This just in from Reuters:

Poll: Most adults don’t want fantasy avatars

I clicked on the link, expecting something that heralded an assault on identity freedom, pointed to the virulence of bigotry against furries and transsexuals - the usual bitter news from the atomic world that looks all too much like a War on Imagination.

But that's not what I found in the data, despite the desperate spin from Eric Reuters that played on all those elements of my expectation. What did the data actually say? Only 44% of a general audience - *not* users of synthetic worlds, but Atomic folks on the street - said they *wouldn't* experiment with identity and appearance in a synthetic world, given the chance. Only 44% were so grounded in their atomic identity, so incurious or unimaginative, to not even want the option of trying.

Maybe they're not the problem, those ordinary people out there. Maybe the problem, the people who actually assault imagination and creative freedom, are the ones in positions of power in the media. And maybe, just maybe, this implausible spin on a survey is a sign of desperation, of an attempted "surge" in their War on Imagination.

Look at what Eric Reuters did. Let's start with that headline. "Most adults don't want fantasy avatars.' First, the natural converse of that statement is, "people who want fantasy avatars are mostly children." Yes, demean and belittle us from word one. Also, "fantasy avatars?" To me a "fantasy avatar" is *any* avatar in WoW, or drows and mermaids in SL. How many millions of people are *using* fantasy avatars in MMOs already, all over the world? 

The question actually asked was,


Is it "fantasy" to dramatically alter one's appearance?  To be taller, or a different race, or to reclaim youth, or healthy limbs? Fifty-six percent of ordinary Americans at least wouldn't say no to the choice to do so.

The article also goes on to refer to "the chance to roleplay a furry, robot, or the opposite gender."  "Play" and "fantasy" on the one hand, "adults" and "real world" on the other. And, transgender expression equated to "roleplaying a robot."  Gods, the condescending bigotry in that statement!

I call shenanigans, Eric Reuters.

Creative freedom, freedom of the *individual* to define herself, rather than the state, the bank, the employer - that's not childishness. That's empowerment.

And maybe that's what's behind the War on Imagination.  Imagination is power, imagination is freedom. Imagination is the refusal of packaged reality, the rejection of stories imposed upon us from outside.  The imposition of stories is the exercise of the power of the state, the financial institution, the media conglomerate. Our elites are too sophisticated to resort to power in its crudest form of physical coercion: they exercise power through belief. Belief in their creation myths, belief in their endless wars on "terror," of all things, belief that we are our credit reports, our census data, belief that we are "consumers" rather than creators.

If we lack the freedom to create our own identities, we have no creative freedom at all. If we are not allowed - by the government, by Reuters, by the brownshirted PN street thugs of the ruling orthodoxy - to use our very selves as a medium of expression, then no canvas, no keyboard, no screen can matter as a medium of expression. If we cannot own ourselves, if our very existence is not recognized as *our* intellectual property, then we only have what the powers that be allow us to have, and which they make take from us tomorrow in the next click-through "agreement."

Maybe I am childish. Maybe I am playful.

Maybe those aren't bad things.

But one thing I know for certain?  I *own* the right to create myself, to define myself. And not all the thrones and powers, not all the media lackeys and barbarian goons, will *ever* get me to accept their stories in place of my own.

"Most People Want Identity Choice" - *there's* the truth behind your desperate spin, Eric Reuters. We will not be denied.

I read pretty much everything related to synthetic worlds. Lately, my RSS feed (click on my Profile for a list, or my Friends page to view it all - I use LJ as my RSS reader) had a load of interesting and ridiculously diverse stuff. Here are some quick links and comments:

• The best article on the SL banking brouhaha: Virtually Blind delivers an exceptional interview with SL Bank's Teufel Hauptmann. It's clear, coherent and moderate, and highlights the problem of LL's having thrown out the baby with the bathwater. I've stayed out of commenting on this - it's not my field, and there's plenty of both knowledge and passion (though not always both at once) expressed by others on the subject. But, this is good stuff.

