Spiders on the World Wide Web: cyber trickery and gender fraud among youth in an Accra zongo

Abstract

This article analyses the online dating activities of Ghanaian young men and women. Finding online friends and lovers who reside in the USA or Europe is considered a fruitful tactic to deal with the often harsh conditions of everyday life in Accra. The first part of the article focuses on the connections between online and offline relationships in specific communities called or ‘stranger quarters’. The second part looks into the intricacies of online love relationships and how these upset or transform existing gender categories, gender roles and relations in the communities. The way in which young women take part in the online world is reminiscent of some of the characteristics of the popular figure of the trickster. Online trickery has affected offline mechanisms of redistribution and has thereby altered the moral economy within the communities, whereby friends straddle between principles of loyalty and trust towards one another while making personal fame and fortune. The article concludes with a discussion of tricking practices, the meanings and moralities of deception, and how research on fraudsters and tricksters touches on some of the ethical dilemmas inherent to the discipline of anthropology.