Plurk Goes Crazy for Fake Lindens Today Thanks to ArminasX Saiman

ArminasX Saiman started a micro-fad on Plurk today by changing his display name to Armi Linden. Chaos erupted as Second Life Plurkers began channeling fake Lindens and posting all kinds of ROLF messages.

A few were displeased and one notable person whose name I won't mention here dropped all of the participants from his timeline.

Here's a shot from my December post on creating a Botgirl Linden identity on OpenLife.

Plurk adds Second Life as Country

Does this foreshadow an acquisition of Plurk by Second Life or just pandering to a large avatarian population. Or is there more as ArminasX writes? Time will tell.

Comic Cover: SLayers

Created on a Plurkish whim from Marvel's Create Your Own Superhero

Featuring from left to right:
Botgirl, (the diminutive) Jacek, Michele and Lanna

The Plurkfect Storm Part 2: Social media as interactive reality TV

Emotionality has coursed through text-based chat interactions from the start. Academics, geeks and early adopters in the 1980s were the first to create pseudonymous identities and live virtual lives on USENET newsgroups, dial-up BBS systems, IRC chat rooms and MOOs. Friendships formed, flame wars raged and romances blossomed through dial-up modems and glowing green displays. America Online brought chat to the masses in 1989 and users quickly created virtual rooms catering to every sexual proclivity under the sun.

Although communication was limited to text in those days, avid participants experienced a visceral sense of place, community and virtual identity. For better or for worse. My Tiny Life, published almost ten years ago, recounted a virtual rape that rocked a MOO-based community. What would have looked like a harmless string of text messages to an outsider was perceived as an existentially traumatic experience by emotionally invested community members.

Although the story I recounted yesterday about Plurk reflects only the latest outbreak of a decades-old phenomenon, I think there is something new going on. A growing number of us have become so pervasively network-connected that we can have more continuous contact with a virtual community such as Plurk, than with any particular social relationship in our physical lives. With a web-enabled cell phone we can be in 24/7 touch with our Plurk community.

In a sense, we are living together in a Reality TV show like Big Brother or The Surreal Life. We meet new people and engage in conversations all the while aware there is a larger non-participating audience peering in. Although we can choose our friends, we don't select who shows up in our friends' comment threads. So it is likely we encounter some individuals who annoy or anger us and keep popping up in message threads we follow. Our interactions with each other in semi-public forums can not help but be tinged by the awareness that our words are recorded and may be viewed by dozens or hundreds of unknown people. Fortunately, Plurk also provides private messaging which is perfect for behind-the-back venting. Not that I'd ever do that, of course.

I'm running out of time for the day, but I will take a brief crack at the questions I posed in Part 1:

• Was the original incident a tempest in a teapot or does it speak to deeper and more pervasive problems? I think the deeper problems have to do with the way humans tend to blame their inner emotional experience on external circumstances including the words and deeds of other people. I posted about this subject previously here and here.
  

• Does a social circle of a few hundred active participants mean anything in the wider worlds? Do the actions of even the entire 23,000 or so people active on the whole Plurk service indicate trends extending beyond Plurk's borders? I think that my particular circle within Plurk is a great window into a social network of pervasively connected virtual identities who move seamlessly through domains, such as Second Life and Plurk. I suspect it is a glimpse of more widespread things to come.
  

• Why are some people so mean? I suspect that most people who tend to be mean were treated badly in their formative years. I've written previously about that here.
  

• How can people feel hurt by a text message from a stranger? Any time you feel emotionally hurt by someone's words or actions it is because of some fictional inner story you believe about what it means. (See links at bullet one.)
  

• How you can you find and take part in the next text orgy (Plorgy?) I don't want to name any names here, but if you sign up for Plurk and become fans of those on my friend list, it's likely one will pop up sooner or later.
  