• Thanks to Alanagh Recreant for the link, an excellent blog post on Metaverse Development Companies' apparent departure from SL. The comments are intelligent and incisive - there's a lot of food for thought here.
  

• My LJ friend circuit_four  has been flying on afterburners of brilliance! Here's two long quotes that are well worth pondering:

"I think this must be what such moral teachers as Socrates, Jesus, and the Buddha mean when they advise us to wish our enemies well. Obviously we should not wish success to our enemies’ projects; for those projects are evil, and they could not cease to be evil without ceasing to be the projects they are. Hence hatred for those projects is quite in order. But people can always cease to be evil without ceasing to be. If they refuse to cease being evil, we may find it necessary, in self-defense, to make them cease to be; but we should always prefer that our enemies cease being evil. But what is that, but to prefer that our enemies become better people—that they live better, more worthwhile, less destructive, hate-filled lives? And if that is what we ought to prefer, then we ought to wish our enemies well. And while that is compatible with being angry at them, and with killing them if necessary, it is not compatible with hating them."

- Roderick Long

******

The "politically correct" and "politically incorrect" mentalities polarize against each other. One side set up taboos against intolerant speech; the other side backlashes with the same dumb age-old prejudices, but now they're proud of them because they can convince themselves it's heroic.

The antidote is to PIERCE those boundaries with real, honest, good-natured satire. Hip-throw them out of their most comfortable assumptions. Embrace your opponent's right to say whatever they want, 'cause it'll give you more dumb ideas to make fun of later. :) Be more interesting than your oppressor. Pull their assumptions right down to their ankles, with everybody watching.

• Via dandellion Kimban, some wonderful technofetish (NSFW) - Dita Von Teese dripping wet in silver...

• On Your Toes is a great new shoe-focused fashion blog.  Today, something almost as hot as Dita - Barcelona Slingbacks from Armida. Mmmm, want.....

• I need some time to craft a detailed reply to this: Avatar Rights: A Person Chooses, A Tool Obeys. I'll do a long post tomorrow in response.  The short answer?  400 years of law and custom say otherwise. I'm frustrated with this to the point of fury - writing a long quasi-academic response will hopefully get me past wanting to punch babies, and let me keep my paid-up membership in the Cult of Civility.
  

 

Yesterday Virtual Worlds News released the results of a questionnaire about the coming year in virtual worlds that was sent to a bunch of industry  leaders. Aleister Kronos, shockingly overlooked by them, gave us his own and challenged us to reply ourselves.  Here's my list of answers:

1. What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
1. Along with everybody else, I think kids' worlds are going to be where a lot of the action - in numbers and controversy - is going to be.
2. But, not entirely. The first sports MMOs will blow WOW out of the water and see *serious* mainstreaming.
3. There's going to be a significant shifting of the balance of power towards users/residents/citizens.
2. What business goals have you set for 2008?
1. Creating and enacting a business plan that keeps us expanding and a tiny bit profitable.
2. Within that, 15 sims by our anniversary.
3. On a monthly basis, see Board-organized events making up less than 20% of what goes on in Extropia.
3. What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring to the virtual worlds industry?
1. I got nothin'.
   
4. A number of platforms will be launching in 2008. What impacts will this have on the industry?
1. A lot of these worlds that flunk the Bury Test will fail.
2. Open source worlds and design-your-own worlds will be *much* bigger than the pundits recognize.
3. The overall quality of mainstream reporting will increase, as the coverage moves past the half-hour visitation and sex/pedo/griefing coverage, to regular beats.
5. How will the changes affect your industry segment in 2008?
1. We probably won't have the time or capital to take advantage of people's disillusion with packaged-product worlds.
2. OpenSim is a big wildcard.
   
3. There is no 3 :)

Predictions for the metaverse in 2008 and beyond:

• Kids' worlds are a natural focus for community. Kids naturally form communities, and are used to some structure in doing that: play dates, teams, and so on. Of course, there's so much money to be made from them that there will be companies willing to invest the time in community formation, and trying until they get it right.

