority of cases the target of

the violence is not specifically the USA but is the English language. It is almost

impossible not to know, or even to disagree with the contention, that English is

the language most widely used nowadays for intercultural communication. It is

worth remembering though that despite the total number of people capable of

communicating in English being estimated at a billion individuals as of the end

of the XXth century (Ianni, 1999,p. 59), this quantity represents only around

15% of the world population (estimated at 6,5 billion in February 2006, United

22 No a Quioto? Toma o Katrina Community created in September 18, 2005.

http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5121731 .23 Torturas no Iraque, que vergonha !!Tpic created in July 28, 2005, 6:37 AM inCommunity Eu Odeio os Estados Unidos (I Hate the United States). The Communitywas created in September 2, 2004,http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=370032 .24 Imperialistas filhos da puta!!! Tpic created in May, 19, 2004, 12:23 AM inCommunity Anti-bush & Estadunidenses (Anti-bush & US citizens). The Communitywas created in April 9, 2004. http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=39450 .

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Commercehttp://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5121731http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=370032http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=39450http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=5121731http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=370032http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=39450http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Commerce


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States Department of Commerce, 2006). It is evident that even amongst this

15% there are variations in the understanding of spoken English and in the

ability to read, speak and write English. Brazilians, in the majority, only know

very little of English language. Contrary to how many imagine the situation,

English is not widely used in Brazil (nor, possibly, in the majority of countries

in South America). Classes in Brazilian universities, for example, are held in

Portuguese (with rare exceptions which quickly become polemical even if the

language used is Spanish). Brazil is a long way away from any major country

where English is the official language (the only relatively close places are

Guyana and the Falkland Islands) or is widely spoken. Air travel is

proportionately expensive in Brazil and the purchasing power of the Braziliancurrency (Real) is significantly lower than the currencies of North America,

Europe and Australasia. For these reasons there are relatively few Brazilians,

even amongst the priveleged elite who have access to the Internet, who travel

outside of Latin America. At least until the, recent and still incipient25, expansion

of subscription television, even the mediatic culture had no effect on this

situation as all of the foreign material shown on Brazilian broadcast television is

dubbed into Portuguese. At the cinema, films are subtitled and, principally when

they are films for children, are frequently dubbed as well. Learning English (or,

in fact any foreign language, with the exception of Spanish for those that live

close to the frontiers) is, for the vast majority of Brazilians, an abstract exercise.

Basic notions of the English language are normally taught in Brazilian schools

and, as the profile of Internet users in Brazil is positively correlated with family

income and higher levels of education, it is not surprising that the majority of

Orkut users would be capable of reading interfaces and messages written in

English. The distance however from there to being able to express oneself in

written English sufficiently fluently to sustain ones arguments against native

speakers is, without doubt, huge.

Computer Mediated Communication made the first-person experience of the

shrinking of the world and the approach to other cultures possible for a

significant number of the Brazilian elite whose perspectives had not included

international movement on the large scale. It is known, however, that cultural

contact has instability as its most exciting and most stressful characteristic. After

all, interaction with or the presence of aliens always implies a position close tothe limits of comfort, at the edge of inadequacy:

To be totally or partially dislocated in all aspects, to not be totally anywhere

(that is to say without restrictions or limits, without some aspect of the person

25 Subscription TV was introduced into Brazil in the 1990s. At the end of 2005 theAssociao Brasileira de Televiso por Assinatura (ABTA) estimated that only 7,7% ofthe total households in Brazil have subscriptions to these services (Marini, 2006, s.p.)

17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Commercehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Commerce


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overflowing and being seen as strange by others) can be an uncomfortable

experience. . . . There is always something to explain, to apologize for, to hide,

or on the contrary, to courageously parade, to negotiate, to offer, to trade.

There are differences to be reduced or pardoned or, on the other hand

emphasized and made clearer. Identities float around freely, some are of our

own choosing but others are inflated and launched by people around us, and we

have to be constantly alert to defend the former against the latter. (Bauman,

2005, p. 19).

Under such circumstances the ability to understand what others have to say is far

from sufficient, as the urge to express ones ideas is essential to beingacknowledged tangibly by others. Reduced to invisibility by the impossibility of

expressing themselves, many Brazilian users have probably abandoned various

computer networking services. In Orkut, however, the demographic data and the

news concerning the trend indicated, from early on, the high possibility of

encountering other users in the same interest community that were Brazilians.

The structure of Orkut itself allows for the verification of this type of

supposition by following the links to other users in the community of interest.

With the presence of other Brazilians confirmed writing in Portuguese becomes

a life buoy that allows for the re-conquest, still only partially, of their visibility.

It would be supposed that, given such a situation, the number of Portuguese

language communities would multiply, replicating subjects that had been only

discussed in English. Despite this actually happening the creation of Portugueselanguage communities did not result in the Brazilians abandoning the English

language communities or in their stopping posting in Portuguese or to arguing

for, often in a very aggressive way, for their supposed right to do so:

Tammy Soldaat, a Canadian, got a sample of Brazilian wrath recently when she

posted a message asking whether her community site on body piercing should

be exclusive to people who speak English.

