The Genre of Imaginary Girlfriends
We're been talking about the notion of genre in
class recently. Genres--as understood within the online interaction world--is a way of looking at the regularities of the ways that people interact:
Genre shifts the focus from issues such as the nature and degree of relationship among "community members", to the purpose of the communication, its regularities of form and substance, and the institutional, social, and technological forces which underlie those regularities.
Tom Erickson, Social Interaction on the Net:
Virtual Community as Participatory Genre
Now
BoingBoing
talks about the imaginary girlfriend phenomenon on Ebay... and I was startled to realize that it's a genre.
Here. Check a few
imaginary girlfriend auctions and
virtual girlfriend auctions out:
Do you want to make your ex girlfriend Jealous, ... Fool them with an Imaginary Girlfriend. ... I'll be whatever you'd like me to be. I'm a 19 year old college student. I'm 5'3, and 110lbs. Help me to pay my student loans, DEBT and rent. In return I will pretend to be your girlfriend/friend/pen pal for 1 month. You can e-mail me as much as you want, and chat with me on MSN and Yahoo IM. You will recieve 4 mailed letters; one per week, scented especially for you. When our 30 days have expired simply break it off and tell your friends I was crushed. You can dump me how ever you want, I will even write you a letter begging for you back .... You will recieve a letter once a week, and a Special Valentines day card to show off to your friends, or leave out so that ex may find it. If the bidding excedes $50 you will recieve 3 glossy Pictures of me to show your friends. If the bidding excedes $100 dollars, you will recieve a pair of my sexiest underwear scented with my favorite purfume. If the bidding excedes $150, I will send you some "special" photoes of me and a cam session online. If you would like another 30 Days, Price can be discussed via email, as I will not block your address from my email. Happy bidding.
ashley_thm: Let me be your Imaginary Girlfriend/Pen Pal
There seems to be a few interesting aspects. One is that there is a broad consensus on what you get from an imaginary girlfriend: a personal gift, a letter or two, a racy photo and a nice photo, and emails for one or two months, concluding with a tearful note begging you to take them back.
There are also small variations between them: some often phone conversations, others don't; some offer IM access, others don't.
What interests me, though, is that an economist might comment on how the market is converging on something--but in my mind, what's happening is that the genre is stabilizing.
Before recently, no one in history had ever tried to sell a short-term virtual girlfriend, as far as I know; the ebay members are now in the process of deciding what to call it ("fantasy girlfriend" and "virtual girlfriend" are other choices, and both have hits), deciding how much to charge, and precisely what services to offer.
January 29, 2004 05:36 PM
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