Facebook as Pac Man

A virtually imagined game

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A virtually imagined game.

PHASE ZERO: Background. What constitutes reality is always under the scrutiny of science, religion, advertising, art, and all media. According to French Philosopher Jane Baudrillard reality is no longer an option we can fully experience. Reality, he claims, has been replaced by a simulation of it. A simulation that is perceived with a sense of familiarity that creates the blurriness of mind, a mind fog necessary to allow the silent embracement of this alternative reality. Lev Manovich (The language of New Media, MIT PRESS 2001) suggests that new media helps create this altered state of consciousness, an illusion of reality, thanks to the current progress of technology specially in communications interfaces and database management. By the end of August 2008, I died. It was a painless dead. As a matter of fact I didn’t notice it until it was too late. The powerful god of Facebook decided to terminate my digital existence in His Kingdom. My game was over and an intense and profound void followed. I found myself trapped among anxiety, frustration and relief. Hours and hours of hunting were apparently thrown to the trash, there was nothing I could do but try to resuscitate myself. I tried it, and it worked.

When Professor Semi Ryu from the Kinetic Department presented us with a project brief that required us to design a virtual interactive game my brain began the roller-coaster that immediately follows the excitement of any new project. I feel like a child being offered a bad full of sweets. I was working solo and my knowledge of 3D and Virtools was certainly limited. It was the first time using either software or a Windows platform for that matter. As a result of this stressful situation I decided to take an unexpected approach: To throw into it more complexity towards a solution of this riddle. I also wanted to put more weight into the conceptual aspect of its solution rather than the technical aspect of it. Thus I decided to turned my project into a conceptual proposal. I developed this idea in tandem with the readings of Baudrillard and Manovich. I decided to use Facebook as “my game” interface and the environment itself as the arena where to develop it. I needed a story, a world, a mythical figure, a path to follow, and above all, a reason why to do it, and more importantly why would it matter?

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Even though there are rumors about the company going public by the end of 2008 it still remains private. Its market value is expected to reach the 4 billion dollar mark by the time it goes public. Microsoft® owns 1.5% of it for a mere 300 million dollars. After only a few years of experience and more than one hundred million users the term Facebook is associated with the most popular network available online today. What interested me for the purpose of the project was the interaction taking place among its users. It provided fertile soil to play with the concept of Baudrillard’s Simulacra. PHASE ONE: Simulating a Game I signed up for a facebook account and as anybody else and began adding friends to it. The first step is automated, your email contact list is crawled by Facebook System and automatic invitations fly to all the people in your list with a note designed in such a way it pretends to be a personal invitation to join the network. This first step is particularly important in terms of simulation. More than one friend would contact me -specially older mature friends- asking about the veracity of the invitation and deeply apologizing for not accepting my “personal” request for joining the network. The next step, and first of this conceptual game was to create a world within the Kingdom of Facebook. A process that reminded me of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities published in 1972, where the protagonist creates different worlds by means of a detailed description of them. Description and the definition of a context is what generate a designed environment where stories nourish and thrive.

FACEBOOK PROFILE PHOTOS

Facebook is relatively young. An interface developed by Harvard University drop out Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004. While still a student at Harvard Zuckerberg began the facebook project -originally called “The Facebook” that allowed his classmates access to one another’s profiles and ID photos hence the name “facebook”. Zuckerberg hacked the Harvard database and stole all the ID photos database to complete his project. That was the first of a series of controversies involving Facebook over the years.

