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Jessica Bloom

Wired 14.12: The Secret World of Lonelygirl - 0 views

www.wired.com/...lonelygirl.html

lonelygirl

shared by Jessica Bloom on 13 Feb 08 - Cached
  • You make movies for the big screen, sitcoms for TV, and something else entirely for the Internet.
    • dracmere
      dracmere on 13 Feb 08
       
      He makes a good point. You have to make something to fit the media medium you are making it for. In terms of writing you wouldn't write a poem for a whole book, unless it was a really long poem.
  • He wanted to create shows in which the line between reality and fiction is blurred, where viewers can correspond with the characters and actually become involved in the story by posting their own videos.
    • dracmere
      dracmere on 13 Feb 08
       
      This is an interesting idea that I think internet users will love. Being able to finally interact with what you are watching instead of shouting at the TV with no results is something everybody can enjoy.
  • "It's a new medium. It requires new storytelling techniques.
    • sunflower123
      sunflower123 on 13 Feb 08
       
      The more I kept reading this article the more I undertand, from the beginning I was just kind of freaked out that people could make this huge reality show on the web and it could be fake.
    • vanamb16
      vanamb16 on 13 Mar 08
       
      this is true....i mostly watch tv shows online now b/c i miss them on their regular air times. people are so involved in the net now that they would probably embrace a web-based show.
    • haines64
      haines64 on 13 Apr 08
       
      This is a really important point to realize. In this course, we continually talked about how writing technologies are constantly changing. The storytelling mediums are going to continue to change. For example, this is why so many people watch TV shows online. It'll be interesting to see how mainstream this idea becomes in the near future.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Beckett tried to explain to the executive that the central theme of online entertainment was interactivity, as opposed to the passivity of television.
    • maureen
      maureen on 14 Feb 08
       
      To me, this is an example of the cultural lag most of us are experiencing. Executives, typical of the white male dominating elites, are not ready to embrace this new video storytelling technology. Blurring the lines between reality and fiction is groundbreaking storytelling. We participate in interactive video games via our computers, why not interactive storytelling. Again, this whole concept to me is absolutely brillant!
  • each portal wanted the series to stream on its site only.
  • Unlike television, where writers sit in a room and come up with a single script, the Lonelygirl15 team comes up with a general plotline and then sends its writer-directors out to produce independent but interconnected videos. All the characters, in essence, have their own show.
    • maureen
      maureen on 14 Feb 08
       
      Collaborative video storytelling.....who would have thought!
  • It's enough to keep the operation afloat until they can find a way to take serialized online entertainment to the next level.
  • The exec responded by walking them through his fall lineup and pointing out that the network's Web site had great supplemental video material for the season's upcoming shows.
    • mccrar25
      mccrar25 on 13 Apr 08
       
      I think that Beckett is on to something, but the TV world just isn't ready for it yet. I think that we may see shows similar to "Lonelygirl" soon, because people want to be involved and participate in what they watch. Why do you think that shows such as Dancing with the Stars and American Idol are so popular? It's because everyone gets to be their own judge in a way. Also, they develop "relationships" with the contestants. They want their favorite singer to win or their least favorite to get booted off. Successful shows such as these are highly interactive.
  • If it couldn't be shared – if hard borders were put around it – how different was it from TV?
    • mccrar25
      mccrar25 on 13 Mar 08
       
      I think that this feature is what made so many people interested in it before, and led them to be currently interested. There were no boundaries with this show. It's creators were free to do whatever they wanted with the show. This is part of what made it different from an ordinary television show.
    • daydreamr97
      daydreamr97 on 13 Mar 08
       
      So, Internet as a writing space remediates early TV as a writing space, which was at the time remediating radio as a writing space. Only later did innovations for each particular space come to exist.
  • The way the networks look at the Internet now is like the early days of TV, when announcers would just read radio scripts on camera.
  • f it couldn't be shared – if hard borders were put around it – how different was it from TV?
  • If it couldn't be shared – if hard borders were put around it – how different was it from TV? If this was going to be the first successful Internet TV show, they felt it needed to embrace the medium
    • daydreamr97
      daydreamr97 on 13 Mar 08
       