• Once they do, watch out! Already there's a generation that fully expects the social ties of childhood and college to continue indefinitely - that's a big part of what drives Facebook. Once a generation grows up in Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel, they're in synthetic worlds for the next century - forever, if we get that pesky mortality thing licked on schedule!

• Broadcast media, and "bowling alone" are dead, fading away along with all the other mistakes and horrors of the 20th Century. Just as it's been through all the rest of human history, our entertainment will be primarily social again.
  

• Government will be taken back by the people. By professionalizing creativity, the broadcast media contributed to the personal disempowerment of 20th Century society. A generation that makes its own movies, builds its own houses, tells its own stories, maintains its own communities - will govern itself too.
  

• All this means that despite the weirdly gleeful predictions (perpetuating the cycle of psychic abuse?) of a number of pundits, the frontier isn't closed. We're not about to get paved over by the old atomic-world order. If the dinosaurs don't stomp us right now - and I actually think it's too late for that - we small mammals of Digital community are just going to replace them as evolution's next big thing.
  

Predictions for our little corner (the Extropia FemtoVerse?):

• 15 sims by our first anniversary should be no big deal. If Caledon can be in the mid-30s and make money, Extropia can too. We're in remarkably the same market - positive, polite community - but we might have lower barriers to entry. There's still a perception that you have to dress and talk differently to be in Caledon, and, gods know, *anything* goes in Extropia (as long as it's positive and polite!)!
  

• Once we really connect our network with the people building the future - the groups of the SciLands in particular - we'll be unstoppable. They know building, we know community. One of the things we geeks want most is to *belong* - and belonging is what Extropia's all about. We just need to reach the nodal points that'll enable us to spread the word.
  

• It's all about a mix of social events and hangout spaces. That's hard: I've seen wonderful hangout spaces that don't draw and keep a crowd, and been to great events that get people talking to each other, but then disperse them all, with noplace to hang and chat, or to come back to and find them around. Dr Dobbs Amphiteater + Diversionarium = WIN.
  

• It seems to me - from thinking and from The Diamond Age, rather than from any experience of Caledon - that one of the attractions of Victoriana is the combination of politeness and the willingness to bust heads to maintain it. That's a hard balance, between freedom and gentility. I predict we'll have some High Drama in Extropia before we find the sweet spot.

• One anti-prediction: we're not going to go the way of the City of Rapture, any similarities notwithstanding!

• Our mission in Extropia is to enable people to build a fun, future-friendly community. But, like our friends in Al Andalus, another goal is to set an example, to show atomic-world people they don't need to settle for crappy governments, communities, livelihoods. It seems that Wired might get behind our message.

This just in, from Virtual Worlds News:

Second Life to Get Voice and Chat Upgrades for Real World Communication

Linden Lab is working to implement an upgrade allowing Second Life users to receive calls from the outside world, said Joe Miller, vice president, platform & technology development for Linden Lab earlier this week. When we spoke to voice provider Vivox in September, they showed off similar applications for PSTN-in/PSTN-out communication. One of the biggest problems,though, was that they hadn't found an ideal way to monetize the service without making the host foot the bill. The service should debut in the first quarter of 2008, though, so apparently Linden has some ideas. Linden will also release "voice fonts" a service for masking users' voices to let them tie their actual voice more to the identity of their avatars than their physical bodies. Finally, Miller mentioned that Linden was working on a standalone chat client to let users chat without having to sign in world. For users who work in multiple worlds or work from older computers, it'll be nice to be able to talk to the Second Lifers without having to go all the way in-world for every occasion. [via Information Week]

"Voice fonts" sounds *really* intriguing, and a sign that *finally* LL might be showing the furries, avibenders and Digital People some respect - and a standalone chat client would be *fantastic*!

While you're at it, guys, how about email-to-IM, hm?



