A term or concept · 2015 · Criticism
Who holds the dream
The standing question on this site. Whenever thousands of people dream together, check who owns the building they are dreaming in, what it charges, and whether you can leave with your things.
Not an academic term, it is a test, and it is the most useful thing the field never formalised. The feeling is the same whether the other end is a person, a corporation or a platform. Ownership is the only variable that changes the ethics, and it is invisible from inside the feeling.
Manipulation. One-sided attachment engineered for somebody else's benefit. Paid intimacy, parasocial persuasion, sasaeng, grief extraction, the streak. The lane that pays the bills and the lane that causes the most harm, frequently at the same time.
Consideration. The part where somebody stops and thinks. The research, the diagnosis, the ethics, the lawsuits, the regulators. Roughly fifty years of arguing with itself about whether this is a relationship.
Where it sits
2010 2010+ · 2015 2026
Provenance · 4 source record(s)
- retrievableThe ownership question, answered by a regulator: Linden Lab logged extent of play, connection location, every move, gesture, purchase and CHOICE OF WHOM TO INTERACT WITH - described as 'avatar profiling over an extended online experience'. Residents could not see that linkage happeningOffice of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (2008). Second Life: Privacy in Virtual Worlds. ↗
- needs-sourceNamed inside a compound citation that also named the work cited separately on this entry, which carries its own locator. This one is recorded on its own so that a single string is not standing in for several works. It has not been identified here - no title, no venue, no locator - and nothing is claimed about what it says. The string it came from is kept in
split_fromso the compound is still on the record.Linden Lab. - needs-sourceNamed inside a compound citation that also named the work cited separately on this entry, which carries its own locator. This one is recorded on its own so that a single string is not standing in for several works. It has not been identified here - no title, no venue, no locator - and nothing is claimed about what it says. The string it came from is kept in
split_fromso the compound is still on the record.testimony of Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale to the US Congress. - needs-sourceNamed inside a compound citation that also named the work cited separately on this entry, which carries its own locator. This one is recorded on its own so that a single string is not standing in for several works. It has not been identified here - no title, no venue, no locator - and nothing is claimed about what it says. The string it came from is kept in
split_fromso the compound is still on the record.Penney, New Virtualism.
INSTITUTION The fandom as institution
Connected · 3 out, 3 in
Reported as a story
It sits in