      It must have been a tough choice for the creators to trade a deal for the freedom to screen their shows wherever they want, but it only makes sense. The designed the series for a writing space that was based on sharing, so signing exclusively with a website would defeat the point.
  • Flinders can't write and film them all, so new writer-directors have been hired and paired with actors playing the new characters.
    • daydreamr97
      daydreamr97 on 13 Mar 08
       
      Interestingly enough, while this separate collaboration doesn't happen in TV or film, it does happen with longer book series. For example, Star Wars books are authorized by George Lucas but written by multiple people. Sometimes single series within that larger group are written by different authors.
  • What's needed, he says, is content that's built specifically for the Web. It doesn't need to be lit like a film – that would make it feel less real.
    • daydreamr97
      daydreamr97 on 13 Mar 08
       
      Oddly enough, this idea contradicts the remediation theory. Instead of saying, "it's like film, only [insert difference here]," they're saying it's unike film.
  • Beckett tried to explain to the executive that the central theme of online entertainment was interactivity, as opposed to the passivity of television.
    • butler09
      butler09 on 13 Mar 08
       
      There's a big difference here before the standard of television and today's internet. Interativity is a lot more involving, and a person can grow more emotionally attached as opposed to the "passivity of television." Emotional attachment equals addicted viewership, which equals popularity and success of the show. It's really an ingenious new medium for the entertainment industry to consider.
    • Jessica Bloom
      Jessica Bloom on 16 Apr 08
       
      I do not thing it's a good idea to blur reality and fiction. As we saw in "A Rape in Cyberspace," problems arise when you mix VR and RL.
  • 9 Unlike television, where writers sit in a room and come up with a single script, the Lonelygirl15 team comes up with a general plotline and then sends its writer-directors out to produce independent but interconnected videos. All the characters, in essence, have their own show.
    • butler09
      butler09 on 13 Mar 08
       
      That's an interesting concept to consider when you think about it. By having separate vlogs, you're able to give separate points on view on different "issues" going on in the characters lives, and it makes the audience feel like they can relate even better. Some movies give you the first-person-point of view, so you know exactly what one person is thinking (like Bree), but you don't know the mind of the other characters (like Daniel). By giving them their own "spotlight," the viewers can form a greater attachment and interest in the stories presented.
  • 13 They don't have a big TV deal, or even a big Internet deal, but they're convinced that what they're doing is important anyway. And they're still here, in Flinders' bedroom. Rose leaps onto the bed and jumps up and down.
    • butler09
      butler09 on 13 Mar 08
       
      Even after people realized that the story was fictional, they still retained their viewership, and that really testifies to the success they had. But even then, Beckett and Flinders didn't choose to "sell out" on the idea; they've kept it as they intended it, and I think that's a pretty important thing to observe. They didn't try to modify it to fit onto the big screen so that they could earn even more money from it.
  • This Web series not only looks different, it's made differently than other filmed entertainment.
  • They don't have a big TV deal, or even a big Internet deal, but they're convinced that what they're doing is important anyway.
  • outing benefited from the publicity surge and pushed a few of Lonelygirl15's clips close to the million-viewer mark.
    • haines64
      haines64 on 13 Apr 08
       
      I guess any publicity can be good publicity.
  • Emails flooded in – Amanda now responds to roughly 500 a day. The show has a reliable viewership of 300,000 per video, and the team posts two, sometimes more, each week.
    • Danielle Rabello
      Danielle Rabello on 16 Apr 08
       
      It didn't seem to matter whether she was real or not in the end. People wrote to her and contacted her regardless, and now she i watched more than ever. People become angered at being tricked, but fascinated all at once.
  • supplemental material is boring.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Apr 08
       
      I don't think it has to be boring. If you are really creative you can make it interesting.
    • Melissa Foster
      Melissa Foster on 17 Apr 08
       
      The concept that this is a whole new form of entertainment seems totally spot on. People treat YouTube differently than they do television. It kind of seems like an evolved reality show phenomenon.
    • Bianca Pieloch
      Bianca Pieloch on 17 Apr 08
       
      It wil soon blow up. Everything starts out small-if they get enough views it will go big sooner than later.
Danielle Rabello