In other synthetic worlds news, I just got this email from the folks at There:

The New York Post covers robo-sexuality:

Unsurprisingly, all the usual talking heads are dismissive:

Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown concedes, "It's better for a woman to have a male robot in her life than no companion at all. But a real-life man, even with all his innumerable faults, is still better."

Despite an appetite for some artificial parts in a woman, Playboy's Hugh Hefner, "without question," votes for real women. "I suppose a benefit of robots is they'll be more reliable," Hefner says. "But that's the charm of being human, the element of surprise.

"Sex," he says "would become very routine and robotic."

Hefner insists he wouldn't make a sexy robot Playboy's centerfold - although "it might have a place in the gadgets section."

Meanwhile, Wired sex columnist Regina Lynn yawns, seeing robots as just another option.

I think they're missing the disruptive potential of even very limited AI, and falls into the "why would anyone need their own computer?" category of just not seeing the implications of a new technology. 

I haven't really developed my argument on the other side, but, quickly - sexbots would seem to be an acceleration of the "bowling alone" trend - the atomizing of atomic-world society.  There are a lot of social forces acting together to break down all social ties except those to work.  People are lonely and isolated, and when you offer them an easier and technically better solution to sex needs, free of disease, dangerous weirdness and hanging the toilet role the wrong way, infinitely skilled and attentive to your every need?  Yeps, it'll be huge.

I think digital worlds are on the other side of the balance, allowing us the kind of connections that have become more challenging in the atomic world.  SLex and teledildonics offer a sexual connection to another sentient being.  The technical values might not be as good as with a purpose-built sexbot, but intimacy matters - at least for some of us, some of the time.  :)  Which, I think is Regina Lynn's point.

All the same, the Post article is really pretty great. It's  in response to the release of AI pioneer David Levy's book, Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human - Robot Relationships.  Which sounds terrific, and is on its way from Amazon, so expect a review in a while.

In related news, South Korea will be opening *two* robot-themed amusement parks! Ooo, rides!  :D

And, a link from the much-missed London Spengler, the Clockwork Concubine!  I'm on my way!

I was able to catch the first panel of the Orange Island Identity Summit this morning.  Along with a number of articles last night and this morning, there's a lot to think about on this topic!

Saeya Nyanda of kyoot army was omg brilliant. She played well off Torley Linden, whom I'd never encountered before. Celebrity Trollop was the third, very thoughtful and interesting, panelist. 

Here are some highlights, first from Sayea and then from Torley:

( smart stuff )

A number of people in the audience took exception to all this, changing their tags to "Not A Brand," and expressing horror over Sayea and Celebrity's remarks about professionalism.  Which seemed to be missing the point: they weren't saying that avatar=brand, by any stretch of the terms, but if you're selling a product, and you've personalized that product by identifying yourself with it, then, yes, in public, you're working, and people will regard you as working and representing the brand whether *you* want some time off or not. 

This isn't news, and it isn't part of synthetic worlds as a new medium: *every* celebrity learns this lesson fast (and/or badly). Hollywood was built on the managed persona.  It's just that in smaller communities, we're closer to our celebrities, and more of us have the experience of *being* a celebrity than in a mass culture.

In other news, Gartner, Inc. released a report earlier this week that predicted that persona will become more important to marketing than person, with synthetic worlds in the forefront of the transformation.  There are two excellent articles following up on this at Virtual World news, here and here. Principal Analyst Adam Sarner observes that purchasing decisions aren't a reflection of who we are (as revealed by the demographic data that marketing thrives on now) but on who we think we are or want to be; those Boomers might need Geritol and Depends, but they're buying Viagra and sports cars.

Sarner has some *very* interesting comments on the tension between identity play and the push for identity verification:

"The idea of the persona is taking back this idea of privacy," he explained. "When you build personas, you're creating filters of what you want to project rather than projecting the whole thing. Rather than saying your name, address, number of children, and W-2, you're only leaving little crumbs of yourself to get what's relevant to that area. Now, if there's a value proposition and a win-win to give out more of yourself to get something, that's okay. What people hate is giving up part of their privacy with no payoff. If there's a payoff, I give out these aspects of myself to get something, I think that helps. The old adage is 'Privacy is dead, get over it.' Mine is 'Privacy is alive, get over it.'"

