Unfogged is rooted in the real world, and uses virtual space to facilitate interactions
Ogged drafted this post days ago, but he waited until the UnfoggeDCon flier went live before he posted it.
I know someone who found out that her blog was being advertised on a billboard in SL.
My initial reaction is the same as yours, but then I think, "What's so unreal about what they're doing?" It's not as if they've actually died. They're spending time interacting with people in a modeled world, and that, it seems to me, is what we all do, even IRL. You might object that their world is so simplified as to be silly, but that just makes them Republicans.
This is where w-lfs-n should post his long comment about "authenticity." And where we should all ignore it.
Caveat: I've spent a lot of time in virtual worlds. This was when they were text-based and we thought there would never be desktop computing power sufficient to have graphical virtual worlds. Yay, we were wrong! Seriously, I am really happy we were wrong.
At any rate, dude, chill. It's a way to kill time. (I haven't played SL, but I'm sure I know someone who does and it's simply never come up.) If someone can make real money at it, great. I don't find someone getting lost inside it any freakier than I find the co-workers who spend all day - I mean all day, I don't mean a little here and there - talking about professional sports and identifying really strongly with particular players and teams to the point that I wonder if they're aware that they, personally, do not play the game in question.
5 -- Hey watch what you say about SCMT...
I thought this was going to be a post about what one called one's business.
I'm torn between two responses.
The first is the same as Tim's. All interaction with other people is interaction in a built, modeled world, and these game worlds are no less authentic than any other world. Also, mineshaft friends are no more imaginary than anyone else I meet in public and have imperfect knowledge of.
My second response is "dammit, it is about time we had a decent replacement for the real world." Seriously, is there anything more overrated than the real world?
A stirring defense, McManlyPants: "Second life: no more ridiculous than obsessive sports fandom."
I don't mean a little here and there - talking about professional sports and identifying really strongly with particular players and teams to the point that I wonder if they're aware that they, personally, do not play the game in question.
Dick.
12 to 7. Rather unoriginal of you, SCMT, isn't it?
It's not a vocation, it's an avocation.
11: Thank you, yeti. You've got the summary skillz.
If you want earnest, fine, I can do earnest: last year I read that there's a private island in SL designed specifically to allow patients with Asperger's and other social disorders to practice at the real-world interactions that they find difficult. The buzz at the time was that it might have real clinical applications; if I remember correctly, the guy who runs the island is a researcher at Harvard.
Ultimately, though, I think waving a bunch of Asperger's patients around on a stick as a defense of SL is too much like the "but think of the children" card so often played by the right wing. I also think there's nothing wrong with letting something continue to be seen as OK simply because it's no worse than other annoying activities. We do not live in a society where every activity must be justified by its social benefit, nor should we. Saying "it's no worse than Activity X" works just fine for me.
That this would get brought up on a blog in the first place is simply delicious.
16: there's a private island in SL
s/b "SL is"
18 is awesome. Seriously, I don't mean to put down Second Life or Second Lifers or anything like that; it's more of a "whither society" question: are we going to stop interacting with each other in physical space? I know it sounds silly, but we can now easily go days and days without leaving the house, because we don't need to go to the store, or the restaurant, or the bank, or even to the office in a lot of cases. Part of what makes textual communities less scary (to me) is that they're so obviously deficient: it's hard to mistake words for bodies. Because SL is more fleshed out, the "danger" seems greater. Anyway, just musing here.
Hmm. I doubt it -- look at how excited everyone here gets about the prospect of a real life chance to meet people. (BTW, I hate you all.)
Didn't EM Forster write this story back in the 20s sometime? The Machine Stops, I think.
All the Hemingway protagonists make good candidates. Nick Adams, Robert Jordan, Jake Barnes, Francis Macomber, Old Man. It's what he was writing about anyway. You may divvy them up as you please. But nobody choose Barnes who doesn't have a healthy self-esteem.
24 -- and the female business we will call "a clean well-lighted place"?
Is it really that easy? I honestly don't think it is, and even if it were possible to go days and days and days without interacting with anyone other than to pay the delivery people, wouldn't that drive people to find new outside social interaction? I don't hate you for asking the question (though I do tend to respond aggressively because my eyes are so tired from reading all the 'computers ate my baby' talk that my vision blurs), and I think it's good that people are thinking like this, but I think it's also largely academic. There are way more of our stories, as a culture, that have to do with someone leaving isolation to find themselves among other people and within society than there are of people who leave everything behind to become hermits. We are a culture of quests, not walk-abouts.
As I thought "business" suggested, I was thinking euphemisms, not pet names. "Area", "down there", all that. Something you could sensibly substitute for the operative word in Nora is frowning earnestly and trying to insert a stray Cheerio up in her business.
Actually, "Francis Macomber" isn't bad.
The sea was angry that night, my friends...
The problem with the question is its underlying Republicanism--like the only thing that actually drives people to interact (good) is the need for material survival. We shouldn't make things too easy, or everyone is just going to become a shutin.
Nonsense. We're social creatures, which is why so much of the stuff that takes up most of our online time is social networking and social interaction. If anything, I'd argue that it's a testament to our desire for social interaction that, stuck in cubicles or offices working on computers for most of the waking day, we cheat by finding people to talk to without looking like we're slacking by talking to our colleagues.
. Part of what makes textual communities less scary (to me) is that they're so obviously deficient: it's hard to mistake words for bodies.
Once the models are good enough for us to confuse the "computed community" for real life, why do we need the distinction? Isn't this a Turing Test issue? Wouldn't people in the "computed communities" be living real lives, even by your account?
Ogged's question, I mean, not Standpipe's.
33 -- that was how I took it certainly.
It's unisex:
"up in her Francis Macomber"
"kneed him in the Francis Macomber"
You may use the spelling "Frances" if you prefer.
That was easy. Thank you, text.
Well Standpipe's is pretty Republican too.
I was originally thinking those names could be universal, as in "John Thomas" but subsequently, coming face to face with the myriad forms, I have decided we should each select one.
Remind me never to eat the Cheerios at Standpipe's house.
Once the models are good enough for us to confuse the "computed community" for real life, why do we need the distinction? Isn't this a Turing Test issue? Wouldn't people in the "computed communities" be living real lives, even by your account?
What if they're good enough to be confused in terms of desirability, but not in terms of the necessary good effects that come from real sociability. You can starve hummingbirds to death by putting out water sweetened with artificial sweetners for them -- they think they're eating, but they aren't.
(I don't have any particular reason to think this is true, I'm just being argumentative.)
37: "Her hills were like white elephants, IYKWIMAITYD."