Wired 14.12: The Secret World of Lonelygirl - 0 views

www.wired.com/...lonelygirl.html

videos

shared by Danielle Rabello on 13 Feb 08 - Cached
  • $500 a week to play Bree full time
    • dracmere
      dracmere on 13 Feb 08
       
      I wish I got paid that much. Thats pretty cool for her to get paid to be on Youtube. Just more evidence that Youtube is taking over.
    • Gail Ramsey
      Gail Ramsey on 17 Apr 08
       
      I wonder if that was tax-free money. I don't think $500 would be enough for me to run around hiding from everyone. This girl seems to be so trusting and naive.
  • But the fans – raised on the unreality of reality TV and with the role-playing ethos of the Web – seemed to take the revelation in stride.
    • dracmere
      dracmere on 13 Feb 08
       
      Seems like viewers treated like a regular show. I know if I was a viewer I wouldn't of cared. If something entertains you then just because it isn't real doesn't mean it will stop entertaining you.
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      True the whole point of entertainment is to captivate you, but it still has to be something tht you can identify with and that speaks to you. She obviously spoke to a lot of people so the fact of whether it was real or not didn't matter in the message.
  • several people noted that everything in Bree's room seemed to come from Target
    • sunflower123
      sunflower123 on 13 Feb 08
       
      That is amazing that people really looked that deeply into the veidos.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • It hadn't taken them long to figure out, by trial and error, what worked in this new genre. Viewers wanted family and relationship drama mixed with a rich, mysterious backstory that could be explored and debated.
    • sunflower123
      sunflower123 on 13 Feb 08
       
      The more I read the more interesting it sound, it is to bad they could not have just admitted from the beginning that they are just trying to get a web tv type show. People would still watch if it was interesting enough.
    • kimmerzx0 C
      kimmerzx0 C on 12 Mar 08
       
      People want something they can relate to and many teenagers have family problems.
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      By not telling the audience whether this character was real or not, everyone automatically assumed that she was real. Maybe it was just realistic casting. This is like an online mockumentary but instead of being viewed by a small group of followers gained an enormous following almost instaneously.
  • In return, she had to stay home as much as possible and wear sunglasses and a hat when she went out. For Rose, it was a dream come true – she was a working actress. She just couldn't tell anyone.
    • sunflower123
      sunflower123 on 13 Feb 08
       
      Yes making 500 dollars a week is okay for a 27 year old, but I would personally hate the fact that I'd have to keep my identity hidden all the time, and couldn't tell anyone what was really going on, that has to get stressful.
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      This is so old hollywood. During the filming of Gone With The Wind, the studio forced Vivien Leigh to live separate from her husband to continue the illusion of her being a single eligible southern belle. Also, many of the studios knew then and still use the practice now of setting up known gay actors with romances to throw the public off. I think the studios care more about this than the public does now, but the practice still goes on to this day.
  • The YouTube community was sucked into the plot and speculated endlessly about Bree's faith. Some thought she was Mormon; others insisted she was a Satanist. Another group tried to figure out where she lived: The leading guess was somewhere in the Midwest. Viewers spent hours Googling the possibilities and posting their results on YouTube.
    • maureen
      maureen on 14 Feb 08
       
      Brillant! Getting the community sucked into the plot is big, but getting the community to start speculating about the plot is even bigger. When people start speculating, a dialogue occurs and from that dialogue the speculation spreads like a virus, which in turn promotes more interest in Bree and more viewers to follow the story.
  • Fair enough," the fan wrote back, and then went on to tell Bree the latest news in his life. To many, it didn't seem to matter whether she was real or not. A number of posts appeared on YouTube denouncing the series, but many more responded with variations of this simple statement: If you don't like it, don't watch.
    • maureen
      maureen on 14 Feb 08
       
