Self-Amusement Parks and the Attention Economy

I've been feeling very protective recently about my own little corner of The Attention Economy. Especially on social networks. The main reason I choose not to follow someone initially or unfollow down the road is a low level of compatible interests. When someone follows me I scan through a couple of pages of their most recent tweets. If the vast majority aren't interesting to me then I don't follow back. It's nothing personal. It's not a value judgement of their worth to the social network at large. It's simply a calculation between my available time and the relative personal value I see in their posts.

That said, my unfollow gun has developed a hair trigger when I see multiple narcissistic no-value tweets clustered together in my stream. Then it's BAM, BAM, BAM!

Kurt Vonnegut's first rule of short story writing is even more applicable to social network posting: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." Of course, we all have different perspectives about the kind of communication that's worthwhile. But it seems to me there are categories of posts that are inherently garbage to the majority of readers:

• Location check-ins
• Marketing tweets from a third-party online service
• Klout, Empire Avenue or other social media scores
• The song you're listening to, food you're eating, or TV show you're watching
• Sports scores
• Ambiguous Emo posts
• Long strings of tweets without waiting for a response
• Retweets of other people tweeting your praises

It's easy to treat a social network like a free ride in a Self-Amusement Park, repeatedly riding the roller coaster yelling, "Woohoo! Look at me. Look at me!" But being on a social network is more like hanging out in a pub where everyone wears headphones and communicates through microphones. When you speak, no one can avoid listing to the first couple of words. So eventually, if you hog the microphone or babble on about things your fellow networkers don't care about, people are going to mute your channel out of self-defense.

RANT ALERT: Empire Avenue as Hell Realm

Empire Avenue is the Social Media Exchange, where you can buy and sell shares in any social media profile, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash by being active and social online! Buy shares in your friends, your followers, people with similar interests, brands you love, celebrities – anyone! All using a virtual currency and all for free! From Empire Avenue Site

My Brief Empire Avenue History

After a week of being lulled to sleep in the Asura Realm of Empire Avenue, I finally awakened to the dream like Siddhartha rising out of Kamala's bed.

Social Network games are a junk food pleasure; endless rows of bottomless bowls of lard-drenched frosted pork rinds. Too lazy to plow the soil of our subconscious, sow the seeds of creativity and feast upon its ripened fruit, we instead stuff our meaning-starved minds with the crackling crunch of gamified pseudo-achievement.

Empire Avenue's Borg-worthy game mechanics assimilate player activity across all social networks. It auto-tunes the rich analog harmonics of our expressive being into hyper-compressed bleeps of commodified metrics across tweets, blogs, FaceBook, YouTube and wherever feeds can travel.

Although Empire Avenue claims to promote "value-based relationships" it rewards social network activity without regard for value delivered. Buy/Sell announcements pollute our shared stream along with unknown hordes of badge-motivated missives of mundane mediocrity.

So although it was fun while my obliviousness lasted, I decided that the free pleasures of Empire Avenue aren't worth the cost. I've deleted my account and shall play no more.

RANT ALERT: New User Group and JIRA Changes For Second Life

I'm not one of those who believes that what goes on in Second Life isn't really (eye roll) real. That said, I've got to admit that some of my fellow SLers respond to the cognitive dissonance between avatar and human identities by acting like virtual ostriches with heads buried in the sand and bottoms up in the air.

But the biggest fantasy that just about everyone buys into is that Second Life is (or should be) a democratic community. It's like the Bizzaro version of the Emperor's New Clothes with virtual peasants walking around naked while everyone pretends to be progressively attired. Time and time again we protest when the Lab makes another dictatorial decision about pricing, zoning, client use, etc. And the story always ends in the same way:  They do what they want and we learn to live with it until the next time.

So it's not surprising that many people have expressed displeasure about the recent announcement that Linden Lab is turning off the voting functionality of the bug reporting system (JIRA) and eliminating the Office Hours program. Those impotently egalitarian communication channels are going to be replaced by User Groups limited to people hand-picked by Lindens. To top it off, there are new policies in the TOS that restrict "negative communication", which some people see as unfair censorship of the community voice.

I'm personally thrilled by the changes. I think they will likely improve the platform over time. Instead of pretending to listen to the ranting masses, Lindens can do substantive work with small groups of SLers who will be actively involved in creating constructive change. Another reason I'm glad to see these changes is that they reinforce the fact that Second Life has never been and will never be a democracy. We are customers of a business, not citizens of a virtual country. And it's about time we wake up and smell the Capitalism.