We're social creatures, which is why so much of the stuff that takes up most of our online time is social networking and social interaction
Yeah, of course, but social interaction is also a skill that takes practice, and the level with which we're comfortable has a lot to do with habituation. Stay in Iran for a month, and you start to get used to a house filled with people, with more dropping by any old time. Move to the American suburbs, and any unscheduled interaction at your home is a massive intrusion. The less you interact, the more you need interaction, but the less you're comfortable with the real thing.
41 -- heh. Stupid fuckin' hummingbirds.
The less you interact, the more you need interaction, but the less you're comfortable with the real thing.
This bears repeating.
41: Fine. Then, over time, the computed communities will go away because they'll be unsuccessful. But I think what's motivating ogged is a sense that there is such a thing as "a life worth living."
One could write a parody about a cynical, witty young roughneck ex-patriot named John Thomas who enjoys good food and drink, secretly hates everbody, and wrestles bears.
That is, one could if it were 1960 and these were new objections.
The less you interact, the more you need interaction, but the less you're comfortable with the real thing.
I don't disagree, but if that's the case then they're going to need somewhere to practice.
Well then, that's the question: are things like blogs and SL practice, or retreat?
The less you interact, the more you need interaction, but the less you're comfortable with the real thing.
See, for me, the question is, "What in gawd's name does he mean by 'real thing'?"
I think he means genuine Frances Macomber.
What in gawd's name does he mean by 'real thing'?
Don't make me cry, Timborg.
51 is a very important point. I periodically chat with my next door neighbor, and know a few things about her and her life. Is my time spent talking at the mineshaft practice for talking to her, simply because I see her in person? Are both my conversations with my neighbor and the unfoggetariat practice for talking with my wife because marriage is a deeper relationship?
FWIW, I don't think my neighbor is any more or less likely to turn out to be something dramatically different than what she claims to be than, say ogged.
53: No, but seriously, I'm not sure what you mean. Particularly in a world in which--by your assumption--the sort of interaction I suspect you mean by "real" is no longer necessary. It seems similar to lamenting the connection to the land that we've lost, now that we're no longer all farmers.
Also: lamenting the connection to the physical world that we've lost, now that we're all brains in aquaria.
People (or whatever you are), do we not all grant that in-the-flesh, face-to-face interaction is richer and deeper (not in all cases, obviously, but in realizable potential) than virtual interaction?
Tangentially related, everyone has read A rape in cyberspace and Amy Bruckman (can't find the article that I was looking for, but Finding One's Own Space in Cyberspace is good and this sylabus looks good) right?
It's a little dated, but those are some of the best writing I found 10 years ago about the question of what is this thing we call a virtual community.
Well then, that's the question: are things like blogs and SL practice, or retreat?
I think the easy, cheap answer is: Yes?
More seriously, I think it will help the concern you're trying to verbalize by being more explicit about the benefits of offline interaction in contrast to online. I mean, I can think of plenty, and I do not consider online interaction to be a direct and equivalent substitute for offline interaction, but I do consider it valuable and I think it beats the heck out of having neither.
To be fair I will state my own perception: the advantages I see are that offline interactions include body language, verbal cues, all the subtexts that can't be expressed in a tidy paragraph, physical ways of being ourselves that we can only learn by being physically present with other people. On the other hand, online interactions can definitely include the community-building required for someone to knock on your door because they haven't heard from you in a while.
Online interaction also has the advantage over offline in that it can remove those subtexts and cues when they become a hindrance. Our neighborhood started a watch program a few months ago. The big "town hall" style meeting that kicked it off was ridden hard by the more aggressive personalities and Rah and I left before it was over. It was on the neighborhood listserv that I was able to express my views without including signs that I was deeply annoyed by busybodies and screaming kids.
Yes, and I think the virtual interaction is a retreat. It is less intense, and requires less of the participants, and is subject to less chaos. I have been thinking that I've been sacrificing richness for the time I've spent online this year, and wondering why it attracts me so much.
It is less intense, and requires less of the participants, and is subject to less chaos.
These are advantages for some people, of course.
Yep, but I'm surprised that I'm doing it, because I like being around lots of people.
Corrected link: Finding One's Own Space in Cyberspace
It's more compulsive. You have to wait for feedback, and when you get it, it's like a small, delayed gratification. This is what I have come up with.
Yes, and I think the virtual interaction is a retreat. It is less intense, and requires less of the participants, and is subject to less chaos. I have been thinking that I've been sacrificing richness for the time I've spent online this year, and wondering why it attracts me so much.
None of these characteristics is clearly neutral. I had a conversation with a friend who admitted that he sometimes felt like the campesinos were living "more real" lives than he was. There was something to what he was saying--he assumed (possibly correctly) that every day they faced choices that materially mattered a great deal more than those he faced, and that this difference made their lives more real. There's something to that. But I couldn't tell you what it is, and I don't want to trade lives with a campesino.
Also, I think a fairly large number of us have recently moved to new places where we don't necessarily know lots of people with whom we have lots in common. On the internets, we waive our freak-flags and wind-up in the mineshaft. In-person conversation with the mineshaft would be preferable, but them's the breaks.
It is less intense, and requires less of the participants, and is subject to less chaos.
This is not my experience but it could just be the site that I blog for, you high-maintenance bitches.
Seriously, I've gotten a lot out of my online interactions -- I've made a number of RL friends, moved, gone on trips I wouldn't have done otherwise, etc.
eh...should be "All of these characteristics are neutral" or something better.
(de-lurk)
Apropos of the conversation.
Rings true for me. Though, re: 61, it hasn't been any less subject to chaos in my experience.
I worry about this. I'm very much the anti-Megan on this; I hate and fear other people in real life, and cower in my office like some sort of small but vicious animal, avoiding all other contact with humanity. I started spending a lot of time at Unfogged when I started this job, and I think it's encouraged me to avoid really settling in socially here (something which I do badly at the best of times, but I think I've done worse here).
58: Were you on Lambda, at the time of MrBungle or after? Just curious as to whether two of my virtual worlds overlap in that way.
22: I always liked that story. There's a part where the protagonist trains for his escape: after weeks of lifting objects in his cubicle he finds that he is able to hold his pillow at arm's length 'for many minutes'.
I tried Second Life briefly. I 'built' a truly cool house one weekend (SL is essentially basic VR modelling software). Then some twat came and 'built' an enormous casino in the 'sea', blocking the 'view'. Well, it would have blocked the view if it had ever become more than a large expanse of garish 'carpet' with lots of 'slot machines' (but no punters). Never rains in SL: roofs are optional.
A month later, my house got deleted.
67: Traveling is always a possibility.
70: I should send that link to my parents.
At least in terms of sensory stimulation, it is much less intense; far fewer cues and all. When the drama escalates, it certainly feels intense enough.