      Who cares whether she was real or not. The purpose of watching the videos is for entertainment and to get in on the new wave of storytelling.
    • vanamb16
      vanamb16 on 13 Mar 08
       
      it is interesting that people would get to the point that they would correspond with her. I can understand why if they thought she was real, but after that, I'd think to continue would be strange
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      I think when people find a connection with someone, real or imagined, it gets in touch with something inside of them that reaches out. This maybe is the whole point of cyberspace, to reach outside of who we are and try to connect on a difference level
  • ithin 48 hours, the video had half a million views.
  • That couldn't have happened on television. A conventional TV episode airs once at a certain time; even if it's great, it can only serve to attract viewers to future episodes. On YouTube, a video can be streamed at any time.
    • hughes27
      hughes27 on 14 Feb 08
       
      This is a good point. I never thought about how youtube videos are basically in the hands of its viewers
    • coffma46
      coffma46 on 15 Feb 08
       
      Yes many of the YouTube videos show what work and what doesnt work according to how good the video is.
  • The good ones are watched again and again, sending a clear message about what works and what doesn't. When "My Parents Suck …" broke 500,000 views, Beckett and Flinders realized this wasn't just an experiment or a setup for a film.
    • Melissa Foster
      Melissa Foster on 17 Apr 08
       
      It's amazing how addicting things like this are. Even though people have already viewed the "episode," they return to it. Maybe they're hoping to find out more about her? Perhaps it became part of the investigation into who she is. To me, it's a little reminiscent of releasing DVD versions of television shows.
  • Meanwhile, the online celebrity started spilling over into the real world. Rose was browsing for a book in Santa Monica after "My Parents Suck …" was posted and noticed two girls watching her closely. That night, Amanda received an email from a fan: "Hi Bree. My friend and I thought we saw you at the Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, but it couldn't be you, right?"
    • Elizabeth Somer
      Elizabeth Somer on 12 Mar 08
       
      This attention as I mentioned before can be both positive and negative. It raises concerns
  • If you want to talk to Jessica Rose, you can go to her MySpace page. If you want to keep talking to Bree, use this email."
    • Elizabeth Somer
      Elizabeth Somer on 12 Mar 08
       
      The character and the actress need to separate. It's dangerous when the two become fused.
  • The editing was too sophisticated and the music too well integrated,
    • kimmerzx0 C
      kimmerzx0 C on 12 Mar 08
       
      This was the only aspect that threw me off from thinking it was real.
  • IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, MATTHEW FOREMSKI, the 18-year-old son of a Silicon Valley tech reporter, dug up an old version of Rose's MySpace page. She'd deleted it when she became Bree, but Google cached a copy, and Foremski posted the link to his father's blog. Within 48 hours, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a slew of TV stations ran the story. The jig was up.
    • haines64
      haines64 on 13 Apr 08
       
      This just goes to show how the idea of privacy has changed in a technology-oriented society. As Vaidhyanathan talks about in his article, we can always be tracked somehow given the technologies we use daily.
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      This idea of always being tracked just makes me nervous. I am such a private person when it comes to certain things. I will tell you 90% of my life story, but that last 10% is mine. I think about that about that alot in relation to all of the sites that I belong to and subscribe too. They probably have more information on me than my own mother knows and there really is no way to exist without it.
    • vanamb16
      vanamb16 on 13 Mar 08
       
      people like the idea that they are watching reality, hence the fascination with dating shows and reality tv. they feel closer to the characters and the experience. we feel a need for shared experiences.
  • hadn't taken them long to figure out, by trial and error, what worked in this new genre. Viewers wanted family and relationship drama mixed with a rich, mysterious backstory that could be explored and debated. > The YouTube community was sucked into the plot and speculated endlessly about > Bree's faith. Some thought she was Mormon; others insisted she was a Satanist. > Another group tried to figure out where she lived: The leading guess was > somewhere in the Midwest. Viewers spent hours Googling the possibilities and > posting their results on YouTube. >
    • vanamb16
      vanamb16 on 13 Mar 08
       
      people like the idea that they are experiencing reality. we liked the shared experiences with others...it makes us feel more human to witness them occurring in someone else's life.
  • explored
  • (One viewer annotated each item with its SKU number.) Could it be, one fan wondered, that the whole thing was an elaborate ad
    • vanamb16
      vanamb16 on 13 Mar 08
       
      it is amazing that people get so involved and look so far into this. when i go on youtube, i am looking up a music video, i don't latch onto a series.....are there more like this on youtube?
    • zimmer67
      zimmer67 on 13 Mar 08
       