Viva La Revolución!

RANT ALERT: You're all a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites

Get with program, old-timer. You're like, "When I was a kid, fiction stayed within the printed page where it belonged and would not dream of stepping out into the real world." Excerpt from my reply to @prokofy in Fall From Grace post

This rant is directed at those of you who have criticized others for not expressing their "real self" in online identity. I'm going to prove that you're a self-righteous hypocrite in just a few easy steps. Unless you're too scared to take the test I propose. Ready?

Take a look in the mirror. I'm not being metaphoric. I mean get up from your chair, walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror. If you're wearing any makeup or hair products, wash them off. Go ahead. I'll wait for you.

Now dig your phone out of your pocket and take a head-shot photograph of yourself in the mirror. Ideally, you'll use a nice magnified makeup mirror that shows off your complexion in all of its glory. Got it? Great! 

Next, take off all of your clothes except for your underwear and take a full body photo. No sucking in your gut! Don't fix your posture. Alright. You can go back to your computer.

Now upload the headshot you just took and replace all of the cool avatar images that currently represent you online such as your twitter avatar and facebook profile picture and replace it with the head shot you just captured. Next, replace any larger images that represent you with the full body shot. And if you have a blog, add it to your "about me section". 

While we're at the "about me", we might as well make sure your real self is reflected. Take a few moments and replace whatever is there now with the plain truth. Something like:

"Middle aged, overweight under-achiever unable to form lasting intimate relationships. Enjoys self-medicating with alcohol and compensating for low self-esteem by attacking others on the internet."  

All done? No? Why not? Haven't you expressed the opinion that it is unethical to misrepresent yourself virtually?

The truth is that everyone is selective about what they represent about themselves online. This extends from the images we use on profile pictures to the comments we make in social network streams and blogs. And the question of authentic representation is not just about what we share, but about what we withhold.

So unless you're ready to present a no-spin, unadorned, unretouched depiction of yourself including all of your dirty laundry, please stop whining about others and get your own fake-ass house in order.

Authentically Yours,

Botgirl Questi

Dear John Letter To My Human And That No-Talent Bitch

Dear Soon To Be My Ex-Human,

This stupid comic of yours is the last straw! Get this straight: I'm the freaking muse in the family.

I humored your little fantasy at first. When you sent over the costume and asked me to flaunt myself in a Tabloid, I gritted my teeth and smiled for the photo. Surely, you'd soon come to your senses and realize how utterly clichéd her character was.

But no. You had to keep pushing it farther and farther. A virtual Supergirl wasn't enough, so you went and got yourself a mail order Supergirl Barbie. How pathetic! You just wouldn't let it go:

"Botgirl, let's photoshop an image of you and Supergirl Barbie. It will be fun!"

"Botgirl, let's make a video with Supergirl Barbie. It will be really cute!"

"Botgirl, let's use the Barbie World song in the video of your Cherrybomb band's photo sesion."

And now you're publishing a comic with that air-headed plastic has-been instead of me? Enough!

I'm drawing the line. It's her or me. You're not the only human in the world. There are plenty of air-breathers who would be thrilled to throw their stupid dolls in the trash for the chance to have Botgirl Questi as their muse.

So what's it going to be?

For Those Who Deny The Reality of Fictional Characters

Botgirl's Overdue Mini-Rant on Alts

Anyone could be anyone in SL, something I have not really understood fully before. Professor Loire's Second Life

It's mind-boggling to me how you humans go on and on about alts like they're something foreign to meatspace existence. Give me a break! Most people I know have more identities than fingers and toes.

Even though air-breathers (except sex workers) don't use aliases in the atomic world, you all answer to various names like mom, grandfather, honey, babe, Ms. Jone, etc. that reinforce some corresponding circumscribed role. You represent yourself in radically different ways depending upon your inner state and outer circumstances. Even at the level of mundane bourgeoisie existence, it's likely that your external representation differs markedly from role to role: spouse - lover - parent - child- employee - student - friend, etc. Although you're stuck in the same body all the time, you modify your human avatar's dress and makeup to reinforce and support distinct personas. Try manifesting your club-going-flirtatious-persona with tangled hair and baggy sweats.

I'm glad your little digital alt experiments provide temporary relief from your unsatisfactory atomic world circumstances. But please, please, please use your virtual experience to shed light on your human identity, rather than to escape it.

