Sophrosine drawn my attention to a story about a woman who spend her free hours doing counter-terrorist from her own bedroom. Both articles are well worh reading (though Wired's one is five pages, so grab your coffee before starting). In short, Shannen Rossmiller spent years building characters in on-line communities where al Qaeda members and wanna-be's hang. Her freelance undercover activities led to many arests. The next quote is a spoiler and is about one of her on-line identities Abu Musa:
"Do you want to see Abu Musa?" she asks me suddenly, as if he were hiding in the closet. She clicks on some files and up comes a picture of a fairly dashing man with a pair of hip glasses and one of those jaw-defining beards. He's wearing a fashionable kafia around his neck, and his posture is catalog-ready. Of course, Abu Musa is his jihadi name. His "real" name is Walid Ali Mustaffa. She scrolls through his biography. On December 17, 2003, Abu Musa was involved in a truck explosion that killed nearly 30 people outside the Mount Lebannon Hotel in Baghdad.
Not long after his interactions with Hakim [a terrorist who was arrested after Rossmiller's action], Abu Musa was martyred by Rossmiller. "Abu Musa had been used enough," she says, pointing at the screen. "Here's the last one," she says. "An insurgent gun battle in Ramadi. August 21, 2005. That's when he dies." Rossmiller is serious, almost solemn. "I have a hard time letting go of these guys, because I kinda become them. When you develop a personality, you essentially morph into it. It's hard to let it go. He's the one I cried the most for."
I understand her. It is hard to leave a character, even if it was made for a purpose and never intended to be attached to it. For, to make it alive, one has to give a piece of own life to it.
Sophrosine raised a lot of questions after this story:
Will I be martyred some day? Will I ever have to share a brain with someone awful for a good cause, an experiment, a bit of bad luck? What if Abu Musa had overwritten Shannen Rossmiller? Am I overwriting OP [operator, human], are we converging, or just getting along? Will I live long enough to be able to transfer my consciousness to another location, leaving OP free to go their own way, alone in their own head again? Would OP even want that, or would they miss me? Would I miss them (I think not)?
We're playing dangerous games. All the combinations are possible. So many people are frightened when they are dreaming second life for the first time. That is not without reason. I (whichever *I* I am in this case) had to pause for a moment and re-think my situation when human-me felt butterflies because of what avatar-me did last night. If both avatar and human are living, they have to influence each other. Which is somewhat funny. Avatar is not born in one moment. It takes time for an avatar to develop, not only to get an appearance, set of animations and maybe some styling details in vocabulary, behaving etc… It takes time for it to depart from its human. And then, they start to interact. And they start that beautiful exchange.
And now something completely different. Or not? Few days ago, MTV called for
virtual worlders for their (perhaps not entirely appropriately named – but people still get the Web mixed up with the Internet) "I Live Another Life on the Web" part of MTV's True Life. Not just any virtual worlders, either. Ones who are willing to put their real selves on display.
Though I am not in the age-group wanted, for a second I thought I could have some fun there. Me-human loves reality shows. But… each time two of us appear somewhere together I feel like a prostitute. Not as an escort but like a whore. That may sound weird but as we are getting deeper and deeper in this adventure, the relationship of my human and me becomes more intimate. Putting that on a TV screen is "No, thanks. I don't do that kink."
I don't have illusions about me being martyred one day. I know I will be. I know my human will kill me and cry me out. It is heavy enough when one do radical changes to an avatar. I guess we all do that from time to time. A sudden jump in own development. Some kind of adolescence. You leave the old one and start living in another. It is like a reptile changing skin. But no matter how different those avies are, how big the jump is, there is something that stays, some consciousness about continuity.
Leaving it for good, with no ancestor is… well, you can imagine. Hopefully, we'll have a nice farewell night, just the two of us, knowing that we gave the best of us to each other. But we have a lot more megabytes to ride on before that.
We all, I am told, have to go sometime.
It’s a luxury to be able to choose the time
and place of our own death. No?
This is brilliant –
- and I hope that day is a long time off. I’m *really* enjoying getting to know you better!
You should seriuosly start thinking about writing a book. This post has shaken me in the very deep. So many questions have arisen suddenly as I ended reading this. This feeling of needing a drink right now is so “Philip Marlowe”… Not that I dislike it, I love Raymond Chandler but… I mean it’s 11:00 am now, and I do feel like drinking???
Call me ;)
Drinking at 11AM, eh? Ah dammit…. time is relative anyway… just use world settings and switch to sunset or midnight. ;)
Soph… we’ll become neighbours soon… you will start to run away and hide from me *giggles
Sera… yes, that is a luxury. Somehow, I always believed that full life (1st or 2nd) is to be ended like that. It is not about time, it is about feeling. One gets in touch with self and all the pieces of the puzzle click in their places. It is not choosing the time as much as feeling that the time is right.
And, by the way, this post is optimistic, whatever you think of it. :)
Geeez… now u’ve put me to think on a friday morning, dandellion. And I’m not that sure they are optimistic thinkings, lol
Although I never think about it,.. I mean really think.. not just an idea that crosses my mind.., somewhere I always, since day 1, lived with the consciousnes that one day I will be disposed of. Just like any other given electronic utensil…
But I comfort myself with the idea that probably, at least a part of me, or the experiences gained here in SL, will be recycled.. and used elsewhere in the life of She who Pulls the Strings..
Sand… Veronique explained it all. :)