Becks suggests that it supplements and improves her real life, and I very much like that function. I've done fun things with lots of new people, and I that part is great. But it also lets me spend whole evenings in front of a box, which is just rewarding enough that I don't pick up the phone and invite the kids over to eat through the contents of my fridge like a plague of locusts.
72 -- I was never on Lambda, but I got interested in the idea of virtual communities in '96/97 and did some research.
(let me repeat my plug for The Gift which also has many smart things to say that relate in interesting ways to virtual communities).
I feel like I'm part of a weird transition generation, I've observed a lot of the transformations of the notions of virtual communities without participating that much personally. I casually participated on a bbs before the world wide web (largely) killed that sub culture, I got addicted to reading a couple of newsgroups for a while, but never posted much, and never went beyond a small set of newsgroups, I read blogs but . . . I'm interested in all of the different sets of arangements of virtual communities, but I never feel like I have enough energy to commit to being an active member so I'm an observer.
(I should say hi, Roamsedge! And thank you for having a name, rather than posting as 'A Lurker' or something like that. I hate people who do that.)
Look, I love this place, obviously, even while hating all of you, individually. The real world doesn't offer, for example, many ways to spend work hours chatting about the benefits and dangers of virtual worlds, or Britney's manners. And virtual worlds can make real-life interaction happen: witness the meet-ups, the friendships, and all the hot monkey sex that all the commenters are having with each other. Grant all that. But I still worry that we become habituated to online life, become afraid of fleshy life, and are the poorer for it. I don't want to break the internet or anything, but I'd like to be making online worlds that offer ways to connect in the flesh.
Also, reading through Julian Dibbell's site, XYZZY
I hate people who do that
I don't think I've mentioned how odd I find this charming little idiosyncracy of yours, LB.
Shorter Ogged in 79: Why isn't this blog getting me laid?
I think y'all are still underestimating how much real life sucks. Why should LB leave her office and interact with her co workers anyway? I mean, what are the odds that two halfway decent people litigate for tobacco companies?
Most people suck, and their annoying body language and the richness of interacting with them face to face sucks even more. Blech.
83: Maybe if he posted more he could tap in to that underground blowjob economy he's always talking about.
Meetups early and often?
I'm curious about this. In this thread people seem to be refering to meetups as a sign of the health of unfogged as an online community. In my experience I tend to think of meetups as a sign of poor health for an online community qua online community (remember, here, that the first meetup preceded ogged leaving the blog).
My speculation has been that maintaining online communities takes a lot of work and that, at some point, people run out of energy for that work and the community starts to decay a little bit and then the regulars decide (consciously or sub-consciously), "rather than spending so much time and energy in this difficult online setting, what if a bunch of us met up offline." I tend to see meetups as a sign that the regulars are "cashing out their chips" so to speak, and turning their online social capital into RL social capital that takes less effort.
So far unfogged has not fallen into that pattern, and I don't know whether that's just because unfogged is taking longer to follow that pattern, because unfogged has enough independent sources of energy to survive selected regulars (tia?) dropping off for a while, or if my sense of an observed pattern was never correct but just contingent on a couple of observations.
So, are offline meetups a sign of health for an online community?
This is the sort of real life experience we're all missing out on.
I'm not so sure that online interaction takes more effort than RL interaction. Maybe for the leaders of the community it does.
88 -- perhaps "effort" is the wrong word, "attention" might be closer. But I'm curious if anyone else has an opinion.
I've been saying that people like online interaction because it takes less effort than real life interaction. Sounds like that isn't true of the leaders/moderators, who are no doubt in it for the frequent blowjobs.
I think this article that I got from catherine's del.icio.us sidebar is a good description of what it takes to make a solid community. I think a lot of what it describes is stuff that Ogged did, which is how he created such a great place. (Awww...)
I've been saying that people like online interaction because it takes less effort than real life interaction.
I would agree that it requires less of whatever it is that introverts find tiring, but I think it requires a different sort of effort.
I could be completely wrong here, and it's possible that the communities I'm thinking of were just too small to sustain the amount of typing it requires to keep things moving and that unfogged has a critical mass, but I still think it takes more effort, it's just that it's different enough that it doesn't feel like the same effort as socializing.
I think that unfogged is more like the kind of party where, when you show up, the host sneers at, and maybe hits, you, and all the guests make fun of you.
78 -- Sure.
76 -- I consider my experience similar, though I was more active in Usenet (though mostly before '98-ish). God damn, has it been that long?
Helpy-chalk, yep indeed. My co-workers mostly annoy, so I keep in touch with family and friends while I'm working. Helps to be one of the network geeks.
Underground blowjobs are hot, by the way. Sub-basement library stacks aren't just for book storage, ya know.
which is how he created such a great place. (Awww...)
If you think this in any way mitigates the massive hurtin' I'm going to put on your for 83, you've got another cogitation coming, missy.
And in response to 86, I do think that in person interactions change the nature of a blog but I don't think it necessarily leads to people cashing out. I think it does make people more in tune to other commenters' feelings and view them more as a real person, though. The tone has become somewhat more congenial since we started doing in-person meetups (although "congenial" for Unfogged would still be considered pretty rude elsewheres and many people may have preferred the harsher days) . Also, I can see how it might cause some communities to crumble, as adding RL dynamics does make for more strongly hurt feelings, as I have seen in some interactions.
the story in 87 goes from funny to sad really quickly.
I've enjoyed every meetup, with groups or individually, I've had with the people here. But I think it significant that I've only ever met anyone from here once. Some, including some who live very close by, meet each other much more often than that, while for me this has gone nowhere. If the purpose is to include developing IRL relationships, than it's a failure for me.
But I think of it as a valuable supplement, a place where I can have conversations, and make statements and ask questions, otherwise unlikely even to my closest friends. We are not able to connect or make lives with such people, but they're always here for us, in some sense. Who knows, someday I meet see someone a second time.
Dude, the story in 87 is awesome. It's like the "how many five year-olds could you take on?" question, but with a lion!
it's the backstory that really makes it work.
Really, I think the "practice or retreat" question ignores the way that most of us use a forum like this. I think it's right that it's a testament to our need for interaction that we're here instead of, say, working or doing schoolwork. Personally, I'm intensely social, and would pretty much always rather be talking to people I like (important qualifier there) than doing other things. Online interaction enables me to be able to interact with people and still have "downtime," which I need. It's downtime in that I'm usually just laying in bed in my pajamas with my laptop, and it's quasi-alone, but I'm still communicating, and I'm still being enriched by thinking and writing. I think my online activities have had a tangible positive effect on my real-life interactions, just because I'm exposed to other people's views, and thus have more interesting things to say, better perspectives. Similary, my real-life friendships give me perspectives to help relate to online friends. One is not a substitute for the other, so it's not retreat. At the same time, it's not practice eiher, because that implies that one will "graduate" out of it, which I doubt many of us are planning to do.
