My Cyborg Identity
OK, if you weren’t already convinced that I am a bit of a dork, here is the proof: I was browsing someone’s site and I found a site for a cyborg name decoder. I typed my AIM username, PaleFire, and here is what came up:
I have to admit, I’m pretty hot as a cyborg. I’d date myself…
End of Internet
Click here to go to the end of internet. Not very bright, are you?
Platform versus World
There has been an ongoing discussing on blogs whether Second Life is a platform or a world. I am not sure why we have to choose one over the other. Frankly, I think SL is both a platform and a world and I think it hinges upon the difference between the concepts work and text, as defined by Anna Gunder, a textual critic. This would probably make more sense to textual critics, but let me explain:
Understanding the reader’s actions within a
particular text to be most relevant in defining how text and work interact,
Gunder explains in “Forming the Text, Performing the Work,” that works are
performed as texts; in other words, to perform a work is to form a text. For
Gunder, performing the work is “to decide what the text will consists of, how
the text will be stored and presented and how it will be structured and navigated”
(Gunder “Forming the Text, Performing the Work”).
Besides being performed by the author, some works require their reader/user to
assist in its being performed. In videogames and hypertexts, for example, work
cannot be experienced until the user performs certain tasks. Therefore, her
understanding of the terms work and text are influenced by the reader’s actions
within a particular text.
Taking this model as the basis of my analysis, I
argue that Second Life as an
electronic work is the raw platform provided by Linden Lab which comprises
networked servers that constitute what is known as the grid. The platform of Second Life
provides the user with an array of tools that allow her to
perform certain activities that help build the world. Her choice of mobilizing
these tools determines her activities in and performance of Second Life, which ultimately results in the formation of disparate texts that tell various stories.
So Second Life as a work is the platform itself, and the texts that are created by its users constitute the world that is being built. If this makes any sense. I probably will have to massage it more in my chapter. Could be an interesting footnote if you ask me…
Ain’t Google grand!!!
I was working today and what do you know… I get an IM from Grimmy saying: "In short: Thanks"! I recognized the name, but didn’t register that Grimmy had found me. Those who have been reading my blog, know that he is one of the early griefers of Second Life and I am quite affectionate of the man (though I never met him until now). And I never thought I would be able to chat with him as he left the game loooong time ago. One of the beta-testers of Second Life if you will. Read my post about him here. He predates me about several years, but his avatar looks cool, and I don’t know, I guess I love the idea behind the man. And he lasted in the game about three days and seems to have had a bigger impact in that short period of time. So, him IMing me out of the blue was like meeting Santa Claus himself, and I am not even Christian, nor have I been a good girl, I can tell you that much. I guess he googled his name and up came my blog, so what the hell, he decided to IM me. I think I probably will be the only person who will have talked to Grimmy and one of the few who even know his name. Such a shame, he seems to be a character.
I already have my case studies in place and one of my Second Life chapters is already finished, but it was pretty cool chatting with him. He reassured me that the ideal behind griefing hasn’t changed one iota. Why-oh-why would you even take a game so damn seriously? The campaign to bring him back was mostly done by him. I was under the impression that his friends were his ardent defenders, but no. It was all him, which makes it an even more interesting story, if you ask me. But what most interested me was his compassion for people. Like Masa, the leader of W-Hat, he is able to pull pranks and still be compassionate about his victims. He is truly emphatic for one of the people on his "Wanted" list. I guess he died recently recently and was discovered three months later after his body was devoured by his cats. Sounded like an end fitting for Prokofovy Neva to me. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him pass away the same way.
Interestingly enough, he now likes to be called "A notorious retired griefer now living in the
suburbs as an upstanding citizen who loves puppies." He does not engage in much online activity nowadays. I guess he has been naturalized like the rest of us. Life has a way of getting to all of us, I assume. All I will say is that, Grimmy, if you’re reading this, you made my day. Cheers…
The Best Date Ever
I was walking around in Baku today, suddenly I saw a green light around me and started getting pulled upwards. And I heard: MARS NEEDS WOMEN. Suspecting that i was getting griefed, I tried to pry away from whatever was pulling me for a bit, realizing that this was going to make no difference. So why not enjoy it at least. To my delight, I realized that I was being pulled by a UFO built by some goons. I was being abducted! I thought this was the coolest thing that happened to me tonight. Apparently a couple of goons used their programming skills to abduct residents off the ground. At some point, we were flying upside down and shooting the ground. I have to say, best date ever. Here are some pictures of my abduction:
Another Interview
As I was explaining what my dissertation was about to my Film and Literature class, one of my students said a friend of his griefs in Second Life. Imagine my delight in the situation, but of course, IRB gave me permission to conduct my research under the premise that I would not know or reveal the real life identities, even if I knew of my subjects, so I didn’t ask who it was or insist that he contact me. But he did, yesterday… His e-mail was well-versed, quite unexpected from a regular goon. He was able to formulate complex sentences without using the words "b/tard" or "lol." So I knew from the start that i wasn’t dealing with a regular goon. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t been in the group all that long, but he had good insight into their activities. He calls himself a freelancer and is pretty much outside the "stars" of the group (which is just as well, as i was able to have a serious conversation for once). Normally, goons give me a first interview in which where they reveal nothing interesting and plunge into a constant joke-like state (which they call "spinning the researcher"), then they contact me under some such pretext and really provide interesting information about their group. And both interviews are pretty remarkable, if you ask me. But this one was a bit different. He wasn’t using the usual jargon, he was genuinely interested in helping me out for a change, and he told me interesting stories. When I asked him the nature of the raids that he engages in, he said what I already knew, but in an eloquent fashion (again, unexpected of most goons): "Often times,
myself and a few others, both conscripted from Baku and my usual friends who I sign on with,
will pick a particularly strange or noteworthy site on Second Life.