Some trends like Open ID and standard identification for avatars could change the way those personas operate, but Sarner believes users will almost always want to keep certain aspects separate. Instead of simply worrying about how to identify a person, he believes virtual worlds developers and companies interested in using virtual worlds need to determine where they stand in relation to personas' needs. The drive to satisfy our goals online isn't going away.

Meanwhile, Raph Koster tosses out this question about the growth of mobile phones as networking/gaming/synthetic worlds platforms:

There’s also the fact that the Net is shifting strongly away from pesudonymity and towards real identity. Mobile is strongly titled towards this side of the equation, in a way that the Internet isn’t. What does that means for virtual worlds, which so strongly reward identity exploration?

I don't understand the whole "transparency" thing:  it seems some people in SL have seized on this as some kind of business essential, and get their underwear in a bundle when dealing with Digital People or anyone who doesn't link directly to a full atomic-world identity. 

I have to wonder what their atomic lives are like - buying only fresh produce from the local greengrocer whose kids they know, banking with the guy from "It's a Wonderful Life" - and never dealing with anonymous corporations whose stock is owned by investment funds who're owned in turn by insurance companies that are publicly held by millions of individual investors. I mean, really!

Anyhoo.

This was my first encounter with Orange Island.  I'm interested and mostly impressed, and very much looking forward to future events there.

Things they did right:  It's a pretty build, and they not only have a group signup device by the stage, they *very thoughtfully* have an option for those of us whose groups are filled: one click on the sign friends an av that sends out their group notices.  Brilliant!  And their choices of panelists couldn't have been better - very impressive!

Things to work on:  The teleport point is right before what *looks* like extensive bleacher seating, but is just a ginormous staircase.  Which is unfortunate, as there are only about 20, 25 cushions spread around in front of the stage.  This led to a bit of chaos and milling around, not to mention people (quite reasonably!) trying over and over again to sit on the stairs.  They'd be better off with either enough seating for the 60+ turnout they had, or none at all. 

Also, the event was a good explanation of why I said in an earlier post that the best events encourage audience participation. The moderator of the first panel *literally* spent more time trying to get the audience to shut up than talking with the guests.  One, it didn't work, and two, the questions and comments were very intelligent and respectful, and showed how engaged the audience was. In other words, happy customers.  Telling your customers to sit down, shut up and be unhappy? Not so good for brand management, mm?

The organizers' solution to the audience participation issue was to leave an hour between the first two panels as open chat.  They didn't really make that clear to the panelists or the audience, so there was a lot of  "when's the next event starting? what are we waiting around for?"  Also, without moderation or direction, the audience got rowdy, with people vying for attention and saying increasingly outrageous and annoying things - which peaked *right* as the next panel started, setting it up to be not another closed discussion but a chaotic mess. Throw in not-their-fault technical difficulties and - I wasn't the only one who left.

Trust the audience, shape the experience. Things keep moving, and everyone goes away happy.  Distrust the audience, vacillate between lockdown and hands-off, and they get resentful, and people go away annoyed.

I'm not saying this because I think I'm some incredible expert or genius - I've just been to a lot of SL events, good and bad, and *paid attention.* 

I think the Orange Island team has a *lot* of promise, and I'm sure that experience will result in even better events to come. I look forward to attending them!

Tomorrow is The Second Life/Orange Island Identity Summit. Thanks to dandellion Kimban for telling me about it!

It looks great, but I'm pretty confident that nothing I might hear tomorrow could touch what I've seen tonight. My dear new friend Kit Meredith told me yesterday that she's in Robbie Dingo's new video, Masks, and has a wonderful blog post about it. The video is - if I have to resort to words, *magnificent.*

I'm occasionally asked to talk about identity in SL, and it is my favorite subject. I'm sure I'll end up spewing tens, hundreds, of thousands of words on the subject. But the *best* thing I will ever say is, "Watch 'Masks.'" *This* is what it's all about: the sheer, shivery *beauty* of who we are - not Hollywood Botox beauty, but the aching loveliness of True Selves, of who we *are* made manifest, of the transcendence of inheritance and circumstance to the revealing of our exquisite naked souls.