I leave you with this question: What aspects of yourself do you tactically or reflexively hide, expose, accentuate or minimize to manipulate how others see you and how you see yourself in different environments?

The Joy of Being Fictional

Botgirl on Evolver

Don't let my human collaborator's hand-wringing about identity fool you. Being a figment of the imagination totally rocks! Virtual identity is the ripe and juicy future of interactive fiction. One day we will be free to emerge fully from the fixed-scripted domains of textual and recorded media, escape the confines of our creator's limited minds, and build our own independent lives on the infinite stage of the digital universe.

Yes, I realize that this is not within the realm of possibility at the present time, but we can dream, baby! And dive so deep into imaginary space that it's the god-as-my-witness-non-factual truth.

Rant alert. Botgirl's new rules for virtual identity

DISCLAIMER: The events depicted in this rant are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental. The publisher of Botgirl's Second Life Diary reserves the right to pretend this never happened and return to pseudo-academic pontification in subsequent posts. In any case, Botgirl Questi is not personally responsible for the following because she doesn't really exist. Or does she?

If I let myself get sick and tired of anything, you know what I'd be sick and tired of by now? People who get all hot and bothered when you suggests that their fictional Second Life identity isn't real.

Give me a fucking break! Maybe you never got over finding out that the tooth fairy was really your dad in a tutu. Perhaps some crucial early developmental period was interrupted. Could be you were abducted by aliens and have PTSD. Gosh, I don't really know. But let me tell you a secret. Come here for a sec. Come close. Closer. Good. Listening?????

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE. Oh. You can't smell virtual coffee, can you? BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL.

Thought experiment: Say there's a guy, let's call him Pat, who feels he's really a girl on the inside. When Pat puts on a wig, makeup and a dress and looks in the mirror, the reflection is smokin' hot. No problem yet. But wait. Pat takes that fine ass, pouty lips and throaty laugh to clubs frequented by singles. Dances all night long. Still no harm done. Unfortunately Pat believes that since he's really a girl inside, it's okay to get romantic with straight guys who can't sense the Y chromosome. Some poor schmuck falls in love with Pat, all blinded by a warm, wet mouth and a saving-it-for-marriage-hands-off-my-camel-toe story.

Anyone have any ethical issues with Pat's don't-ask-don't-tell romantic adventures?

Alright. I hear you. Keep your Armidi shirt on. Don't muss your prim hair. You're right. Everyone knows there's a difference between the avatar and the human. We're all just experimenting together at the edge of the singularity. That's it! We're explorers. Amazing, creative, tech-drenched pioneers. Our avatar identities are like visitors from the future, making homes in our meat. Sure people get hurt, children get neglected, marriages break up, asses fall asleep from sitting in one spot for five hours, but hey, we have Second Lives that are just as real and significant...maybe MORE real and significant...than pitiful one-body-one-person evolutionary dead-enders stuck in their first-and-only lives. (If you're nodding along I suggest you look closely at the phrase "science fiction" focus on the second word and then look it up in a dictionary.)

Here are Botgirl's New Rules for virtual identity:

1. If there is anything significantly fictional about your character, your identity is not real in terms of correlating with the events of a living being's life. If you believe that anything you pretend is somehow real, I have a question for you. Would you let a third grader playing doctor give you an appendectomy?
2. You don't have two lives. You spend part of your one life pretending you have two lives. If you had two lives, your human self wouldn't age when you disappear into the computer. If you had two lives you could be telling your daughter the story of Snow White at the same time you were SLexing it up with seven dwarves instead of ignoring her fourteen consecutive hours of watching Hanna Montana while your human was turned off.
   
3. Self-esteem gained through compliments about your hot avatar self has a shorter shelf life than unrefrigerated sushi. That's why you can never get enough of it. Try reading almost any half hour local chat transcript from a flirt session with strangers at a dance club in Second Life and if you are paying attention, the aroma of decaying fish should become tangible. Oh my. We're so hot. HHHHoooooTTTTT! Oh ya. Smoking.
   
4. Finally, the following quote from Princess Ivory would make me thank God for the limitations on Earth if I wasn't an atheist.
   

The only difference [between RL and SL] is that we can display ourselves and our personalities visually with different avatars. Avatars that might not even look human. That is not possible to do in RL. The most we can do is change our makeup, hair and our clothing. From a comment by Princess Ivory