From the beginning I decided to create a combination of fiction and reality. For my personal ID photo I chose a self-portrait where I am wearing a “bug” mask. The intention behind was to keep my identity somewhat disguised, at least visually. This decision happened in response to our natural tendency of facial recognition as a first step of human interaction/communication. I wanted to delay a potential early recognition. While constructing my network of friends I found out the true nature of the Facebook game: A simulated social playground. The interface allows the users to simulate hugs, kisses, poking, giving away gifts, and all sorts of playful and somewhat intimate exchanges among the user and his friends. The act of poking and/or slightly pushing somebody for instance, is one of the early forms of establishing intimate connection among humans. Poking is an ice breaker in human interaction and also a way to demonstrate personal interest and physical attraction without braking any laws of accepted social behavior (Desmond Morris, 1990.) However, I wondered about an established set of norms of social conduct in a virtual environment such as this one. Is there a Facebook moral beyond the set of rules? Not rules but moral, inner rules. The inquiries remain open.

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Taking one step further into this social interaction “food chain” there’s another interaction tool: “hugging.” Hugging is by al means an interpersonal act. One that requires -in the real world- a true intimacy between people. In facebook that happens lightly as it is pushed by an interface that facilitates this seemingly innocous practice. How are we supposed to read when one of our students hugs us? The role of “play” in Facebook is what defines its character but when you take this concept to unexpected fields the results are quite amusing. I continued the development of my facebook character by providing fictional -imaginedinformation in subinterfaces such as the one where the user indicates where in the world she had been.

observer, not actual events taking place. I could write my “current” status on top of my personal interface page or profile and somebody from the other side of the world (who is in the actual future or the past) is able to read in real time what is happening through my head. The possibilities are endless and astonishing. I continued developing the game environment trying to accomplish a good balance between fiction and reality. One of my friends sent me a fish. I accepted and by doing so I started my own aquarium. After a few weeks I took my aquarium to the extreme. One that would be imposible to have in real life. I named it “Bombay” and incorporated as many fish as impossible. I wanted to have a texture of fish swimming back and forth the box. The idea behind was to create a simulation of the simulation.

Facebook Software: Places I’ve Visited

I entered information about where I would love to go rather than actual information about my nomadic experience. The result: Friends complaining about my neglect in visiting them during my supposed stay in a given foreign country where they are currently living.

It was at that point that it presented itself to me: Wait a minute, I said, this is a game. This is the game I need to design. Anything said, or done within the boundaries of Facebook is considered by the users as truth. Truth along the lines of a world personally created by each user. Even Einstein’s theory of space and time could be observed here as a metaphor of simulated physics and reality. Reality was being defined in regards of the

The Rules of the Game As I continue to play with the interface a fundamental observation happened. This observation allowed this experience to gain the status of a game. Before any person within the Republik of Facebook accepts you as a friend accept to his or her complete list of friends is granted. No questions asked. I discovered this unexpected “feature” while adding my friend Priya Khatri to my list. Priya by the time I was playing this game worked for Benetton’s Research Center: Fabrica. Fabrica is top of noth research center for communication and design. We used to be classmates and good friends so there was no problem in getting into her list. When I went into her friends list the concept of the game matured and presented itself to me. What I needed to do is to “Eat People!” I would turn myself -conceptually- in some sort of digital Pac-man and people would be chips to eat.

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The more chips I ate the more powerful I would become. So I went hunting for people one by one, day by day; unstoppably and indiscriminately. My need to develop a fictional world continued, I changed my current location to Milan in Italy. Although anybody could easily track down my real whereabouts just by track down my real where about just by checking my information box that showed only real information they did not. I received many inquiries of people believing that I was actually from Milan. Every day I would spend at least one hour devoted to eating people, their friends, friends of their friends. There was a criteria behind, it was not completely arbitrary. I chose to “eat” people who would have some sort of connection to the world of Teaching at University level, and teaching anything for that matter: Media, design, advertising, art, poetry, writing. Any subject matter that could be for my benefit. It was a game after all, and I needed power to continue playing it. Harnessing Power Foucault claims that Knowledge is power and that a sense of surveillance, not the surveillance act itself provides control over the mass. In the case of my self-initiated game this relationship of power survelliance and control was rather odd. I was gaining a position of power not by having access to other people’s information rather than allowing the other to have access to mine. It was certainly turning the panonpticon over onto itself and changing the invisibility of the central guard to a complete seemingly transparent state. Open to everyone to see and by this act gaining control over the contents of what is shown. As I continue to eat my friends’ friends I began to venture into territories unknown to me by befriending people I didn’t know personally. I had no connecting friends whatsoever but I had an interested to have that piece of power digested and incorporated into my total count. I concentrated into Fabrica’s staff. Through my friend Priya I found several people who were working in Fabrica. Extremely talented designers, artists, photographers who went through the tight screening of Fabrica’s Recruiting Unit. I ate them all and continued moving on through the labyrinths of their facebook lists of friends. At some point, my efforts to gain power became tangible, real -somewhat- and I managed to record them in a screen capture of a chat session with my friend Priya:

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Her comments pushed me forward. I knew I was stepping into sensible territory but I was playing a game after all. Games without fear, challenge, or thrill are not games at all, thus I decided to continue. Priya would go on telling me that Fabricantes -creatives from Fabrica- began to think that I was some sort of important name at Benetton. Or maybe I was dreaming and she didn’t say a thing. I must remember this is a game, not reality. It’s a game, right? Semiotic anchors as Barthes would suggest may have placed me into that fictional category. Milan, Italy was my birth place, Guido my real name could be associated to an Italian fellow, plus the mob of course- and I was in everyone’s list of friends yet nobody really knew me. The panopticon effect anointed me as one of their invisible guards for a slight moment in time. When Priya revealed my “real story” on how we knew each other they must have turned me into the outcast, the deviant. From guido to weirdo, same difference. However, gaining the status of “weirdo” among Fabricantes would be quite a personal accomplishment to be honest. My conceptual guzzling turned into devouring and I had a chance to meet the real power behind Facebook: The System. One night while adding friends to my list unexpectedly a window popped up in front of me. It suggested me to slow down my activity or my account would be canceled. I panicked. The System, as I found out reading blog entries is indeed powerful. When we talk about facebook we talk about a virtual non-country of more than one hundred million inhabitants who intermittently exist in this world in a regular basis. Every day The System exterminates thousands of people who are categorized as abusers. This partially told rule of the game -according to my facebook experience- is defined as using one of their features too many times or too fast. As soon as you do something that The System captures as misuse or abuse the warning will immediately follow. If the user refuses to pay attention to it or interprets it as a friendly warning, the next thing, he or she faces is digital extermination. PHASE TWO: A Good Rhythm As Spring turned into Summer my munching quota would keep in a comfortable hundred-people per-week. The game was fun and a nice rhythm was established. I discovered what I called “nests.” These “nests” consist of organized groups of people within the kingdom of Facebook that have already been harnessed by a shared interest. I found flocks of poets, packs of designers, and schools of professors, among many other forms of groupings and I joined them all as a fisherman discovering a fresh pond filled with curious jolly fish. One by one I ate them all to find some mornings my email account flooded with my new friends’ acceptance notices:

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To include my name in different groups had a twofold effect: It helped me build my personal facebook world as a brand by placing my name among those of famous writers, poets, and scholars. The expansion of this simulated simulation bore fruits and unknown people began adding my name to their lists. Perhaps they were also playing the same game. The idea of joining groups evolved into a more focused practical one: To eat people who might become influential and beneficial for me and my long term plans. Remember: This is a game! Survival is primal and point accumulation -scalp counts- defines the popularity and supposed success of a digital persona. This last observation is observable in the Colombian model Carolina Betancour. Her facebook world was filled with her apparently personal suggestive sexually charged photographs and hundreds of “personal” comments. To my amazement her friends’ count almost tripled mine. (Nowadays she has reached the total allowed Facebook quota of five thousand friends.) She did not eat people, she was playing a different game: To be eaten and digested. She was not playing a game, or was she? Her professionally made photographs worked as nectar to bees -to use a subtle metaphor. As I requested her friendship the new phase of the game sat in front of my eyes: Visuals. I needed more visuals; more shocking visuals and since I am far away from being a model or looking good in a swim suit I needed to design a different strategy. I thought I needed famous connecting -hyperlinking- friends. Facebook is after all, a platform for Public Relations disguised as a harmless playground.

