Daily Archives: June 20, 2003

FOTD2: Friendster of the day

Tonight, i figured out the significance of the cute (straight) woman who asked me to be her Friendster. Normally, i get Friendster requests from men who write me and then ask to be my Friendster (via message); i ignore them. Before you had to be connected to someone to ask to be their Friendster, i’d get requests from fake characters (like SARS). But this one stumped me. She was connected to my friends but i didn’t recognize her. She didn’t message me, just asked to be my Friendster outright. I messaged my friends to ask who she was, but they never responded. It all felt odd.

Well, it *is* odd. She isn’t real. She was the figment of my friends’ imagination… a hot girl they created to give them glowing testimonials and to suggest matches between them and other hot girls on the system (because it is less sketchy to have a hot girl tell a stranger that you should meet her friend than for the guy to just outright ask).

Of course, since they gave her sexual characteristics on her profile, she’s getting some of the most bizarre emails from people in her network – sexual fantasies, descriptions, etc. The guys who created her are dumbfounded.

It makes me wonder how many fake characters are out there really passing to be real. The lessons from MUD/MOO days are returning…. It makes me think of Van Gelder’s “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover” where a male psychologist performed a disabled female woman online..

law students for choice

I’m terrified by the current state of political affairs. What worries me more than the obvious game happening in Washington is what is coming down the line at the lower levels. Thus, i’m ecstatic to help those who are trying to make changes that are focused on the long term goals.

A few months back, two of the smartest people i know started a non-profit to address the emerging risk of losing the legal issues surrounding a women’s right to choose. They realize that the federal judicial system is run by a lot of anti-choice, anti-women judges and that up-and-coming lawyers are not trained to actively challenge the laws that are being generated. [They realize this in part because one of them completed her law degree without ever being able to address women’s issues in law.] Thus, they created Law Students for Choice to educate and motivate smart future lawyers to conscientiously learn how to challenge the legal system in this arena.

I love that my friends are starting to build their own non-profit start-ups and use their post-collegiate political energy to generate a coherent national agenda. This gives me hope.