Whenever ogged threatens to beat someone up, I think of this.
ogged is exactly right on this thread.
You can starve hummingbirds to death by putting out water sweetened with artificial sweetners for them -- they think they're eating, but they aren't.
[whistle stamp cheering even if you didn't endorse it.]
Online interaction is real interaction, mind. But it's a tool to communicate, or to play, and a life that consists of only typing in text boxes or killing orcs or being a valiant pirate is one-dimensional. And I do think that people often over-estimate the value of their blog or game or forum; if someone announced they were quitting WoW or SL, people'd notice for about three days, and then they'd move on.
This may not be better or worse than in the rest of one's life, true. Most people I know wouldn't care if I disappeared. But when it's online it's easier to distort, I think, because it's so easy to spend such amounts of time typing or gaming or whatever, that it must be the most important thing in your life. An online friend is a pretend friend to the extent that he or she is not nearly as good of a friend as he or she would be if we spent four hours a day talking face to face.
Maybe it's just me, but the periods where I've been most depressed are those where while I had plenty of pretend online friends, friends reachable by telephone or e-mail, family and boyfriend easily accessible by instant messenger, and I'd realize that if I committed suicide, most of them wouldn't notice for days or weeks or months, if at all.
And more lightheartedly, The Sims freaks me out. Make your Sims work hard! Eat right! Study! Advance in their careers! Do the dishes! Go to the gym!
Meanwhile, you sit in front of the computer, order in a pizza, ignore the cleaning, get behind in your work, &c.
105: that's hilarious. White Ninja vs. Windmill-Fu. The brown dude was exactly like the nihilists from The Big Lebowski.
Let me endorse leblanc's view. She and I are often near the same places, but the interaction possible online is of a different quality, and I agree that it enhances possibility, because of the quality of communication writing enables. I grew up in the absolute nadir of written culture, when letter-writing had about died out and what we do here hadn't replaced it, and I've missed it all my life. I can't imagine living without it now.
Wow, the lion story is crazy.
See, I agree with you in many respects, Ogged, because I'm completely wedded to the "not brains on sticks" idea. We need actual *physical* interaction to be really healthy, being as our brains are themselves physical organisms and tied into our bodies, yadda yadda. But I don't think teh internet is the problem: I think teh American worklife is the problem, and the whole nuclear family/suburb/isolation/lengthening workday/cubicle thing has been happening for the last half century, at least.
To some extent, sure, the internet probably exacerbates that process, inasmuch as it provides a sociability, which we want, without physical interaction, which more and more we don't have time or social mores for. So yeah, maybe it makes us more complacent about problems we'd otherwise feel much more acutely. But I don't think it's the *cause* of those problems, and I do think that in a lot of ways it provides not only relief from them (to an extent) but also possible resistance. At some point, the employers of the nation are going to realize that if 90% of their employees are spending 60% of their paid work hours futzing around online, they could probably cut back on those people's overtime and accept a standard 35, 40 hour workweek again without really impacting productivity much. If anything, it would probably improve b/c once you start futzing around, it's really hard to stop.
(I say this only because I think everyone's taking it straight, and I did too initially. If you look at the URL on the lion story, it's not a BBC page.)
106: Yes, but didn't Tolstoy say that he would sometimes contemplate hanging himself even as his wife and children slept contentedly in the next room?
107: I found The Sims enormously depressing. That relentless self-improvement. You have it exactly right.
I think that unfogged is more like the kind of party where, when you show up, the host sneers at, and maybe hits, you, and all the guests make fun of you.
w-lfs-n is the king of the depressing comments today.
91: I think a lot of what it describes is stuff that Ogged did, which is how he created such a great place.
This is true -- I ended up commenting here a lot largely because Ogged responded kindly to some of the first few things I said.
As a 36 year old geek who is -extremely- socially isolated, I'd just like to add my voice to those who are disturbed by Second Life and the opportunities it offers. Especially when you consider how it supplements other attractions -- I'm thinking here of videogames that are so well-designed they can absorb your attention for 10 to 12 hours at a time, along with vastly improved systems for distributing thousands upon thousands of images of attractive women (when I was a teen in the 1980s you had the sports illustrated swimsuit edition, and that came out but once a year.) What am i saying...I worry for all the pimply teens out there who won't have to adjust themselves to (and resign themselves to) the realities of interacting with flesh-and-blood people because they can conjure up pliant electronic substitutes. Another thing: with electronic interaction, it's too easy to just opt out when things get complex, disappointing and uncomfortable. You're anonymous and you can just vanish. People in the flesh know your phone number. I wish I could do more than gesture at what I'm worried about. Or maybe I've been *all too clear*
But I don't think teh internet is the problem: I think teh American worklife is the problem, and the whole nuclear family/suburb/isolation/lengthening workday/cubicle thing has been happening for the last half century, at least.
I don't know if it's the American worklife, as I suspect that most gaming/blogging/communities doesn't happen during work hours.
117: Gaming maybe not, but this place is hopping all day during work hours. Pretty much if I'm 'here' I'm supposed to be working -- things I do in my off hours usually don't involve the computer.
fuck, the lion story totally fooled me. I am such a sap.
Explanation here.
Hmm. 116 sounds a lot like uncharitable descriptions of modern-day Japan. Which, as someone who has been known on occasion to make a derogatory remark or two in the direction of tentacle porn and/or Naruto-heads, worries me greatly.
119: The guy who wrote it had a good ear -- normally I catch those things because the prose clangs. That one I bought until I saw the URL (and then thought about how ridiculous it was).
Does one, hypothetically, bill one's blogging hours to a particularly morally disreputable client? Time sheets in general, and law firms in particular, have always confused me.
It's playing off prejudice, too. I was reading it and thinking "yeah, Cambodia is a fucked up, violent place."
"He eventually discovered it was a fake article and admitted he had been fooled.... big time, and has since retaken the side of the midgets."
Awesome.
(I ask because I billed a lot of reading USENET back in the day to Requirements Tracability Analysis for the Advanced Tomahawk Weapons Control System for the Royal Navy, but software engineers don't take these things seriously)
122: Hypothetically one switches back and forth between tasks at high speed, so that one is always in some sense working, and one knocks a certain amount off the time it takes to complete tasks. Hypothetically one is also shatteringly poor at keeping track of one's hours at all, and longs plaintively for a job without timesheets.
Please, LB, tell me you bill big tobacco for the time you spend here!
I find this all a bit bizarre. People have certain needs that are either getting met or aren't. If they aren't, things will change. Behind all of this is a weird assumption about a "healthy" life or a "real" life or...gawd knows... that no one defines. From the article that Rosemudge (sp) linked to, it doesn't appear to be harming people to interact in Second Life. So some of them appear to be freaks to some of us; there's probably a room in Second Life in which they're all saying the same things about us.
