Life in the Network

so I can, so I can...Hi there. Apologies for the slightly late submission (once again) and I'd like to say, first of all, thanks Comcast for giving me faulty internet access. (Takin' it to the man!)
Swiftly moving on, this Meez thing was quite fun. Though I do believe it would take a power-user to get through all the options. It is sure, however, that much consideration went into the creation of these online-identity-builders. Obviously Meez is aiming for the generations that are growing up when online identity can be just as important as reality. Similar to the cell phone industry. These days, if you don't have a cell phone, you almost, just almost, don't exist in theminds of the mobile-subscribing population. It's a matter of presence in the mediums through which people commonly communicate, and Meez (or others, like DookyWeb) allows users to mold this presence very thoroughly. This promise of close-to-infinite customization makes the number of options less surprising, but still it is reduced to generalities and stereotypes. I find the "sort by theme" options interesting. Things like "Hipster" and "Mom" bold judgments to make about one's self, but we have to do it in every interaction we have, and this holds almost more true in online communication where our self-projection is the basis (and monopolizing force) behind other's understanding of our character.
My internet usage is characteristically confined to communication with people that I know from outside of the web. In this way, I am able to place a lot more trust in people's self-projected identity though it is still very malleable. For this reason, I found the Turkle article interesting, but much harder to relate to. Her interviewees, while discussing the nature of their MUD experiences, were confronting issues I haven't come into contact with. Of course, when chat rooms were still very new it was almost unavoidable to see the e-sex happening seemingly everywhere. And of course when someone signs in with the screen name "HotLesbianGirl" you've gotta think it's a thirteen-year-old boy looking for kicks. But some of the stories, like Ribbit, the helpful frog, were oh so lucid. A nice cut-away of a social-experiment of sorts, but with benefits. The ability of Ribbit's human player to work through social issues by role-playing. I couldn't help think of Borat during this reading. Though Sasha Baron Cohen's alter ego was a permutation of ethnicity, the results were the same. People treat you like what they think you are.
And how fitting that the Gurak text quotes Turkle in the epigraph to chapter four. Her explanation of the male-dominated birth of the internet gave a nice dimension to the gender-bending MUD experiences. She really takes it to Mattel too, but I couldn't help but think "Aren't people still buying this stuff?" Truly, if the products didn't sell, I doubt Mattel would bother. But, this article (hyperlink) makes some good points about the inevitable limit to the power of pink and flowers over adolescent females. Bad news for Mattel I guess.
The parts in Gurak's text about message-board behavior were interesting too, though as with MUD's I'm not a regular (or even initiated) user, so I haven't the experience to bounce her words against. Her analysis of trends like emoticons and flaming as generally prevalent gender roles--or more accurately--habits, are not surprising most of the time. Would a teen boy building his meez choose the "Hood Candy" animation so his avatar could sit alluringly on top of a hotrod? Maybe "HotLesbianGirl" would, but he's the real deal...right?