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PHASE THREE: Hunting in the Kingdom of Fame. “Meeting” Carolina Betancour gave an idea to increment my people digesting quota. I decided to go after celebrities and world wide famous ones. At the beginning of this new face I took the following approach: To find a few highly valued pieces of this gigantic puzzle. Pieces I knew about and befriend their friends first prior requesting his or her friendship. As I moved forward into this new strategy my Ph.D. classmate Salvador Barajas was working in a research paper about the subject of Cannibals. Particularly, about Cultural Cannibals. His insights, and comments tied perfectly with this game I was playing. My eating habits were parallel to the definitions of cultural cannibalism I was hearing from Barajas. He talked about Oswald De Andrade and his Anthropophagy Manifesto (1928.) The Brazilian poet defined cultural cannibalism as the process of devouring and absorbing, opposed to imitating foreign ideas or copying influences from modernity. This process he claims creates an original Brazilian work. Assimilating those concepts and making those connections upgrade this game from inherent ludic status to a meaningful plan, a learning experience with a more practical vision without removing the its playfulness. The minutes devoted to people hunting soon turned into hours of a laborious process of selection. Choosing more carefully who person to add to my list and hoping, as in any hunting game, that the pray falls into the trap turned into a part time job in itself. When I found a very important figure in advertising for instance, like the CEO of a major Ad firm, I would first attack his or her friends list and befriend as many friends as possible. Then when some of the lures were into my list I would attempt to befriend the big fat fish. To my amusement I had a decent level of success as people would accept my friendship based in our “common” friends. Some other times, people would come back to me immediately puzzled for my friendship request posing questions and comments varying from: “Who are you?”, “I am sorry but I can’t remember where we met,” all the way to: “Who the hell are you?”, “Do I know you?”, or simply calling me a freak. When I had to confront those questions my real status would do the trick. When I told the inquisitors about the Ph.D. I am going through, my MFA, my perennial shield of former Fulbright Scholar, and the plans I have for the future in terms of establishing a Study Abroad Center for Interdisciplinary Studies they would ease their concerns and let me in, allowing me at the same time the continuation of my game. As my famous people list grew my mental mode slowly shifted from “pure gaming” to “serious linking” that contemplated the possibility of developing serious professional connections. I began then looking for famous influential people. That way my hunting game moved to the big fish in this electronic pond. I found and successfully ate Phillip Starks, Erik Spiekermann, Will Wright, Deepak Chopra, Diane Diamons, Chris Hansen, David Carson, Vincent Connare, Lev Manovich; among many other world celebrities. I even had a chance to exchange emails with Chris Hansen about his Dateline NBC show: “To catch a Predator,” and asked him about their maleonly approach. He said that experts claim that women don’t use the internet to do it. I couldn’t disagree more. Our “personal” email exchange didn’t move forward. This step open a new idea for my gaming habits where I foresaw a brighter future. One with the cliche quest of saving the queen from the powerful forces of evil but in this case there was no queen, no evil, no hero but all playing all roles all the time.