Brazilian Orkut users quickly labeled her a "nazi" and "xenophobe."

"After that I understood why everyone is complaining about these people, why

they're being called the 'plague of Orkut,"' she said in a site called "Crazy

Brazilian Invasion (Alerigi, 2004, s.p.)

In 2006, there are still available in Orkutvarious instances where a communityownere appeals to the Brazilians to keep communication in the official language

of the community. In the majority of cases such appeals are ignored by the

Brazilian users(Figure 6). The attitude is similar to that expressed by Silva

(2005, s.p.) in addressing the question of fake profiles in his Top ten reasons

orkut is popular in Brazil: "we know this is wrong, but why play by the rules if

this is a place for fun and entertainment?

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Brazilians often act as if the rules ofOrkutdo not apply to them. An interesting

interpretation of this feature of the Brazilian culture can be found in the work of

the Brazilian anthropologist R. Da Matta (1978,1984,1985) who identifies, in

the permanent need to situate oneself between institutions and values that are in

principle incompatible, the roots of the Brazilian capacity to not only live

between the two opposed logics, but to adhere to both and each of them at the

same time.

Figure 6: Just six months after the creation of the Community Alice in Wonderland

(March 11, 200426,) the first topic in Portuguese appeared: Wizard of OZ vs. Alice in

Wonderland!!! The first post reads What would happen if the Wizard of OZ appeared

in front of Alice?. The Community owner (identified as being Dutch) replies very

politely requesting that all posts should be in English. A few days later another user

(apparently from the US) responds to the original message in English. Soon follows a

childish post in Portuguese (Well...PERHAPS THEY WOULD SHARE THE SAME

ACID), which kills the thread.

For Da Matta the origins of the essential disjunction and conformity to Brazilianreality reflect on the institution of a State apparatus that intended to create a

specific type of society as opposed to a State that responded to the requirements

26 In 2006 the Community has the following description and definitions: Are you alsobewondered and bewildered in life? Share your bewilderment here; Language - English;Location Netherlands, 5,700 members,http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=27250.

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of the social structure that supported it. The practice of treating everyone as

equal before the law, which derives from the Northern European egalitarian

tradition, would encounter an ethos that never ceased to exist in Brazil under

which a person is important because they belong to a family and have

colleagues and friends. It is the relationship which helps them as a human

being and as a meaningful member of society. However in the modern

individualistic ethos, which started with the Protestant Reform and the Industrial

Revolution, family and society are what are constructed by individuals 27. (Da

Matta, 1984, p.45, added emphasis) The result is an institutional system

divorced from the everyday practice, which Da Matta illustrates using ananalogy of the space of the home and the street.

In the archetypal Brazilian home there rules a family logic under which everyone

has a determined and permanent place and inalienable and perpetual rights. In

principle, everything and everyone that is in the space of a Brazilian home is

unquestionably beautiful, good and above criticism. As an important and

diversified moral space, the home . . . demarks a definitively. (Da Matta, 1984,

p. 27) The street, on the other hand, is a depersonalized and dog eat dog space.

Here who rules is not the father, brother, husband, the wife and the netweork of

relationships and friendships that we have with a person, a friend. To the

contrary, command is given to the authority that governs by law, which makes

the whole world equal in the act of disempowering and even exploiting in an

impious way (Da Matta, 1984, p.30).In Brazil, differently to in those societies based on clans or castes which

exclude the notion of the individual but also to the Western societies - which

exclude the person the two categories coexist, creating a double code. (Da

27 To follow the thinking of Da Matta, it is necessary to be clear about the distinctionbetween the notions of individual and person which the author takes as his starting point.By individual De Matta understands an independent and autonomous entity which iscapable therefore of wanting freedom and equality, with loneliness and love being thebasic and the power to select and choose being one of their most basic rights. Underthis construction society should be at the service of the individual, as opposed to beingan injustice to be corrected (Da Matta, 1978, p, 181-182). The notion of person

emphasizes the social belonging of the subject. Here one does not treat of the parallelequality of all but of the complementarity of each to form a totality that can only be soconstituted when all of the parts are there. Instead of the terms of the society beingcontingent on the individual we have the opposite, the individual immersed in andcontingent upon the society. The notion of person can thus be succinctly characterizedas a collective aspect of individuality, a mask which is placed on the individual orindividualized entity (lineage, clan, family, club, association etc.) which in this way istransformed into a social being. (Da Matta, 1978, p, 182).

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Matta, 1978, p. 190). Both the logic and morals of the home and of the street

make up part, therefore, of the everyday Brazil, the experience of which is

framed by the paradox of laws which should apply to everyone and

relationships that evidently only function for those that have them. The result is

a social system divided and even balanced between two basic social units: the

individual (subject of the universal laws that modernize society) and trhe person

(subject of social relationships, which carry the traditional aspects of the

system) (Da Matta, 1984, p.95-96).