      Who actually has the time to watch something that intently and notice the SKU number on background items in a video? that borders on obsession
    • haines64
      haines64 on 13 Apr 08
       
      Reading up until this point, I kept thinking how creepy the creators were. Now I'm thinking they played into their target audience very well. They were able to create online videos that attracted such a faithful audience (possibly crazy with too much time on their hands as well, but nonetheless) willing to go over every detail.
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      Just goes to show you what you can accomplish with a well dressed set. Iam still so fascinated by the public's love for stuff like this. I guess it brings out the voyeurism in all of us in what many consider a safe outlet.
  • lucrative career as a surgeon before he started making little videos and posting them online.
    • vanamb16
      vanamb16 on 13 Mar 08
       
      it seems crazy that he would give up a career, any career let alone being a surgeon, to start an unpaid youtube series. what was in it for him?
  • Miles, it's time you quit being a doctor," he said. "We just passed 200,000 views."
    • mccrar25
      mccrar25 on 13 Mar 08
       
      Although, I am not really for what these men did, I do give them credit. They took a risk, and it proved to be revolutionary for both the Internet and You Tube. It changed the way that many people view, You Tube. They created a story which captured the lives of many audience members. This must have been a great feeling when they realized that their story was changing the world.
    • jc ice
      jc ice on 17 Apr 08
       
      This is so war of the worlds. People assuming that what they are seeing and hearing is real because they are seeing is depicted as real. If this was on ast teeno'clock on a Thursday night we would not assume the same thing.
  • When viewers suggested that he had a crush on Bree, they changed the story line to include a romance.
    • mccrar25
      mccrar25 on 13 Mar 08
       
      This is interesting, because the Internet does allow the audience to interact with the content presented. In the Lonelygirl's story, viewers were able to present all types of ideas and feelings. This, in turn, allowed them to feel connected emotionally, much more than if they watched a reality television show. This is what they believed to be a "real" person who cared about their imput and feedback.
  • #4 The YouTube community was sucked into the plot and speculated endlessly about Bree's faith. Some thought she was Mormon; others insisted she was a Satanist. Another group tried to figure out where she lived: The leading guess was somewhere in the Midwest. Viewers spent hours Googling the possibilities and posting their results on YouTube.
    • richar19
      richar19 on 13 Mar 08
       
      This is a great way to keep people comming back alway make them wonder what is going to happen next.
  • "I don't want you to ever set foot in another TGI Fridays," he said, explaining that he'd pay her #14 $500 a week to play Bree full time . #13 In return, she had to stay home as much as possible and wear sunglasses and a hat when she went out. For Rose, it was a dream come true – she was a working actress. She just couldn't tell anyone.
    • richar19
      richar19 on 13 Mar 08
       
      This is something that I would have a problem with I could not stay home that much. Plus i would want to tell everyone.
    • alieraisu1
      alieraisu1 on 13 Mar 08
       
      Now this is ridiculous. Did she not see she is losing her life to this? Come on, she's a young adult and if she plays this character on a Youtube video she has to stay home in the dark and not have a life? This is totally ridiculous! Where are her parents in all of this? Her friends? What's going on here?
  • so his father, a marketing executive at an IT company, agreed to invest in the newly formed Lonelygirl15 production company. Beckett immediately called Rose
    • richar19
      richar19 on 13 Mar 08
       
      It is a good thing that his father gave him the money because if not she would have started to work at Fridays and they could not have used her in the series.
  • but Google cached a copy
    • richar19
      richar19 on 13 Mar 08
       
      This shows that you can never really escape from things there is always a trail.
  • #17 "I don't want you to ever set foot in another TGI Fridays," he said, explaining that he'd pay her #16 $500 a week to play Bree full time . #15 In return, she had to stay home as much as possible and wear sunglasses and a hat when she went out. For Rose, it was a dream come true – she was a working actress. She just couldn't tell anyone.
    • butler09
      butler09 on 07 Apr 08
       
