Once again today, i read about someone’s concern about the fake characters on Friendster. Of course, the creator despises these fake characters. Although i’ve never created them, i find them utterly fascinating. Given my appreciation of Morningstar & Farmer’s paper on why it is necessary to pay attention to what users do not what designers want them to, i’m also fascinated by the uproar over what the users have chosen to do.
People create fake characters to show their allegience to a certain element of culture. When Burning Man existed, people showed that he represented their interests. No one is going to make friends with LSD or Ecstasy if they are anti-drugs, because one’s appreciation of that type of humor requires an appreciation of the culture embedded in it. Conversely, when one makes friends with God on Friendster, one is probably not Christian.
Characters are just another way that people game Friendster, indicating that its primary purpose is not dating for most people. It is a fun experiment in social behavior and identity development/manipulation. People want to see who all they can access; they want to see their numbers grow (even if those numbers are utterly meaningless); they want Friendster to be fun fun fun.
Of course, this begs the question: can it be both fun and meaningful?
OOOOOOO……fake identities……Yes!!!!
What about those fake identities that are not “joke identities” and identifyable as such? If people add joke IDs to their networks without knowing who the other actually is, how would one stop fantasy idenities that don’t stand out as well as the joke identities do from seeping into the network of ones friends?
Cannot get over the feeling that the system might be even now cluttered with such fantasy identities.
Besides fun and dating, the creation of alternate identities is in itself a big need satisfied by Online Networks, though none of them would bother to aknowledge this or create features to cater to it.
Play is a natural impulse and a huge part of social interaction. It makes me a little mad when I hear that people want to constrain natural interaction to whatever is in their design spec — it smacks of clueless engineers, not perceptive facilitators. Friendster and its ilk should be reflective, not proscriptive, of what the users seek to create.
Besides, if the Kim Jong Il livejournal went away, I would cry.
it was lame to watch the friendster borg attempt to myopically rein in- or rain on- the fun people are having with the avatar characters.
sometimes technology is best- or at least its most magical- when unintended uses occur. i like to explain this with a musical instrument metaphor: roland corporation made this electronic bass guitar-emulator instrument in the 80s called the 303 that was a commercial disaster and quickly discontinued. later, as these things hit the pawn shops, it was discovered that these wild filter sweeps it could do sounded killer on e through a huge sound system; people were having out of body experiences to the soundtrack of these squelchy blips and the little units suddenly were worth $1,000 used.
here’s an example about finding a solution to an unintended audience use of a public space. a friend of mine has a gallery in manhattan and a couple of years ago he was complaining how he always had to paint over his outside rollup door because of the kids in the hood always tagging it and spraying murals. i convinced him to let me tag it myself- i was doing a show there- and since then he’s incorporated it into the curatorial agenda of his space: artists in the shows there now want to do the roll up door too. instead of a gray door with sporadic tags by random kids, he’s got a morphing mural done by artists that easily absorbs the stray marker pen tags that still persist. he was able to find harmony with an external input situation he wasn’t able to control. he became one with it and solved his problem.
further, so much of our media is show biz facade anyway: the dialog over what is real or imagined experience in a culture of media saturation was already in full swing well before most of us were even born. if our news is fake propaganda, sporting events are pro wrestling at every level, models are airbrushed and photoshopped to a higher level and so on, why wouldn’t we expect to communicate in ways that leave reality farther and farther behind?
more communication is generally better than less communication. more is more. less is less.
I love the fake characters on Friendster. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in many months after finding White Trash (http://www.knowitallgirl.com/archives/000382.html) — whoever did it is well-versed in the white trashiness of Southern California, my home territory. Some of them were incredibly brilliant.
That being said, if these guys start thinking beyond their next round of VC funding they’d realize that attempting to incorporate an element of play into the community would make it a more attractive tool (truly, what is going to keep anyone there for the long term once the novelty has worn thin?). Appealing to the larger audience beyond teenagers and gaming freaks with avatars and the like has potential. We (I’m a slave at Yahoo!) are rolling out avatars in Korea with good success, but it’s completely cookie-cutter and not super compelling (IMHO). The Friendster freaks are more creative than average, but it definitely illustrates how people can *break* systems and reveal new possibilities.
Are fake identities or fantasy identities bad? What about play? Personally, i agree with Jen – i think that they are utterly fascinating and say something interesting about the culture we live in.
Are fake identities or fantasy identities bad?
It’s pretty hard to define what real and fake is, even in real life, let alone in the limits of cyberspace. plenty of people lie or misrepresent themselves in person; beyond the value judgements, it simply is a part of human nature and accepting that probability makes some sense, regardless of your own ethics. fantasy is great, not bad at all; the bay area as a region is loaded with some really interesting folks who build up some super neato fantasy alter egos. everyone should always have the ability to express whatever parts of themselves they so choose.
play is always good. not being able to play is bad.
Are fake or fantasy IDs bad?
No.
Are they an enduring appeal of online social networks?
YES.
Are online social network platform providers listening?
Not so far, lets mount a daring raid on em and get them to do something bout it.