To appeal, in such a system, to universal rules as the owners of Orkut

communities do in reminding the Brazilian users of the existence of a defined

language for communication in that community is to refuse to concede thedistinction of familiarity to which each Brazilian user is accustomed. To make

the same rule apply to all, to refuse to open exceptions in the name of

relationships (many other users are also Brazilians) or emotions(why cant I use

Portuguese if I want to?) is fair for the Northern European ethos, but appears as

violence to many Brazilian users. The general rule, impersonal, functions

amongst Brazilians as a euphemism for the negative or as a means of informing

the other of their condition of anonymity or inferiority. As even the Brazilian

legal system is populated by irreconcilable internal contradictions, in Brazil

what is always looked for in any situation of conflict or dispute is the ritual of

recognition that humanizes and personalizes the formal situations, helping

everyone place in a hierarchy the persons implicated in the situation (Da Matta,

1985, p. 87).

The Brazilians who ignore the official language of a community or even the

requests to respect this by the owner, do not necessarily consider this rule to be

wrong or inadequate. They understand, however, that as frequently happens in

the world outside of the screen of their computers, the law can be forgotten, or

at least limited in effect, so as not to apply in their case 28. It is not a piece of

trivial cynicism by the Brazilian users, but a way of behaving that is learned and

practiced in everyday life to live, and sometimes survive, in a nation in which

the formal laws of public life have nothing to do with the good rules everyday

morality which govern our honor, respect and, above al, the loyalty that we owe

to our friends, relatives and colleagues. (Da Matta, 1984, p. 104). Ignoring the

requirement to write in English in communities defined to be of this languagewould thus be a typical Brazilian way of obeying an impossible order express

yourself in English with the desire to remain in Orkut and interact within any

of its communities. How, though, to also explain that Brazilian users also

28 It is worth remembering that, despite the penetration and use of the Internet in Brazilobtaining standards that are in the large part surprising, the Brazilians who have accessto the Internet are relatively few and predominantly from the most favored classes.

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flooded the Orkut communities with an uncountable number of violent replies

full of bad language?

Da Matta associates the negative behavior of Brazilians with respect to the street

and the impersonal things found there with the fact that, contrary to the safe and

familiar environment of the home, the street is the location of the undesired

individualization, of fighting and misbehavior. The zone where each has to look

out for themselves . . . [as] the relational and hierarchical structure of our value

constellation can no longer be used to mold morality. But to say each man for

himself is to abandon the rigid social control that to some degree guarantees the

pacification of spirits and provides order to things. (Da Matta, 1985, p. 61) In aculture where individualism and equality of rights are seen as negatives, any

public location as is the case with Orkut is a no-mans land where behavior

that would be unthinkable in domestic territories can be, if not adequate,

acceptable.

Thus there exists amongst Brazilians a predisposition toward aggressiveness in

the public space of Orkut, which is accentuated by the emergence of an

ethnically based nationalism which, as we have seen, reflects a sense of

alienation and unjust exclusion or exclusion which is considered unjust

typical of zones of cultural interchange. It is characteristic of resistence

identities that they resort to the construction of trenches of resistence and

survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those

permeating the institutions of society (Castells, 1998, p.8), which is typical ofwhat Brazilians do in Orkut. Whilst the aggression derives from a people whose

stereotype refers to transgressions of a carnivalesque type (which, by definition,

do not have consequences in real life) and, coherently, does not go beyond the

borders of the virtual environment of Orkut, it becomes possible to take with

good humor the attempts of the Brazilians to invert what they considered to be

the oppressive logic of a dominant social group in Orkut.

In February 2006 Orkutreally is Brazilian. Many communities that discussed

the Brazilian Invasion are reduced to ruins inhabited by the victorious users

who have captured them, The heroes of the North American resistance who

keep the light of discord burning in these areas are, in the most part, Fakesters,

which everything indicates to be Brazilians who are missing the adrenaline rushof the hour of battle. There have emerged, however, new calls to capture Orkut

which help us to remember that the exclusion of the excludent by the excluded

(Castells, data, p.9) does not significantly change the order of things, it just

reinforces the separations and boundaries, potentially provoking still further the

moods of the various entities involved. Closing in, by number of users, on the

North Americans, the Orkuteers of the Middle East (proportionally represented

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by the Iranians, Indians and Pakistanese) are preparing for a rerun, in their style,

of the Brazilian Invasion. The principle theme under discussion has ceased to be

the language used for Orkut communication, which has given way to a large

number of Communities, Topics and Posts discussing questions related to the

international situation outside the digital network. One can only hope that this

time Orkutcontributes to boost the reciprocal communicability and is not used

once more as the ground for a battle between excluded and exclusionary

identities the only likely outcome of which would be the reinforcement of its

own exclusionary structure.

Acknowledgements

The English version of this article was revised by Robin Lane.

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