{"id":616,"date":"2003-06-16T23:56:35","date_gmt":"2003-06-16T23:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubuntu.my\/wp30\/archives\/2003\/06\/16\/fake_characters_friendster.html"},"modified":"2003-06-16T23:56:35","modified_gmt":"2003-06-16T23:56:35","slug":"fake_characters_friendster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/archives\/2003\/06\/16\/fake_characters_friendster.html","title":{"rendered":"fake characters &#038; friendster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once again today, i read about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lokislabs.org\/~loki\/weblog\/archives\/2003\/06\/12\/friendster_and_digital_identity.php\">someone&#8217;s concern about the fake characters<\/a> on Friendster.  Of course, the creator despises these fake characters.  Although i&#8217;ve never created them, i find them utterly fascinating.  Given my appreciation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scara.com\/~ole\/literatur\/LessonsOfHabitat.html\">Morningstar &#038; Farmer&#8217;s paper<\/a> on why it is necessary to pay attention to what users do not what designers want them to, i&#8217;m also fascinated by the uproar over what the users have chosen to do.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this begs the question: can it be both fun and meaningful?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once again today, i read about someone&#8217;s concern about the fake characters on Friendster. Of course, the creator despises these fake characters. Although i&#8217;ve never created them, i find them utterly fascinating. Given my appreciation of Morningstar &#038; Farmer&#8217;s paper on why it is necessary to pay attention to what users do not what designers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friendster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}