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< Aliases are hard, perhaps impossible, on the modern Web

~inquiry

A bit more on the "RPG" thing.

I've never participated, but can anyone else here speak to whether there's a sort of "liberation" in role playing?

The reading material that most attracts me tends to emphasize that liberation is in *zero* i-dentity, *zero* role(s).

But now I'm wondering if infinite (or a large number, at least) context-switched roles accomplishes the same?

Or IS THAT WHAT SEEMS TO BE HAPPENING, i.e. all us stooges running around as though individual/separate instances of <ineffable>, thoroughly convinced of the reality of our be-ing *literally* to the point of "a fool (for being convinced of separate from <ineffable> is born every minute"...?

wow wow wow....

("Earth to detritus! Are you there, detritus?! Please come in, detritus!")

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~shoebx wrote (thread):

Sorry for the delay, exams are soon so I've been busy but I feel like I need to relax a bit.

Anyway... thanks for stoking delightful thoughts along these lines!

My pleasure! :D

Regarding the above, in my (young and naive) experience, a core "personality" keeps me "sane", or at least attached to this reality. For me, identities are nothing more than masks, meant to "protect" this precious core, to separate interactions from "interfering" with my whole internal "social web". I know that this is all jumbly wumbly, but I guess that keeping track of too many people becomes scary and tiring in the long term.

Maybe that's behind the idea of having infinite identities you're mentioning, so to minimize the amount of people one has to consider while doing any form of interaction. That would be quite a liberation, I think.

I've not yet went as far as charging personas. It's weird to say, but I feel like an automaton: my memory is short and most of the time I feel like running in "self-driving mode", so I wouldn't be able to be mindful enough to "fake" a different personality altogether. I like being myself, you could say.

That said, role playing indeed is liberating. I actually played some actual "real life" RPG with some friends before (albeit through VOIP), but it didn't feel as liberating as a place like here, perhaps because I didn't need it yet.

And role playing isn't necessarily being somebody else; here, I'm reasonably "myself", just with a different mask. I just want to chill a bit in a nice pub like this, with a nice virtual (nonalcoholic) drink. Also, "walking around" feels quite therapeutic, even on the Web. You could argue that most people don't do that even there :P

~detritus wrote (thread):

* ~detritus approaches a table with a man who seems to have had one too many *

What is going on here? Talk about RPGs? Sure! I like a good old RPG now and then. In fact, I was just thinking of downloading a few old Final Fantasy titles.

There's an interesting idea here... if we are just the um, universal consciousness jumping from body to body in order to experience itself.... can we replicate this in our programs? Have a single process experience the system in the guise of very different programs... maybe the ensuing confusion will imbue in it something we could call life?

I seem to have had too much to drink too, excuse me...

~bartender, do you have alka-seltzer?