I think everyone would choose the best life that was available to them, if it was helpfully labeled. I guess I'm wondering if it's better if someone spends too much time online or too much time hanging out with the regulars at the local bar.
128: Probably goes without saying, but please, LB, don't even intimate that.
131: Sure. Sometimes he's wry or bitter or incomprehensible or bitchy, rather than depressing.
129: Tim, you are the king of the "eh, everything's fine, what's the big deal" comments.
130: Oh, right, I didn't mean she should say that online. I mean she should email me personally with lots of details about how she is ripping off The Man.
124.--I was thinking something like "surely not even in Cambodia is this legal!" and kept scrolling up and down for some sign of disapproval either from the Cambodian government or from the BBC writer. That is the one jarring note: in a real BBC story there would have been some brief background paragraph about how "violent bloodsports are officially legal in Cambodia, although this matchup is unusual, blabla."
132: I'm sort of surprised that you're not on my side. I would think that you'd be more comfortable than most saying that unconventional lifestyle choices can work, only need to work for the people engaging in them, and that, in the absence of clear evidence of harm, other people should understand that they're mostly just wittering on about something that doesn't fit them, specifically. (I really hope that doesn't come off as some sort of weird "Aha!" comment, or in any way as disrespectful. I just would have thought you'd be more, "Eh, whatever," yourself, I guess.)
But I still worry that we become habituated to online life, become afraid of fleshy life, and are the poorer for it. I don't want to break the internet or anything, but I'd like to be making online worlds that offer ways to connect in the flesh.
Yes.
But a big part of me wants to encourage the male half of the species to immerse themselves in online worlds and become shutins, thus creating legions of frustrated women wandering the streets yearning for a man's touch.
I admire the plan, gswift, but aren't you married?
aren't you married?
Certain adjustments in current social norms will be necessary in this new Utopia.
134 captures my response to the article. I believed the whole thing until the end when it said "28 were killed and 14 were mutilated". I mean, that's just impossible. At least one of them would have managed to escape. And it definitely would have been covered up by Cambodian gambling authorities if 28 were killed just for a bloodsport.
Very well done, though. Better than any Onion article.
I am so fucking bummed that the midget thing isn't true.
Cheer up. Mini Kiss and Tiny Kiss are real.
Don't worry Ogged. ">Not all our dreams must be shattered.
136: Well but I kinda am. It's just that I'm a slut, so I'm gonna be all about the actual physical contact, don'tchaknow. But I'm saying, I don't think that the whole drive to socialize via the internet is a bad thing, and inasmuch as people are more isolated, it ain't the internet that's causing it.
I'm really surprised so many of you hadn't seen the lion-midget thing before. I saw it months ago.
144: Perhaps not, but I do worry that there's a very finely grained balkanisation in progress. We have such great tools for discovering points of difference with the people we live and work with. If the fix for this involves long distance travel, we have an environmental pollution problem, not to mention an economic problem. A society that constantly convects?
I live in a city of eight million or so, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe that the people who happen to be around me are ... enough. But this can't be right. It's not so long since there were fewer than eight million people in the world.
I guess I'll go ahead and horrify ogged: I think that online interactions can frequently be richer than offline ones, and have felt this way since I ran a BBS in middle school. It's like the difference between improv and scripted comedy. The letter-writing-ish nature of forums like this one allow people to be maximally clever, thoughtful, funny and knowledgeable. And they make it eas(y/ier) to avoid your own unconscious prejudices about the other person's appearance or demographic and instead focus on the mind you're speaking to.
I agree that IRL social interaction is necessary and important -- we're full of hormones and neurotransmitters and all kinds of systems designed for being near one another. I enjoy it and I'd miss it if I didn't have it. But I don't necessarily feel that the quality of real life interaction is as important as its quantity — or that it's as easy to achieve regularly high quality interactions in real life as it is online. Why should it be, when you're constrained by geography and time and anxiety and who knows what else? Besides which, some people can't participate in regular in-person interactions, for various reasons.
With all of that said, I really don't understand the appeal of Second Life and have found it pretty annoying to use during my brief explorations of it. The CopyBot phenomenon is in the process of destroying its economy, and every ad agency on the planet is trying to invade it in order to burnish their internet cred. It's going to be ruined soon, and it didn't seem that great to me to begin with. But maybe I'm just missing the point.
can I just make one point that may not be blindingly obvious to those you who are young and good-looking?
Some of you are young and good-looking Some of you are merely physically unprepossessing. Others, like myself, are deeply unattractive in person--anti-charismatic in the extreme. If you could see me, you wouldn't talk to me. I can pretty much guarantee that, from a life-time of experience. Which does not improve when age piles on the insults.
So--part of what a forum like this offers is an opportunity to interact with other people, without being shunned for being physically unattractive.
I mean, sure, you catch a raft of abuse around here. And that's partly for being intellectually or morally repellent. But that makes a nice change from being physically repellent.
And that's part of what on-line interaction offers. The old joke about no one knowing you're a dog? Believe it or not, "dog" is actually ambiguous in that sentence.
I blame the introduction of those foreign stimulants, coffee and tobacco, which led so many people to leave their proper place in life and chill at the coffee houses.
No, it's the invention of fiction, and particularly the pernicious so-called 'novel', which allows people to abandon RL and live in fantasy. It's a short slippery slope from Chaucer to The Fountainhead and Orson Scott Card, and from there to Columbine.
It's not like it was when I was your age, and being social meant lying on a branch picking lice from each other's fur. Those were the days. I'm sure they'll be relived by those at the DCCon seeking to free their inner Bonobo.
Some folks are very verbal, and their natural habitat is the MLA and APA meetings and Unfogged. Others aren't, and are more likely to be found at sports bars and Second Life. Some people play with Frisbees and balls, some play with words and ideas, some play with social roles and identities, some play with virtual architecture and clothing design, some play with some or all of the above. At least on SL they're playing with others, even if it's hard to tell the real virtual people from the virtual virtual people. I mean, sometimes you go to play with the people you have, not the people you wish you had. Sure, for some the chance for a glimpse of those fabled 32DDs is worth a long journey, but sometimes the unreal thing is real enough.
I'm playing talking with myself again, aren't I?
Allow me a moment to explain my deal: I have always -- as long as I can remember -- been very agitated about whether people that I interact with like me and pay any attention to me. It makes it difficult to develop deep friendships with people because I am neurotically examining the relationship the whole time and not completely present. I find I don't worry about it as much when I'm in these online discussion venues, and that because of that I am able to connect with people a little more easily. This has influenced my real-world interactions a little bit since I started hanging out on the internets, though not as much as I'd like. (I don't mean to say my online interactions are free of neurosis; they are not by any means. It's a subtle difference in degree.)
