[arg_discuss] Deception and what it means to be Real

[Nathan Mishler]

This sort of thing does happen all the time. And sometimes we never know.
For instance, here's a great article from Raph Koster about a memorial
service held in a MUD for a player that had died.
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/essay1.shtml
And then it's not until more than five years later they learn that person
never really existed at all, at least how they knew the person.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2003/04/14/revisiting-the-garden-of-remembrance/
Kind of part of the treacherous nature of this space, I think. People
generally wear at least one mask when they come into these spaces. How many
people annouce their real names in unfiction? And puppetmasters often
encourage people to put on some other layers and present themselves as
different than they really are in game spaces.
So I can see why a puppetmaster might think that they can approach it from
the other direction and have their characters put on masks themselves.
But... he shouldn't have. These things are all about trust, and a certain
ammount of it is knowing what space you really are in, even if you are
really keeping up the suspension of disbelief.
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Andrea Phillips <deusexmachinatio at gmail.com

> wrote:



> 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

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-- 
Nathan Mishler
Studio Cypher, LLC
"Curious Games for Curious People"
http://www.twitter.com/StudioCypher
(812) 361-5981