Angela Valaine had a problem. The 25-year-old Atlantan was spending so much time building websites that she had nearly forgotten what sunlight was like. But in a classic lemons-into-lemonade move, she decided that rather than get lost in her computer, she would get creative, and find new friends in the process. So she started a clique.
A clique is traditionally defined as a group of mostly teens who spend a lot of time together, control who hangs out with them and talk about a few specific subjects. But these days, another definition of a clique is a website that serves as a virtual gathering place, where the site's owner picks the topic of discussion, sets rules for joining and vets whose on-topic sites can be linked.
Cliques are a developing trend in online communities in which someone builds a site focused on a topic, say, anime, chocolate or Moulin Rouge. The owner then accepts applications from others with like-minded, well-designed sites who want to join the clique. The owner sets rules and conditions for membership and then provides links to all the approved member sites.
On popular cliques, membership can number in the several hundreds. Once the clique is born, members communicate with each other via e-mail, chat, discussion boards and instant messaging. Thus, a community is born.
With that in mind, Valaine started her clique, Step Into the Sunlight, for fellow website-building obsessives, hoping to link them together and help them understand that they are not alone.
"I wanted them to know that I know how addicting it is to want to make the best websites, and therefore get consumed," she explained, "and that it's OK to admit that they are too."
A clique has several mandatory structural elements, which include About, Rules, Members and Codes sections. In general, a clique will clearly define its topic. Its rules section lays out the governing principles of the page, and its membership section lists links to many on-topic sites. In the codes section, small graphical or text-based buttons that link back to the original clique are presented for all member sites to post on their pages.
And while the bar for membership in a clique may not be high, clique owners take the rules seriously, especially those about codes. Some owners spend a great deal of time crafting their codes and often present many different versions that can be used by members for linking back to the home clique. Common examples include countless varieties of small, blinking animated GIFs, called "blinkies," that denote the name of a clique. One clique, known as Layout Land, is devoted almost entirely to providing a vast array of codes.
But in addition to laying out a common set of rules -- no porn, good design, proper use of codes -- some clique owners throw in little twists, seeking to assure that would-be members have thoroughly read the rules. On the Kawaii Anime Clique, for example, the rules section states, "So that I know you have read the rules, you must type 'blueredyellow' where it says 'the bird is ... ?'"
One reason owners are finicky about their membership is the two-way linking that goes on between a clique and its members: Just as was the case in high school, online cliques are very much about popularity.
And as was also the case in high school, online cliques often can adopt a deliberately elite posture manifested through the rules. While many offer open membership to any site that meets basic design requirements and stays active -- on most cliques, a good number of linked sites are dead -- others are much more strict about who can join.
"I think the elite nature of cliques ties in with the bumper sticker analogy," said Anne LeMaster, owner of the clique Origami. "You can't put the 'My kid is an honor student' bumper sticker on your car if your kid is not an honor student. So if you want to join a clique that represents visually appealing websites, you can't join unless you actually have" one.
And therein lies the rub. If a prospective clique member can be rejected not because her ideas aren't good enough but simply because her Web-design skills aren't good enough, these sites may be perpetuating the self-selecting nature of groups of popular high school kids excluding those who don't meet their arbitrary rules.
LeMaster thinks that may be the case. "When thinking about the elite nature of cliques, you also have to consider who the elite clique owners are," she said. "I would guess most of them are young people who have little power in the world…. Running an elite clique gives them a little bit of power over something, even if that power is only to reject people whose websites are not 'cool enough' to join the clique."
Even some owners who say their sites are anti-elite admit to feeling protective about whom they let join their clique. And that's largely because of the self-referential nature of the sites and the communities they foster.
"In my view, the reason for (the membership) requirements is that by linking to someone from my Web page, I'm giving them a small endorsement," said Shelley Edmunds, who runs her Science Geek Clique from her home in New Zealand. "I only want to list pages that I'm happy to send people to and want to be associated with."
Indeed, according to Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in interactive telecommunications at New York University, cliques are representative of classic popularity patterns. It's "we have to want you to be a member as much as you want to be a member, perhaps more," he said.
Yet Shirky also points out that, for those who join them, online cliques offer what many young people crave these days: meaningful social interaction. They "bring human scale back to the Web's otherwise inhuman connectedness," he explained.