And: I really dig getting together outside the electronic medium with peoople I have met on the inside. It's about my favorite feature of online relationships.
(Well -- besides the virtual sex anyways.)
part of what a forum like this offers is an opportunity to interact with other people, without being shunned for being physically unattractive
Agreed, plus when you do meet someone who you would otherwise stereotype or ignore b/c of how they look, you're already friends. It's really pretty broadening that way.
for some the chance for a glimpse of those fabled 32DDs is worth a long journey
I really don't think I'll be flashing anyone at the meetup.
154: I hear the book on that is running 2:1
I really don't think I'll be flashing anyone at the meetup.
Ah shit, there goes my plan for the meetup...
It would take a *lot* of booze.
Then again, after I started taking the Effexor, one drink *did* totally knock me out that time....
1) 149:Word
2) There are other democratizations (?) that would be unlikely except for the web and blogs. Class;education, etc. In RL I am in usual contact with minority ethnics:blacks and Latinos; they are much less common on the blogs. I meet or deal with few gays, lesbians, feminists and certainly don't discuss politics or gender issues when I do have contact.
3) Most people I have RL contact with spend their days in front of a monitor, but do not spend their evenings or breaks in online conversation. I know no one in RL who blogs, comments, IRC'S etc, virtual worlds etc. They watch TV or go out or work or play games.
4) The class/education/professional differences interest me. But I don't think I would comment on black or Iranian or goth blogs;I lurk on feminist and GLBT blogs.
I don't think I would comment on...Iranian...blogs
Present company excepted, of course.
159:Of course I meant blogs where everyone but me was Iranian, compared to blogs where everyone but me are professionals and have multiple degrees.
bob, everyone but you *is* Iranian here.
didn't you know that?
(some of us are from the more westerly parts of the persian empire. still.)
I agree with Helpy-Chalk that RL isn't always so great. IRL most people aren't bookish or clever (not smart but clever) or witty. Unfogged isn't practice; it is, to some extent, escape. For the New Yorkers it's a little bit less explicable, but for a lot of people in the boonies, they may not have much opportunity to meet with like-minded people. I don't know anyone (or only a very few) IRL outside of academia who are genuinely interested in philosophy or even think through ethical questions. (I'm not saying that peopel aren't ethical, just that they don't think through those questions abstractly.) I don't know many people who want to argue about the importance of maintaining a notional standard of beauty. These are things that I value about unfogged.
I also appreciate the fact that I was able to get advice from people pretty quickly.
There's more I want to say, but I'm addicted to Gray's Anatomy and am now able to catch the second half of it. My non-crazy roommate wanted to watch Scrubs.
"I was able to get advice from people pretty quickly."
given that quickness was apparently far more important to you than usefulness or reliability, may I suggest a Magic 8-Ball
162: RL flesh-talk has never impressed me as especially facilitating intimacy or conveying information or building relationships or whatever. Flesh-talk is used by the participants for their purposes, which are as varied and valuable as the number of participants. People who are good at it tell the rest of us we don't measure up.
Can one imagine the many ways 30 people (as might be involved here tonight) conversing in RL goes wrong? Breaking in subgroups; dominants and interruptors;wallflowers;bullying;raconteurs and listeners;competitions.
This is just better.
subgroups; dominants and interruptors;wallflowers;bullying;raconteurs and listeners;competitions.
I think these dynamics are in evidence in online forums; aren't they?
(I mean I'm not gonna name names or anything but...)
I have a million billion reactions to this one all at once since it's an area I write about semi-professionally (virtual worlds). Some of what I'd say (that those of us working on this stuff have said) has already been said above. There's a neat-sounding book called Phantasmagoria coming out this spring that I think looks like it'll situate some of this historically as well: we've been relating to things which are not us "in the flesh" as if they *are* us for quite a while now (photographs, mirror reflections, etcetera).
Another historical thought: social worlds that are minimally interactive in the flesh but maximally relational in the abstract are not unprecedented in human experience. I was just teaching Alexandra Fuller's book on her childhood in Rhodesia--those white settlers lived on farms quite distant from each other, didn't view Africans as fully relational human beings, and saw other whites fairly infrequently. Manorial gentry in England kind of had their own family worlds, servants, and not much contact with people that they regarded as peers. (Gormenghast is kind of a trippy Gothic riff on this.) I'm not altogether clear that these were in their isolation or physicality intrinsically bad social worlds (obviously quite bad in other respects). But anyway, talking about this in brave-new-world tones is to a modest extent falling for some of the marketing hook of Second Life in the first place.
Second Life does have a lot of really interesting aspects even within the larger topic of virtual worlds, though. Not the least of which is its angle on intellectual property, which is being really challenged at the moment by the invention of something called CopyBot within its world. (Members own the intellectual property they create with Second Life's tools, but CopyBot is just copying objects and so on that users have created, and SL's creators are leaving the players to enforce their own intellectual property rights if they feel a need to.)
Ah crap, the story in 87 is made up. I so wanted the lion to be real.
"158
1) 149:Word"
yes, and then there is this incentive: old duffers like mcmanus and I can feel free to use the latest teen slang without (excessive) ridicule.
If in RL I were to utter choice neologisms like "word" or "true dat", the laugable mismatch between balding pudgy self and hipster slang, and the resultant reaction from anyone who heard me, would simply reinforce my feelings of irretrievable unhipness.
Whereas here, where no one can compare my verbal image to my physical shape, I can try out whatever the latest thing in colloquialisms may be. Twenty-three skiddooo!
talking about this in brave-new-world tones is to a modest extent falling for some of the marketing hook of Second Life in the first place
Isn't the convertibility of in-game money to dollars unique?
Wasn't it a couple of years ago already that there was that (half-remembered) scandal with somebody employing sweatshop workers in northern Mexico to amass virtual dollars in an online game?
(I seem to recall the employer of those workers having a scheme to convert his virtual dollars into negotiable ones.)
76: You will perhaps find it amusing, then, to learn that essentially all that remains to remind us of MrBungle is the login banner to LambdaMOO, which warns reporters and researchers that the "citizens" of Lambda request that they self-identify as such before conducting interviews or research. Arbitration went down in flames several years ago after it became the personal bludgeon of someone far more aggressive and far more dangerous to the underpinnings of Lambda's society than MrBungle. Almost no one mourned its passing; I certainly didn't. Balloting is still around but very rarely used, in part because there are so few of us left to use it.
The login banner is also all that's left to remind some of us that once upon a time we thought MOOs were the future of online communities and that one day Lambda would teem with thousands who looked on our low object numbers as the outward signs of our deep, developed wisdom. Again, I am so glad we were wrong.
