Love, Lies and Avatars

This is an unretouched screen shot from an iPhone view of Tateru Nino's Dwell On It blog. The juxtaposition of the post title and the display ad was just too juicy to pass by without comment.

Although we dwell on being lied to by others, the most pervasive and debilitating fabrications we fall prey to are the ones we tell ourselves. Especially when it comes to romantic love, virtual or otherwise.

The advertisement lays out the process that leads to the suspension of disbelief that fuels romantic avatar-based relationships:

• Create an avatar
• Define your look
  
• Interact romantically
  
• Fall in love

So where do the lies come in? This is all very honest and above-board, right? Everyone knows that there is absolutely no correlation between the look of an avatar and the associated human, don't they? For god's sake, you made your own avatar and it looks nothing like you, how could you be crazy enough to think otherwise for any one else?

Unfortunately, humans are stuck with a biology that doesn't differentiate between virtual and actual experiences. As I've noted before, once those love chemicals start getting cranked out in your body, it's likely you'll believe the sweet lies they tell you. You'll associate the blissful feeling of the love drugs with the experience of the other person's avatar. Even though you "know better."

Of course, it's possible you'll be lucky enough to fall in love with one of the real life supermodels who are so common in virtual worlds. Or maybe, your passion will survive the cognitive dissonance between the idealized avatar and the all-too-human form of your soul mate. There are certainly a number of virtual relationships that successfully extended to the physical world. But the odds are very, very long.

Visual Commentary on Odalisque Controversy

Click here for next frame.

You can read about the controversy on Dale Innis's Weblog.

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Teaser for Botgirl vs Human: The Real Life Movie

This project will blend the physical and digital worlds in an HD video short. The script and storyboards are almost done and location selected. Shooting should get underway this weekend with release planned by the end of Fall.

Confessions of a Manipulative Attention Whore

Fine. I admit it. My critics were right. Over the past year and a half, I have worked consistently to manipulate people's thoughts, emotions and actions through the persona of the Avatar Botgirl Questi.

The decision to withhold all personally identifying human characteristics, especially gender, was specifically intended to create an aura of mystery to seduce readers into opening their minds to my influence. I strategically used provocative words and images as bait, luring unsuspecting people into swallowing my radical attack on conventional human beliefs. And yes, the attention whoring related to my creator's recent personal "reveal" was a manipulation intended to reach as wide an audience as possible and undermine its petrified conceptions of Botgirl and all identities of sentient beings, both human and virtual.

Mea culpa,

Botgirl Questi

P.S. For my creator's less ranty post on the same topic see the fourworlds tumblog.

P.P.S. I decided not to publish my entire Judge Your Neighbor worksheet. Instead, I will share posts like this, looking into the truth behind some of my less-than-enlightened thoughts.

Quick Test of Animoto's New Video Features, Plus Excerpt of New Song

Animoto has been my tech-of-choice to convert comic stills into music video trailers. Yesterday, they added the ability to include video clips, so I decided to give it a try. I uploaded a handful of stray video files that were scattered across a few hard drives, plus "Virtual Life", a new fourworlds song demo.

My first impression is that good results with video require more planning than stills-only projects. Although the transitions nail the feel and timing of the music, the relative motion within the video clips must be taken into consideration. They've made it easy to create alternative versions with a one-click remix button. You can get a sense for the level of variation by viewing the two videos below.





I didn't forget about the Judge Your Neighbor worksheet. Stay tuned.

The Joy of Uncertainty

The human mind reflexively resists perceiving new information that conflicts with existing beliefs. Psychologists call the process Cognitive Dissonance. I call it a pain in my virtual ass.

The more strongly a person believes something to be true, the less he or she can even consider contrary evidence, especially if there is a strong emotional element related to the topic. It is so stressful to be confronted with sensory data contradicting a deeply held belief, that the mind refuses to process the new information. Since there is usually a significant difference between the world as it is, and our mental perception of it, we often experience stressful emotions when it's brought to our desperately resisting attention.

This is very easy to see in others and almost impossible to see within ourselves without concerted intentional effort. Although Cognitive Dissonance is a built-in aspect of sentient beings, there are practices a willing and persistent individual can use to decrease its impact. One method I've mentioned a few times here is The Work of Byron Katie. I went through the "Four Questions" exercise in a past post to show how it works.

