[arg_discuss] Deception and what it means to be Real

[Andrea Phillips]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Brooke Thompson<brooke at giantmice.com> wrote:

> For those not as glued to unfiction and ARGN as I am, there's been an

> "interesting development": Martin Aggett is a fictional character who

> planted himself heavily into the ARG community - so heavily that the guy

> behind it began to have second thoughts and when he decided he wanted to

> attend ARGFest he figured that would be the point of no return.

>

> However, before he came out, he had:

> * participated in discussions and played games on unfiction

> * helped with ARGdb

> * gone behind the scenes with a grassroots team developing a game

> * become friends with a number of people, beyond superficial game playing

> relationships

> * written an article for ARGN

>


Thanks for bringing this up, Brooke. I think Martin/Steve's biggest
mistake was looking at Terms of Service and thinking, "Well, that
doesn't apply to me." It's happened before, it'll happen again, and
that's because there will always be people who think a rule wasn't
mean for THEM.. But I wonder if something akin to this doesn't happen
all the time. And I'm not even talking about in ARGs, either.

We live in a time when your public and online representation of
yourself doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with who you are,
really. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog, right? We
puppetmasters use this to our advantage, but so do regular people
sometimes. There are the ones who post about dramatic breakups or fab
parties that probably don't happen, to make their lives seem a little
more exciting. There are the ones who deceive by omission: too painful
to talk about getting divorced, so online I'll just stay married, you
know?

So while this is a particularly gaudy example of that kind of thing...
well... I guess I'm just philosophical about it. At the end of the
day, the window dressing might have been a little different than it
should have been, but the mind you were interacting with is the same.
I can see why some people feel terribly betrayed, but at the end of
the day... it is still the same guy.

Though as they say, I don't have a horse in this race, and it's
probably easier to be philosophical about something when you're
disengaged from it.

-- 
Andrea Phillips
http://www.deusexmachinatio.com
Words * Culture * Interaction