In this feature, Don Slater (right) discusses his ethnography of a community of online traders of sexual pictures ("sexpics"). The traders use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for the noncommercial trading of sexual pictures, video and text. Slater compares this community's relationship to and use of the Internet with a community of Trinidadians online. He suggests that the work draws out four dynamics, which can be useful when considering the use of ethnographic techniques for research online.

Slater's comparative research in these two environments goes to the very core of the idea of virtual reality. He suggests that a concept of virtuality is not fruitful, as it creates a misleading impression that behaviour, norms and values can be removed from their social context. Slater's work shows that the sexpics community anchors their virtual embodiments in the real, whereas the Trinidadian community use the Internet to objectify their identity in the virtual.