Examples include (but are not limited to): Gorean sims, Furry "Yiff"
Clubs, John Edwards/Barack Obama Second Life HQs, Starfleet Sims, Ageplay sims,
and other bizarre cultural or sub-cultural outposts that have cropped up, where
the creators and typical users are very serious about what they do." Seriousness about the game is what is generally under attack. If you take Second Life seriously, you are doomed to get griefed, no two ways about it. He adds "we’ll improvise something ridiculous, usually based on the setting, to
satirize their efforts and make them realize how tenuous their assumptions
about the Internet are." He also told me one of his stories that took place in one of those ageplay sims. I almost fell of my chair reading it in Soma. Apparently, some goons go to the ageplay sims to grief, looking like sexually charged children. He once went looking like one of these precocious children and when the owner of the land was having him bounce on his lap, he suddenly transformed into a giant zebra and ruined whatever "perverted fantasy" he was engaging in. Now, who can blame him for doing that? Either way, I had a sudden vision of him as a little boy turning into a zebra as the guy was sexually aroused… What can I say, gotta love the social engineering of it.
Tags of Narrative
I am participating on the Tags of Narrative project that I posted a while back. The researcher who is heading the project is sending me ten links to tag each week in del.icio.us and I am tagging them according to their content. To tell you the truth, I am more interested in reading about the results than participating in the project itself, but no matter. I am sure I’ll get to read what comes out of it. A very curious project if you ask me. But as I look through the links, I realize that some are pretty interesting and useful for me after all. These are sites that I never would have found out about had I not participated in this project. For instance, in a hacker site called kuro5hin I found some rules for engagement for IRC. Pretty funny and practical if you ask me. Provides an insight to digital culture on some levels. Some are common sense which you might not have notices unless you use IRC regularly:
- Don’t repeat yourself. We heard you the first time.
- Don’t ask to ask a question. Just ask the question.
- Set autoaway off. We don’t care that you’ve been idle for 5 minutes.
- Set autorejoin off. Coming back immediately angers the /kicker and usually leads to a /ban
- Do
NOT use bold colons, mIRC colours, blinky text, or ANSI codes. They
mess up many peoples screens, and are generally abused. Some bold or
colours are apropos to some situations. - Do NOT automessage anyone. You will be lynched.
- Put an idiot on /ignore as soon as you discern he is an idiot.
- Say nothing to an idiot, or about an idiot in his presence. It only gives the idiot attention.
- Someone who is ignorant, but pretends to have knowledge, is probably an idiot.
- Don’t ask a question you haven’t researched first.
- Don’t try to whine, beg, or guilt trip.
- Don’t IRC as root. Every IRC client has exploitable holes, including yours.
- Don’t initiate file transfers without the other user’s consent.
- Not a rule, but a good guideline: try to phrase questions so they can be answered in as few words as possible.
Touchdown!!!
I want to scream!!! Just came out of my dissertation group meeting and it is a fuckin pass. Minor revisions are needed (no surprises there), but all the responses I got were good. This is the first positive feedback I got in a year and a half. Now onto the second Second Life chapter…
Jale Parla
As I was killing time tonight in front of my laptop (not that I lack stuff to do, but I just felt like wasting time), I had this sudden idea of looking for old friends and acquaintances from Turkey. So I looked at who I recognized from the Facebook group of Bogazici University. Unfortunately, I only know two out of 550 people. Then I googled a professor of mine from Bogazici, Jale Parla, who had influenced my education in more ways than one. She is a Harvard graduate. The reason why I am working on narratology is because of her (and Sibel Irzik, another professor who was at Bogazici at the time). I can never forget the novel classes i took with her, a truly outstanding professor, scholar, a real human being. I saw that she now has her own Wikipedia entry, though in the Turkish version. What can I say, all of a sudden, I went back in time fifteen years and remembered our class on Don Quixote. What an outstanding teacher can you be to influence someone’s life for decades. I am truly lucky to be one of her students.