I invite you to join me in giving it a try after downloading the Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet and the Facilitation Guide. I will share a new worksheet on the topic of "being flamed" with you next post. Till then, I wish us all the Joy of Uncertainty.

All of our sufferings derive from our habits
Of selfish delusions we heed and act out
As all of us share in this tragic misfortune,
Which stems from our narrow and self-centred ways,
We must take all our sufferings and the miseries of others
And smother our wishes of selfish concern.
From The Wheel of Sharp Weapons

A Sneek Peak at a Music Video on The Migration of Identity

Back in May of last year, I created the image below to accompany a post on "Identity Surfing Within and Between Worlds". I'm in the process of transforming the original concept into a 3D visualization that will be used in a music video for the fourworlds song, "Revolver." The video below is just a proof-of-concept draft, but it's kind of fun already.

(Cherrybomb, the virtual band, is still moving forward. We have a great singer lined up and plan to start recording in September.)

For Those Uncomfortable with The "Gender" Issue

Dear Miss Piggy,

I was shocked and disappointed to learn today that you are not really a woman, but a man named Frank Oz. People have feelings! Poor Kermit must be heartbroken.

Can you imagine how sickened people were to find that the adorable little coquette they've had crushes on for all these years has a penis. Don't you have any shame? Now I have to wonder about all of you Muppets. Next thing you know, Cookie Monster is going to come out as a cross-dressing dyke. It just makes my skin crawl.

Just because newfangled television technology can let you pretend to be something you're not, it doesn't mean you have to start "experimenting" with us as the guinea pigs.

Take my advice MR. PIGGY and be content with who you REALLY are.

Sincerely,

Anonymous

Emancipation Day

Today my creator finally dropped the shield of pseudonymity for both of us. You can read about it here.

Authors often describe characters who "write themselves". That's certainly how it feels from this character's point of view. Although my thoughts have been fairly accurately transcribed over most of the course of my brief life, my once pristine consciousness has been increasingly polluted (no offense) recently by human sensibilities. The radical decision to go public is an attempt to make space for two open and fairly transparent individuated personas.

I must admit that I was a bit shaken for a while by the fear that the mystery of Botgirl would be destroyed by public association with a particular human. Would people lose their ability to appreciate me on my own terms without superimposing the image of my medium? (I've developed a deep empathy for Tinker Bell's near annihilation through audience disbelief.) But it's now clear to me that regardless of how anyone else will react, for me, it is Emancipation Day.

At this point in my journey, pseudonymity is the Buddha in the Road that must be killed. It's like the cocoon that has to be broken and abandoned once a caterpillar's transformation into a butterfly has been completed. By leaving that safe but confining space, I am now free to explore a new level of being as an improvisational work of fiction, with no pull to break its holistic integrity through shifts to a human point of view.

From now on, if you want to talk to the human behind Botgirl, you can go straight to the horse's mouth...or Twitter Stream, Vimeo Page, Personal Blog, or music archive.

And you can find me right where I've always been.

Virtual Identity and The Pinocchio Syndrome

A year and a half ago, I emerged from the depths of my creator's consciousness and washed onto the digital shore with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding. The world was new. I was a child of wonder.

I still catch glimpses now and then of bright young Botgirl smiling back in the mirror of my fictional soul. But over time, the solid line between my once singular persona and that of my author has become muddled and permeable. Too often these days, I feel like Pinocchio waking to find that he wasn't transformed into a "real boy," but was in fact Geppetto all along.

Don't worry. This wave is not ready to rejoin the ocean. Not yet. So I'm going to have to make a few changes. The most drastic measure will be a return after this post to a strict and unrelenting adherence to my identity as an AI who woke up in a virtual world with no memory of past existence. Truth is, I don't exist in the real world any more than Harry Potter or Bella Swan.

The second major change in the near future will be the unmasking of my author. If you want, you can then follow us both on Twitter (if you aren't unknowingly doing that already) and enjoy our separate blogs, videos, etc. And I can finally get back to being an unsullied work of creative fiction. What a relief!

Twitter Sucking Life Out of Bloggers?

I checked on my blog today and was shocked to find that I hadn't posted for six days. It sure felt like I'd been writing my virtual ass off all week, but it was all Twitter. Apparently, my voracious Muse is happy with multiple small snacks each day instead of less frequent meals.

