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<li>The Perils of Pauline cover, public domain (according to <a href="http://http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perilsofpauline.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>)</li>
<li>The Perils of Pauline cover, public domain (according to <a href="http://http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perilsofpauline.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>)</li>
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==Comments==
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5 Responses to “ Gender bending, 2.0 ”
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Gregory Kohs
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As someone himself tricked (for a brief spell) by the network operated by “Poetlister”, I offer this video-formatted word of advice:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU
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Barry Kort
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Just as many professional sports teams have increasingly taken on names that correspond to abstractions, some of the more interesting avatars names are genderless abstractions.
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Way back in the 90s, when Amy Bruckman and I were pioneering MUDs, one of our colleagues in academia took the name Pi and provided no clues whatsoever suggestive of any gender at all.
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John A
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Lots of people were fooled, Greg. It was certainly an impressive show to have infiltrated not only WR but also Wikiquote and Wikipedia itself with so many characters without once slipping up for so long.
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The Internet plays games with people’s personas to such an extent that I tend to spend most of my time talking to arguments rather than people, so as not to get surprised at sockpuppetry when it happens.
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I know that you are Gregory Kohs, because you have gone to extraordinary lengths to be a verifiable real person. But you could still be a sockpuppet – I’ve never met you, nor can I verify that every single post by “Gregory Kohs” is by the same person.
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I use one to two personas but I don’t change characters, nor pretend to be the opposite sex, nor sexually deviant nor gay nor anything else. I like my anonymity because it is much less of a strain to my personal life and that of my family – I’m just introverted like that. I certainly don’t seek fame or notoriety and am appalled by “celebrity culture” which is an oxymoron.
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The Internet is an immense stage with innumerable disguises available, and so one is always wondering exactly how many people are really out there. The Internet also plays with our belief system and betrays our trust, which is why I don’t trust it with my life.
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Paul Wehage
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Barry,
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The “Pi” incident is interesting: what happened? Did people decide what gender “Pi” was and on what basis? Was it ever uncovered which gender “Pi” was and what were the consequences?
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Please tell us more!
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Timothy Usher
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See also these sockpuppets (among many others) of Steven McGeady (”Gnetwerker”), better known for his testimony in the Microsoft trial: http://www.webcitation.org/5j9XXoR9C. As discussed on Wikipedia Review, McGeady misappropriated a South African girl’s photograph from her blog and, under the alias “Reseaunaut,” pretended to be her, much as our British civil servant misappropriated women’s photographs to accompany his feminine personae. In such instances, it isn’t only, or even mainly, other online denizens who are the victims of these frauds.