      That's about the most unusual proposition available for an actress, isn't it? It's kind of hard to believe she even agreed to it at first, especially since she wasn't even paid! And even once she was, she couldn't tell? Her career changed her lifestyle, though not in the way it usually tends to for celebrities.
  • It was a medium in its own right.
    • Danielle Rabello
      Danielle Rabello on 16 Apr 08
       
      Again, demonstrating how convenient Youtube it. As Americans, we want instant gratification.
  • It hadn't taken them long to figure out, by trial and error, what worked in this new genre. Viewers wanted family and relationship drama mixed with a rich, mysterious backstory that could be explored and debated.
    • anita sipala
      anita sipala on 17 Apr 08
       
      Sure it worked, it plays out like a soap opera. Look how many years Erica Kane from "All My Children" survived on TV. People love the suspense and drama that unfolds in the world of others
  • IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, MATTHEW FOREMSKI, the 18-year-old son of a Silicon Valley tech reporter, dug up an old version of Rose's MySpace page. She'd deleted it when she became Bree, but Google cached a copy , and Foremski posted the link to his father's blog. Within 48 hours, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a slew of TV stations ran the story. The jig was up.
    • anita sipala
      anita sipala on 17 Apr 08
       
      This should make the Internet users more cognicient that nothing is ever ireally private. You need to be aware, if it is out there, anyone can gain acess to your infomation.
Laura DePamphilis

4.01: Who Am We? - 0 views

www.wired.com/...turkle_pr.html

shared by Laura DePamphilis on 12 Feb 08 - Cached
  • What has she found? That the Internet links millions of people in new spaces that are changing the way we think and the way we form our communities. That we are moving from "a modernist culture of calculation toward a postmodernist culture of simulation." That life on the screen permits us to "project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and star.... Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual. We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, and identity." Turkle's own metaphor of windows serves well to introduce the following samplings from her new book. Those boxed-off areas on the screen, Turkle writes, allow us to cycle through cyberspace and real life, over and over. Windows allow us to be in several contexts at the same time - in a MUD, in a word-processing program, in a chat room, in e-mail. "Windows have become a powerful metaphor for thinking about the self as a multiple, distributed system," Turkle writes. "The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times. The life practice of windows is that of a decentered self that exists in many worlds, that plays many roles at the same time." Now real life itself may be, as one of Turkle's subjects says, "just one more window."
    • Bill Wolff
      Bill Wolff on 12 Feb 08
       
      I really like how Turkle is setting up her discussion here. The windows metaphor is a wonderful move into the discussion of how different spaces encourage/result in multiple representations of identity. Though published in 1996, we can see this today in Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn spaces, as well as how and where we blog.
  • ender-swapping on MUDs is not a small part of the game action. By some estimates, Habitat, a Japanese MUD, has 1.5 million users. Habitat is a MUD operated for profit. Among the registered members of Habitat, there is a ratio of four real-life men to each real-life woman. But inside the MUD the ratio is only three male characters to one female character. In other words, a significant number of players, many tens of thousands of them, are virtually cross-dressing.
    • dracmere
      dracmere on 12 Feb 08
       
      People do this on current online games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft
  • G ender >
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In the games in the Sim series (SimCity, SimLife, SimAnt, SimHealth), you try to build a community, an ecosystem, or a public policy. The goal is to make a successful whole from complex, interrelated parts. Tim is 13, and among his friends, the Sim games are the subject of long conversations about what he calls Sim secrets. "Every kid knows," he confides, "that hitting Shift-F1 will get you a couple of thousand dollars in SimCity." But Tim knows that the Sim secrets have their limits. They are little tricks, but they are not what the game is about. The game is about making choices and getting feedback. Tim talks easily about the trade-offs in SimCity - between zoning restrictions and economic development, pollution controls and housing starts.
    • sunflower123
      sunflower123 on 13 Feb 08
       