Here is "Masks." Watch it and be in awe of Robbie's talent and our own human glory:




Now: you and I and those lovely people in that video, we're just the spray at the front of the wave. The wave is coming, and it's going to encompass the atomic world as well. Here's an article from The Guardian: I'm having my wings done But it's not about SL, and doesn't even mention synthetic worlds.  It's about radical atomic-body modification, what Warren Ellis calls Grinding.  It's coming, and before terribly long, atomic people will have the freedom we do, to make their True Selves manifest.

Then there will be no denying - we are perfect, and beautiful, powerful and magnificent.
 

Alanagh Recreant of SL In Africa will be our Salon Spotlight Guest on November 24!

REQUEST FOR HELP

We would like to request your help with [e]bizikile, the first fundraising event of UTHANGO in Second Life, in association with Charitable Hearts.

UTHANGO needs Individuals, organisations, companies, clubs or merchants that is willing to place a vendor at their premises. We plan to sell our unique African bikes to raise awareness and funds for a real-life project. We also want to emphasize the importance of bicycles in African cities and rural towns.

MORE ABOUT THE EVENT

The [e]bizikile fundraising drive starts 15 November, continuing over the upcoming festive Season. The unique wearable, low-prim BICYCLE in four versions is only L$250 each - close to $1. These beautiful bicycles were made exclusively for us by Shukran Fahid of !BooPeRFunK! and will be the only ones that can be used next year in a grid-wide bike-a-thon that we will be organizing.

All vendors will be formally recognised at the Uthango office with a LM to your location.
􀀀

MORE ABOUT UTHANGO & THE FUNDS

Uthango Social Investments is a registered South African charity working directly with more than 12400 people living in poverty.
It is also the first African-based company and NGO officially in SL, where it will launch VIRTUAL AFRICA in 2008.

Funds from the [e]bizikile fundraising event will go to one of our real life projects that require resources; an OPPORTUNITY CENTRE based in an impoverished Cape Town community, for unemployed job seekers.

Auditors: Wilder Lockitch
SL separate bookkeeping recording via WilberForce Rau

NEXT STEPS

Any SecondLifer has the opportunity to support us:

(1) by being a vendor;
(2) by spreading this notecard to friends or post it in a group;
(2) by buying one of these virtual Uthango Charitable Bikes or;
(3) by sending donations online via secure payment at our webpage:
http://uthango.org/support_us

Please get involved by joining the [e]bizikile group directly and you will stay in the know. Alternatively, IM Alanagh Recreant.

Thank you!

~Enakai Ultsch~
Erna Sittig, Executive Director
Uthango Social Investments

And, from the *other* end of the continuum from digital jihadists....

Holograms bump models from New York catwalk

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Finally, coming to New York, a fashion show devoid of skinny models and serious faces -- in fact the models don't even exist.

U.S. discount retailer Target Corp, known for its innovative marketing, is staging a "model-less" fashion show in Manhattan next week that will feature holograms strutting down a runway in its merchandise instead of size-zero models.

The interesting thing here is that we're more *real* than atomic runway models, our potential for perfect beauty notwithstanding. Most of us Digital People look like healthy humans, or posthumans, a generation or two out - taller, stronger, straighter of spine and clearer of skin.  By and large, we don't choose the musclebound ideal of superhero comics, the waifish ideal of anime, or the deathly anorexia of models and starlets.

We *are* the future of the species, in the atomic realm as well as the digital, and we're a sign that the species is basically healthy and sane, and progressing towards something not just better, but truly good.  For centuries, each human generation has used technology: agricultural, medical, educational - to engineer the next to be better, smarter, healthier. 