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PHASE FOUR: Reality and Imagination Collide. My new found more serious approach in this hunting playground throw me off the world of imagination into a new hybrid dimension. A dimension that combines the reality of what we perceive as real (as portrayed by media) and the electric fictional world of Facebook. Every morning during Summer 2008 I scanned the Washington Post from cover to cover looking for game. They were hidden behind a gigantic forest of letters and numbers. With a closer read one by one they appeared before my eyes. With a highlighting spear I ventured among pages and pages of texts finding out the names of important people. Important according to my professional needs and wants of course. Once I had the names I wanted to posses I would visit the vast kingdom of Facebook and through cross referencing research I would find the names I was after. Request their friendship and immediately, get into their friends’ accounts and request friendship among several of them. The idea behind this process was fairly simple. If the “famous” person has second thoughts about accepting my friendship request, it is most likely that he would double check the friends in common. If there are any the prey then would have found real friends therefore creating a communication void filled with uncertainty. A very important void that would become the password necessary to activate a potential simulated friendship. At this point of the game the path became blurry, I stepped away from the purely play aspect of it towards a more “serious” and practical approach. I registered some of my numbers as they increased unstoppably. I remember getting to 1000 friends. The craze was intense, two warning from The System followed and I managed to cool them off by slowing down my activities. This mental change from play to work also changed my hunting pattern. At this point I had created two Facebook Groups or Nests: One to declare the hatred of Comic Sans, a somewhat universal font face designed by Vincent Connare for Microsoft (Connare is my Facebook friend but hasn’t joined the group) and another one to gather my former classmates and alumni from my MFA program in Design at Virginia Commonwealth University. Both groups would gather a decent number of followers. I was so active in facebook that a friend of mine -one of my former studentsfounded a group/nest called “GUIDO SPAMS MY ACCOUNT” with a lot of people happily becoming members.

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FINAL PHASE: Towards a New Frontier. As my new hunting method slowly became an obsession I received my third warning to slow down my I-want-to-hunt-a-million-friends attitude. Wondering about the Facebook System and diving deeper into its roots I found out about the 5000 friend cap Facebook established and enforces. With limitations the game was not interesting anymore. I began stepping away from the play mode to the work one progressively. I turned my Facebook world into a portfolio piece and uploaded a lot of photos. I created several photo albums containing photos of my work and great work from my students in classes I have taught in previous years. As a way to increase my friend’s quota I linked my flickr photo account and my typepad blog to the Facebook site. The linking wasn’t electronic rather advertised. During my blog entries I ask people to join my facebook profile. The same request is post in the photo description of each photo in my flickr account. All this efforts towards a major plan of finding a full time teaching or administrative position for the next few years. One that will secure the completion of my Ph.D. studies. As you can read, the ludic diluted into praxis and now I am just one more Facebook user who plays from time to time with time, space, and creative ideas. It was August 26th 2008 when I died. I turned 37 and to my surprise I received lots and lots of happy birthday “wall-to-wall” messages. I honestly couldn’t believe it. I experienced an odd feeling that took me back to where I began: Simulation. All of a sudden I had greetings coming from people whom I didn’t know. Greetings from Europe, Asia, American, the Middle East. I got so many messages that The System -ZuckerGod threw me to the dungeons and let me die. By the end of my birthday I died digitally, I was no more. Immediately after I asked my friends to create a nest called: BRING GUIDO BACK TO LIFE as my last attempt to continue in the game. It gather more than one hundred people and arose many internal questions.

as reality and that is not going to change any time soon. As I resuscitated the experience that began as a Kinetic Imaging project was over for me. Over in the sense I played it during the peak of it. Now I am one more “Facebooker” of rather a strange by-product of this kingdom. People add me to their account on a daily basis. Some of them think that I am some sort of celebrity myself. I must be! How could they be wrong? I have 2300 friends now. I must be very popular, I live in Milan, and traveled the world. I continue to use Facebook as a huge portfolio piece that allows me to experience in flesh and bone -at least digitally- a great quote of my favorite philosopher Johan Huizinga: "Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing." Facebook is the ultimate interactive game. The new frontier is to create a proposal for a documentary about Facebook and the personal stories behind it. I believe there must be much to tell about it. I want to tackle this simulated social environment that does change lives, unite people, create businesses, gods, affairs, jobs, among many other unexpected uses. Until then I may call this project as:

Please insert a coin to continue

After sending three emails to the Company’s Warning Department they restated my account and by doing so Facebook killed my early idea of founding a Facebook Cemetery for all those electronics souls left in Limbo to perish out of loneliness. Baudrillard is so right, we embrace simulations of simulations

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