Our family is fascinated with technology of all kinds. We have interacted through a variety of technology that is amazing in its evolution!
Personally, I have never used an alias either for email or for internet games… it never struck me as very ‘honest’… it doesn’t pass — as Karen says — the transparency test. However, I have learned there are plenty of ‘innocent’ alter egos on the game sites and on one of our favorite hangouts… FACEBOOK.
I was playing an on-line game on FACEBOOK called Mafia Wars and had my head handed to me by one of the more experienced players. He must have taken pity on me as he gave me a couple of ‘hot’ weapons and some ‘advice.’ First thing I need to do was to open a second Facebook identity and let this ‘alias’ do many fund raising tasks for me. So I thought I’d give it a try and … sure enough it is working wonderfully….
So, I chose an alias. As a young child growing up, I enjoyed the various heroic stories of the magnificent Spartans. King Leonidas met the Persians at about my age… no spring chicken … and I thought I would tip my hat to him by adopting his famous name. I noticed an interesting phenomenon in this game among young male gamers who adopt the picture of what they might call a ‘babe.’ WHY? Well, part of the strategy is to build a powerful mafia family and honey attracts bees.
Anyway, there is no real deception as to who I am on the game as I am ‘fully disclosed’… but it is an interesting study in how people act in on-line games.
Roger