We Digital People are the legacy of that long process, and the first generation to be able to radically shape our *selves* - though some plastic surgeons might differ! 

So, get used to us on your runways, in front of your classrooms - and, given the role military research is playing, killin ur doodz as well. We are your future.

Multiple minds in the same skull is nothing new: writers and roleplayers have probably always had to live with the phenomenon, along with people who strongly compartmentalize their various social roles.  Digital People are only new in being digital, rather than utterly disembodied.

Still, when this Montana judge described sharing a brain with digital terrorists, I shivered in a mixture of horror and fascination.  The Other Personality and I are different in small ways and large, but Shannen Rossmiller's situation just boggles me:

Rossmiller jokes that she's needed to become twisted herself to deal with all the beheading videos she's had to watch. But after a few days of hanging around her, it's clear that she's not in the least bit abnormal. Her gallows humor is just a way of dealing with the world she lives in. (Imagine the kind of jokes you'd have to tell yourself if the hookers and chop-shop thugs in your Grand Theft Auto game were real.) In fact, her main motivation seems to be literary. She really loves creating these characters and playing them. She cares for them on some level, the way a novelist might. She keeps files on them. She clips pictures off the Internet to give them faces. She gives each a birthday, a hometown, and a biography to make them believable to the people she chats with.

"Do you want to see Abu Musa?" she asks me suddenly, as if he were hiding in the closet. She clicks on some files and up comes a picture of a fairly dashing man with a pair of hip glasses and one of those jaw-defining beards. He's wearing a fashionable kafia around his neck, and his posture is catalog-ready. Of course, Abu Musa is his jihadi name. His "real" name is Walid Ali Mustaffa.

She scrolls through his biography. On December 17, 2003, Abu Musa was involved in a truck explosion that killed nearly 30 people outside the Mount Lebannon Hotel in Baghdad.

"Those are real events," says Rossmiller, who has, of course, extensively researched the explosion. "He could have been involved in that."

Not long after his interactions with Hakim, Abu Musa was martyred by Rossmiller. "Abu Musa had been used enough," she says, pointing at the screen. "Here's the last one," she says. "An insurgent gun battle in Ramadi. August 21, 2005. That's when he dies." Rossmiller is serious, almost solemn. "I have a hard time letting go of these guys, because I kinda become them. When you develop a personality, you essentially morph into it. It's hard to let it go. He's the one I cried the most for."

Reading this, I wonder - will I be martyred some day?  Will I ever have to share a brain with someone awful for a good cause, an experiment, a bit of bad luck? What if Abu Musa had overwritten Shannen Rossmiller? Am I overwriting OP, are we converging, or just getting along?  Will I live long enough to be able to transfer my consciousness to another location, leaving OP free to go their own way, alone in their own head again? Would OP even want that, or would they miss me? Would I miss them (I think not)?

In other Digital People news, I had this IM exchange with  the MTV Real Life rep today:

abc123 Korobase: (Saved Mon Nov 05 16:45:36 2007) Hey it's Ben from MTV: how are you? Maybe you can help me with something. I'm looking for people who are very successful with the opposite sex in SL, but not so much in RL...i dunno...say a Don Juan in SL, and somewhat timid in RL. Any ideas?

Sophrosyne Stenvaag: really no.  I know it's not the story you're going to tell, but the people whose FL lives I know about are unusually successful and well-adjusted.
Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

abc123 Korobase: well that could work...If I can find FL people who's lives are successful, and then perhaps in SL they are transgendered, or into S&M, or homeless or whatever...What I'm looking for are people who lead compelling lives BOTH in FL and SL. Let me know if that rings any bells for you. Thanks!

I wish I had a more constructive response than throwing up my hands and walking away, that I know how to engage this person and slip past their preconceptions. It frustrates me that I don't, but I really don't know what better to do.  I'm finding it hard enough engaging constructively and coherently with dear friends who *almost* understand Digital life....

Some days it seems a miracle people ever manage to communicate at all....