      Not only are these games fun and help you to escape from your daily stressful activities of life to a fun world where you can create whatever you feel makes you happy for that day. But it also teachs you about being apart of your community, how to spend money and being apart of the ecosystem, setting goals for yourself and making smart choices while recieving positive feedback. And what can be better then learning while having fun doing it?
  • Relationships during adolescence are usually bounded by a mutual understanding that they involve limited commitment. Virtual space is well suited to such relationships; its natural limitations keep things within bounds. As in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which takes place in the isolation of a sanatorium, relationships become intense very quickly because the participants feel isolated in a remote and unfamiliar world with its own rules. MUDs, like other electronic meeting places, can breed a kind of easy intimacy. In a first phase, MUD players feel the excitement of a rapidly deepening relationship and the sense that time itself is speeding up. "The MUD quickens things. It quickens things so much," says one player. "You know, you don't think about it when you're doing it, but you meet somebody on the MUD, and within a week you feel like you've been friends forever."
    • coffma46
      coffma46 on 14 Feb 08
       
      This is true that during adolescence, relationships do come rapidly without notice. The virtual space for adolescence does become intense and scary at times that the person may not realize what has been going on.
    • Aaron D
      Aaron D on 25 Mar 08
       
      I scary to think how on point this really is. I myself figure to be a less technology influenced person. But when I sit back I am sharper, I rely, and inovate self-efficiantcy due to these "windows."
  • People accept the idea that certain machines have a claim to intelligence and thus to their respectful attention. They are ready to engage with computers in a variety of domains. Yet when people consider what if anything might ultimately differentiate computers from humans, they dwell long and lovingly on those aspects of people that are tied to the sensuality and physical embodiment of life. It is as if they are seeking to underscore that although today's machines may be psychological in the cognitive sense, they are not psychological in a way that comprises our relationships with our bodies and with other people. Some computers might be considered intelligent and might even become conscious, but they are not born of mothers, raised in families, they do not know the pain of loss, or live with the certainty that they will die.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 06 Apr 08
       
      This comment is extremely interesting because I always thought that machines like computers are psychological in the sense that they comprises our relationships. Computers are the very things that can destroy and built relationship based on the idea that computers allow us to be intrapersonal and interpersonal
  • What is virtual gender-swapping all about? Some of those who do it claim that it is not particularly significant. "When I play a woman I don't really take it too seriously," said 20-year-old Andrei. "I do it to improve the ratio of women to men. It's just a game." On one level, virtual gender-swapping is easier than doing it in real life. For a man to present himself as female in a chat room, on an IRC channel, or in a MUD, only requires writing a description. For a man to play a woman on the streets of an American city, he would have to shave various parts of his body; wear makeup, perhaps a wig, a dress, and high heels; perhaps change his voice, walk, and mannerisms. He would have some anxiety about passing, and there might be even more anxiety about not passing, which would pose a risk of violence and possibly arrest. So more men are willing to give virtual cross-dressing a try. But once they are online as female, they soon find that maintaining this fiction is difficult. To pass as a woman for any length of time requires understanding how gender inflects speech, manner, the interpretation of experience. Women attempting to pass as men face the same kind of challenge.
    • Kelly Burns
      Kelly Burns on 05 May 08
       
      I think it is very bizarre that people actually do gender-swapping and play a different role. It is crazy that people can go home and act like they are a different gender.
  • A 21-year-old college senior defends his violent characters as "something in me; but quite frankly I'd rather rape on MUDs where no harm is done." A 26-year-old clerical worker says, "I'm not one thing, I'm many things. Each part gets to be more fully expressed in MUDs than in the real world. So even though I play more than one self on MUDs, I feel more like 'myself' when I'm MUDding." In real life, this woman sees her world as too narrow to allow her to manifest certain aspects of the person she feels herself to be. Creating screen personae is thus an opportunity for self-expression, leading to her feeling more like her true self when decked out in an array of virtual masks.
    • Laura DePamphilis
      Laura DePamphilis on 06 May 08
       
      I think this is really spooky and weird that people try to be different people and act crazy than what they would normally do in real life. That comment on "rather raping on MUDS" is just horrible to me. Even though he says "there is no harm done" it is still gross to me that people think like that. Just because it is on the computer and not the real world, its wrong to me. I can see how people like to act like differnt people towards MUDS, and can allow their "self" to be expressed, but I think some people get way too wrapped up in this sort of virtual world.
  • Kelly Burns on 05 May 08
     
    technology and people
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