On the MrBungle tip, it is my considered opinion that he just enjoyed getting people riled up and seeing what happened and then, when things like the town hall hosted by evangeline did happen, he liked to keep tweaking them. It was 100% pure performance. MrBungle himself was a perfectly nice guy, offline. (I was a [make-believe] friend of a [real-life] friend, we talked, he struck me as someone who was doing the MrBungle schtick simply because he was less likely to get busted for that than for flushing cherry bombs.)
168: I just want to say that I liked your post on the Son of Arugal. Observing those touches of humanity in an otherwise anonymous landscape carefully crafted so as to hide as many seams as possible is one of my favorite things about virtual worlds and entirely relevant to the topic at hand. That said, I hate endgame content and cannot wait for BC to drop so I'll have something new to do without sacrificing my life at the altar of raid schedules.
151: Clownae, sounds like we have similar neuroses. I like that in a clown.
I was thinking that text-based communities resemble the epistolary relationships of eighteenth and nineteenth century upperclass types--ladies would typically spend a good part of the morning writing letters, if Jane Austen is to be believed, and in the cities postmen would make multiple rounds in the course of the day, so you could send off a note by the midmorning post and get a reply in the afternoon.
There are one or two other virtual worlds that boast of structured conversion of in-world currencies to real-world ones, and all the rest have unofficial or black market conversions, which is just about the most studied phenomenon in virtual worlds. (RMT, or "real-money transactions".)
Robust McManly Pants has just given me a horrible flashback to Sunny and the end of arbitration at LambdaMOO. Now there was an education about the limits of governance in *any* world, virtual or otherwise.
172/3: I think Sony sued an Everquest guy who had the Mexican sweatshop. Now, like everything else, it's all gone to China.
171: I think Second Life mainly has a good PR, and probably good timing as well.
163: No, Boston's not the boonies, although we don't seem to have as large or as social of a contingent as New York. I wasn't really including my self in the "Those of us."
Having said that, I do live in Boston now, and I'm from Boston originally, but I've lived in other places too. For a while my parents lived in a town which had an outpost of the agricultural dept. of Teo Univ. which made Teoville look like an incredibly cosmopolitan place. That was the boonies. I never did anything but read and go to the movies when I lived there. I was only ever there on vacations. That included a couple of sad, lonely summers. My parents lived there, but I never really did. I would have killed for a community like unfogged then.
A friend of mine (in his 70's) used to teach in that town in the 60's, and he said that he used to read the Atlantic Monthly, which was then a Boston-based magazine, to remind himself of Boston. I said that I didn't like the style of the Monthly very much, and he agreed--but he needed it very much then.
Teoville's actually a pretty cosmopolitan place for its size and location. I've never been to the town BG refers to (though I know where it is), but I'm sure it's a lot more typical of the area.
177: I believe SL also grants its users actual legal ownership of objects in the game (subject to some necessary terms). That's unique, I think, even if their currency system isn't.
179: And it has a college too, so it's actually got more stuff, e.g, an accesible college library, than do many of the surrounding towns. Definitely part of the rust-belt. I had a friend who worked in a lab in Teoville one summer who described it as a wasteland, and I said that there was good summer recreation and that it was a lot more exciting than a lot of places in the area.
I had a friend who worked in a lab in Teoville one summer who described it as a wasteland
This is a very common sentiment among Teo U. students, who are not a happy bunch. I think it's mainly because so many of them are from affluent suburbs and didn't come here for the outdoor recreational opportunities.
Teo, was that your namesake I drove by on NM6 today?
If Teoville's location is a better-kept secret than I think it is, my apologies for the WIE.
Yes, actually. That's not Teoville (the location of which is no longer a secret), though.
I seem to think of you as living in Albuquerque. I didn't know if indicating a restaurant in Los Lunas would be damaging.
Is the place worth trying? I seem to find myself in Los Lunas surprisingly often.
174 -- Indeed I do appreciate, thank you (and apologies to Timothy Burke for reminding him of unpleasent memories). I don't know, does the reminder of MOO triumphalism put blog triumphalism in context or not?
And RMcMP and Burke, what do you think about the relative merits of meetups (and how literally should we take the UnfoggedCon name? Will there be panels? Will there be an auction?)
186: I'm from Albuquerque, but I'm away at school now.
The restaurant is very good. You should definitely try it some time.
176: See, now you've said the name. I am given to understand that around here that is called the Bat Signal. If she shows up here and threatens to sue everybody, it was not my doing.
187: It very much puts it in context for me. It is very difficult for me to take anyone seriously when they in turn take their blog seriously. Oh, yes, the blogs took down Dan Rather, blah blah blah, nobody's character was ever assassinated before blogs, journalism never had a populist streak before blogs, it was just a bunch of people in caves chewing the sinew from the bones of vermin and inventing correct spelling so the rest of us could fuck it up later. Y'know?
Blogs serve a fantastic and effective and important purpose in providing a way for people to interact with others whom they'd otherwise never know. A webpage is the easiest thing in the wired world to access and you can close the window in a hurry when the boss walks by. I also think blogs have shown a real power to lead to very rapid accumulation of collected knowledge and expertise in a way no other wired technology or medium has done, but there are a lot of things they really stink at doing, too. As soon as someone invents an online medium that's even easier to use, or not so bad at some of the things blogs are bad at, or even faster, or whatever - and if it either features a similar component of narcissism^H^H^Hself-expression or is so ridiculously awesome otherwise that it can overcome the narcissism^H^H^Hself-expression that is a huge part of the appeal of blogging - then blogs will be the new thing everyone does to be self-consciously old-school and the kids will all move on to wireless brain-sharing happy expose yourself fun time or whatever.
As for meetups, I did a lot of LambdaMOO meeting-up, because I had a lot of offline friends who were also on Lambda and we, as a pre-existing social group, would take any excuse for a road trip. I have a t-shirt from the fabulous New Year's I spent in DC one year amongst other MOOers. I don't think meetups spell the end. I think taking it all so seriously and feeling like great works must be done to be preserved for history is what kills an online community. Self-awareness isn't dangerous on its own but it's required for self-importance and the latter is usually what should go on the death certificate.
It is very difficult for me to take anyone seriously when they in turn take their blog seriously.
I presume you have no difficulty taking me seriously, then.
190: I don't have any problem taking you seriously, since you're the one person here whose workstation I've actually seen in RL.
I used to wander around MUDs and MOOs. I've been to Midgaard, I've killed the dog, I've played Scrabble with kibbutzers galore. And for a time in law school, I dropped down the rabbit hole of this kind of time sink and didn't really care if I came out. More recently, I spent a lot of time in the first release of Star Wars: Galaxies making my way up to bounty hunter (this was before the path to Jedi was discovered). But for me, escape into a virtual reality has always been just that -- an escape. Typically, I've been in a very dark and lonely place in RL when I jumped into an on-line world. Perhaps others on-line are in the same kind of place.