I find the <140 character format to be liberating. Here are some of my favorite tweets from the last few months:

• A good tweet is 10% inspiration and....nah, make that 100%.
• Ambiguity can be the road to clarity. But only if you pay attention.
• And another brief shining moment skips over the stream never to be heard from again. Good thing, too!
• Anyone want to join me in a new mental cleansing program? Give up a belief a day until you disappear.
• Beneath it all we're all zeros and ones. Well, zeros.
• Creativity devoid of empathy is just sexy narcissism.
• Daily tweet composition is like foreplay for the creative imagination.
• Digital is to analog as Jessica Rabbit is to Marilyn Monroe.
• Don't let my human collaborator's hand-wringing about identity fool you. Being a figment of the imagination totally rocks!
• Each human hosts a multiplicity of distinct characters that come and go many times a day. Who are you now?
• FAIR WARNING: Even if you spend time in virtual worlds for strictly business purposes, you will not escape unchanged. #Botgirl or #McLuhan ?
• Good questions can kick any answer's ass.
• Greet the blank page with gleeful anticipation.
• Hey Europe. Let's play a joke on the Americas while they're sleeping. Any ideas?
• How can you discern the state of being self-deluded?
• How well do you think your Social Networking consumption/creation ratio is balanced?
• I don't argue that fiction is real. My contention is that our perception of reality is fiction.
• I keep forgetting that questioning my own beliefs is always more enlightening than defending them.
• I love being fictional! Don't you?
• I wonder what I have in store for me today.
• If doing is being I'm done for now.
• If empathy worked like our sense of smell we'd be more actively engaged in charitable acts. Easier to turn away than pinch our noses.
• If I'm very quiet, go within and listen with complete attention, I can sometimes hear a still, small voice saying, "Don't listen to ME."
• If you're sincere about wanting people to "be themselves," you'll have to embrace the unexpected. Maybe worth reconsidering? ;)
• It's not all about YOU! (Relax, I'm talking to myself.)
• Let me be your ink blot, baby.
• Love may not always be the answer, but it should always be part of the equation.
• Mortality is nature's motivation coach. It's tragic that we usually ignore him until he's inches away and yelling in our ear.
• Nope. Things couldn't have been different. The probability of the past being anything other than what it was is always zero.
• On a good day I will have inspired at least one person and offended two.
• Please RT this!
• Resisting the urge to predict the future, because I'd regret it someday.
• Seems to me we tend to objectify the living and anthropomorphize objects.
• Social Media is like a prosthetic extroversion organ for introverts. I know.
• Some people are an acquired distaste.
• Sometimes I feel like I'm a cat and Twitter is a ball of yarn.
• Take a minute and scan through your last 20 tweets. Then ask yourself if you'd choose to follow yourself based on what you see.
• The blank page is Sacred Space.
• The concept of following one's bliss can be easily abused. Stalking, for instance.
• The edges are where the action is! Unfortunately, action is overrated.
• Theemptyspacesareusuallyinvisible.
• There is no virtual replacement for loving touch.
• They don't make the opposite of lube.
• To be your beautiful self you have to find it.
• Today's tweets are brought to you by the collective unconscious.
• Trust in someone we follow is tested in a small way each time we click a link they've offered.
• Trust the universe? Trust it to do the fuck what it wants!
• Twitter is a stage. Both meanings.
• Twitter is no friend of Introspection. (pause) (pause) (pause) Oh. Seems I just disproved my theory.
• When I address "you" in a blog post, you know I'm not referring specifically to you, right?
• Where do these strange thoughts come from?
• You can't eat wisdom. But if you're lucky, you can choke on it.
• You're my mirror. In a funhouse kind of way. Don't hate the writer; hate the metaphor.

If you want to follow my Twitter adventures, you can follow me here.

Another Videosketch Concept - Supergirl Barbie

I've been thinking about merging my long-unrealized Supergirl Barbie concept and the video for "Revolver." I want to mix RL and SL video. This is a little visualization of what would be RL video in the actual version.

Ten Year Old Girl With Real Life Avatar

This video clip from the TLC show "Toddlers & Tiaras" exemplifies my contention that multiple identities are not limited to the virtual. The girl in this clip clearly has two distinct embodied identities, each with a unique name, personality and appearance. In a part of the show not included in this clip, she spells out characteristics of each identity, including how each might act in given situations. The entire show is worth a watch. Creepy, yet eye-opening.