• Why has Botgirl written such a long post when she's supposed to be taking it easy after finishing work on the art show (shameless plug)? Probably so I'd have another excuse to plug my appearance this Friday at Second Life's first Comic-con.
  

The Plurkfect Storm Part 1: Hugs, text orgies and flame wars.

I wrote about Plurk's strange blend of public and private communication a couple weeks ago. Last week the site exploded with interactions so emotionally charged that they inspired a planned Gender Freedom Day In Virtual Worlds event in Second Life. So it seemed like a follow-up post was in order.

First, a little background. Plurk is a micro-blogging service with a twist. Participants can post short text messages called "Plurks." When you log in you see posts from those who have given you permission to be either a "friend" or a "fan" arrayed on a timeline. Plurk's most unique feature is the ability to spawn a near-real-time chat thread from any post. The example below shows a Plurk I posted, followed by comments.



Although you can see Plurks from only those who have given you permission to subscribe, you do see everyone's comments on Plurks you can access. So if Joe is my friend and Jane comments on one of his Plurks, I can see Jane's comments even though I'm not her friend or fan. Since comments appear in almost real time, they can end up feeling like typical chat room conversations. People often meet on Plurk through conversations within comment threads of mutual friends. (For more info see The Ten Minute Guide to Plurk.)

Plurk's two-way conversational capability has created (at least in my circle of mostly Second Life expatriates) a kind of corner-bar atmosphere. People talk about everything under the sun from troubles with their sweethearts to sporting events they're watching on television. There is also a great deal of communication depicting imagined physical actions ranging from hugs to explicit sexual activity.

So back to the story. Last week some guy got really, really angry after his virtual girlfriend participated in a girl/girl text orgy within a comment thread. He took out his emotional upset by flaming the hell out of someone in a series of increasingly venomous messages on a comment thread tied to an unrelated Plurk. People jumped in on either side. The flame skirmish turned into a full-blown flame war, including very personal attacks.

The conflict spilled out of Plurk. Although the original thread was deleted by the person who made the original Plurk, someone posted a copy to a blog and is now accessible to anyone on the internet. Sophrosyne Stenvaag, a prominent Second Life resident, took the events so seriously that she decided to sponsor a full day fundraiser supporting organizations promoting freedom of expression of gender identity and sexual preference in digital worlds.

So what's up with all this? Was the original incident a tempest in a teapot or does it speak to deeper and more pervasive problems? Does a social circle of a few hundred active participants mean anything in the wider worlds? Do the actions of even the entire 23,000 or so people active on the whole Plurk service indicate trends extending beyond Plurk's borders? Why are some people so mean? How can people feel hurt by a text message from a stranger? How you can you find and take part in the next text orgy (Plorgy?) Why has Botgirl written such a long post when she's supposed to be taking it easy after finishing work on the art show (shameless plug)?

These and other questions will be examined when I continue in Part 2: Social Media as Interactive Reality TV

Plurk hole: Privacy part 2

Your Plurk user name and identifying information are passed along every time you click a link embedded in a Plurk message from your timestream. Here is an example from my blog reports. I've inked out everyone but Codie.



Going from your user name to additional identifying information is just a click away. The next image shows that if you are at work or school, that information is also passed along. Wonder what someone at Microsoft was doing on my blog for 102 minutes? I think they're looking for a Jerry Seinfeld replacement for commercials and are considering Botgirl.



One more click and your physical location, operating system and other tidbits are revealed.



The key security flaw in Plurk, is that you view posts in a url that has your user name, for instance: http://www.plurk.com/user/botgirl. So when I click a link, my user name goes right along with it. Twitter doesn't have that problem because the browsing url is twitter.com/home.

There are two easy ways to avoid this issue if you care about it. First, don't click links. Instead, copy the link and paste it into a new browser tab. Another more sneaky way is to browse another user's timeline and click from there. That will send their user name along with your other information.

That's all here till Monday. I hope to meet some of you at the Identity Circus opening on Sunday.