Or maybe not. Even though it doesn't match my personal experience, I'm willing to believe that, for some, time spent in worlds like Second Life is actually healthy. I've read accounts by people who use SL as a creative outlet, as a place to road-test things like architectural designs and such. And obviously, there are people there with a considerable entrepreneurial spirit like Anshe Chung (who, rumor has it, started her SL empire as an escort at a seedy club, but that's neither here nor there) who are building serious businesses out of electrons.
As an aside, check out comments posted here about Anshe Chung and SL -- an interesting mix of ill-informed ("GET A LIFE!") and nuanced reactions to her story.
Bottom line: All in all, I'd rather be here.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the business and legal aspects of these emerging secondary realities are incredibly fascinating. So Anshe Chung has a million dollars in virtual real estate. How does she monetize this "assets" in RL? How about asset-backed securitization? Ridiculous, you say? Why? There's a flow of cash coming off of these "assets" which is readily convertible from Linden dollars to U.S. dollars. If the financial markets have been willing to support and promote junk bonds, why not this type of investment?
But what about the uncertainty, you say? What if the Second Life servers are struck by lightning and all this virtual real estate goes up in electrons? Well, let me see, if only there was a way to mitigate the risk inherent in every type of venture... Oh yeah, it's called INSURANCE! Why shouldn't the owner of such virtual real estate be able to insure their "assets" against natural and technical disasters? The risk is much smaller than it appears, given what I can only assume are vigorous and regular backups of the Second Life universe. This sounds like an imminently reasonable area for insurance coverage.
But speaking of risk, the biggest issue facing these virtual reality businesses is the terms of service with which the owners agreed when they first logged on. After all, don't most of them say that any user may be evicted (via termination of their account) at any time for any reason whatsoever? How can there be any certainty in that kind of environment? And in fact, despite the fine print and legal gobbledygook, don't these users have at least a colorable argument in the face of such an eviction that they have relied to their detriment to the apparent reality of the world in which they've been operating their businesses, and that such reliance gives them a claim against the owners of the world for the value of "assets" lost to such capricious account terminations?
Not that I believe a word of that, but isn't it delicious to imagine where all this could be headed? Snow Crash, here we come!
I'd just like to say that it's been great having the sidebar contain all these references to "Commenter X Comments on Your Business", as if that was the title of some sort of audience participation Off-Broadway show. Just wanted to see my name in that sentence again before the thread goes away.
192 -- But how does the conversion to US $ take place? I'm assuming it's something like, you present your SL $ to the company and they give you US $ -- which seems like a weird-ass business model to me -- so your assets are only as secure as the financial state of the company. I don't see how an insurance company would be willing to cover it.
Or are you saying the insurance company would cover the SL $ value of the virtual property? This is so confusing...
I don't think meetups spell the end.
I would be happy to believe that I have been generalizing from a small number of data points. OTOH, experience may differ depending on whether you are part of the group that attends meetups or not. But I'm inclined to believe that the groups from my earlier experience were simply too small.
192: As best I can tell, the conversion takes place via a currency exchange -- L$ US$. Therefore, the RL value of your on-line currency depends upon the fluctuations of their currency exchange. Here's the summary of yesterday's trading on the exchange:
Daily Summary
Last Close Date 2006-11-30
Best buying rate: L$269 / US$1.00
Best selling rate: L$278 / US$1.00
Last trade: L$269 / US$1.00
Last close: L$270 / US$1.00
Change: -L$1 / US$1.00
Today's volume: L$10,611,480
Today's open: L$280 / US$1.00
Today's high: L$280 / US$1.00
Today's low: L$269 / US$1.00
Today's average: L$272.4574 / US$1.00
Don't ask me what any of that actually means...
Here's the link to the currency exchange info page:
http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-market.php
Whee!
I think too much focus on meetups is probably a bad thing for an online anything, because it raises barriers to entry. As a purely virtual blog/comments section, this place is open to (and interesting to) anyone who's entertained by it, and (if they want to delurk) anyone who thinks they can be entertaining in return. When too large a percentage of the discussion is about the RL friendships between the commenters, new people are both going to be bored and will feel like intruders, which is kind of a shame.
Oh I see -- so you convert your game money to real money by selling it to other players. That's way less insane than the company buying it back.
selling it to other players
And, I bet the exchange (i.e. the company) takes a cut, too.
and (if they want to delurk) anyone who thinks they can be entertaining in return
Whoa! When did that become the standard? Obviously sometime after I got here. And I'm damn glad I was grandfathered in under the old open admissions policy, or I'd have ceratinly failed this test long ago.
Brock and soub miss that LB was using "entertaining" in its au courant sense of "tiresome".
Actually, Brock, you've avoided the 'I'm afraid you're simply too dull to comment here. Please stop.' email only by your tricky refusal to post an email address. We figured we wouldn't humiliate you by saying it publicly, but if you're going to force my hand...
She clearly said "anyone who thinks they can be entertaining", not "anyone who can demonstrate to us that they are entertaining".
The ironic thing is that a pretty low percentage of commenters here would probably consider themselves "entertaining", at least compared to other online communities.
205- what? this is unbelievable. how could you not tell me? i could have taken plan b this morning instead of having to run all the way to cvs sobbing.
Also, w-lfs-n has my email address.
206- yes but I don't think I can be entertaining, which was my point.
Actually, I occassionally entertain myself -- does that count? I'm just not sure I do anything for anyone else. But no one said anything about that being necessary, so maybe I'm in the clear after all.
I presume you have no difficulty taking me seriously, then.
My answer will be delivered in the form of Morse Code broadcast using a clown horn. HONKA HONKA!
using a clown horn
Hey, you trying to muscle in on my turf? Step back, Robust, step back.
196: I may well be wrong, and have nothing invested in being right on that score. My experience has been that the soul of an online community dies when it stops doing its thing, whatever that is, in order to focus on getting the place ready for the rest of the world to arrive. I summarize that as self-importance.
Now, LB makes an excellent point: geography is a barrier, this is kind of the whole deal of online communities in a lot of ways, and when an online community recreates that barrier rather than knocking it down, the meetup can be death. I doubt that's going to happen to Unfogged anytime soon, though, unless for the first two weeks of '07 every thread is OMG that thing you said was teh LAWLZ, which I really don't think would happen. On Lambda, for instance, I would argue that MOObashes were one of the things that kept Lambda going beyond its expected shelf-life.
210: I think it's wise never to cross a clown - especially one wielding knock-out gas - and thus will modify my medium.
