. The . Human . Direction .

(aka – The Nature and Evolution of Relationships)

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways…

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

Okay, sometimes I play online RPG games a lot – mostly because i like to, and also for professional reasons, and also because it helps me understand the nature of where this world is moving to.

(To that end I do other things too. i sin, i write, i sketch, i paint, i watch, i analyse, create, construct, sing, fight, and what have you.
do you know what one learns through doing all this?
one of the things is this – that the nature of the relationship is changing.

People are coming closer to one another. The implications of this are staggering when you consider emergence.

But thats a different story.

Almost.

Anyway, let me cut my bullshit and come back to what I was talking to you about).

So, someone i used to know on a MMORPG wrote back to me and at the end signed off, saying “- your gaming buddy”

Ah! I said. That’s a relationship.

Who was/is he?

He was/is a gaming-buddy!

Now, what the heck is that?

A new kind of a buddy, hm?

So what kind of buddies have newly come into picture? And what kind of terminologies evolve for these new paradigms brought about by techno-social change? Lets see if we can define some of them. and try not to glower in embarassment when we come across sexual paradigms that may leave one crimson-eared.

(Lol, yeah, there are a lot of weird people on the internet – including you and me)

So here we go -

BlogBuddy

Maybe this will cover someone who one knows through image sharing platforms, like Flickr?

gamebuddy

Oh well, you will know the bonds that exist between gamebuddies if you have battled monsters together, trekked across worlds to raise your game-buddy from a virtual death at the hands of a nefarious mage, or simply exchanged mods. A game buddy is a co-adventurer in a lovely world, and this makes for a lovely bond.

chatbuddy…

Simple, clean – someone you just chat with’

cyberguy/ cybergirl -
You do know that this relationship is the one that is the evolution of bf-gf relationship/paradigm. i’m cybering her (ie. cybersexing her). This means she is my cybergirl ie. my cyber-bf/gf

cyberdate
Meeting someone from one’s virtual world on a date. cyberdate has romantic or sexual connotations. you may anticipate some romance or make out. Its a boy-meets-girl thing – anything can happen – you do not rule out anything – like a sortie fully rules out romantic intent.
cyberparty or sortie
This means when one meets multiple cyber-buddies in real life.

Oh, and what do you call someone with who you have had virtual sexual contact?

(I am asking because, you know, one may have rare friends with who one has had some level of sexual contact sometime, maybe even eons ago, but now there may be just a pure platonic friendship. It happens)
And what do you call the ACT of having some real sexual contact with someone you know from the net?

But then contact is not just a toggle switch with only two on-off positions, right? In real life, you making out with someone is different from sleeping with someone. and kissing someone tenderly is different from digging into their underwear.

Even in sex we have categories and boundaries – damn! Where’s the freedom, i ask you?

Sigh, okay so, how do you grade sexual contact on the internet?

If I may venture, using a rising hierarchy (do correct me if I am wrong) -

The i-Index

(well thats the index that measures your sexual contact with some-one. i = information. Pardon me for being a bit poetic when I draw upon the biblical term of ‘knowing someone’)

• freely talk about sexuality (both ways)

• use sexual words in flirting (both ways)

• use actions or words that indicate a sexual act (both ways)

• exchange sexual likes or dislikes

• express non-phrased/non-actionword-oriented sexual desire or act

• cybering – you know what i mean

• camming – you are watching/performing sexual acts of the cyberdate voluntarily

• incamming – you are watching

• outcamming – you are performing

cammer
someone who is into cybercam kinda shit. they will either display or watch. Note that this is different from cyberhusband cyberwife – who have been virtually married to each other

cyberorgie or sorgie
this means when one meets multiple cyber-sex partners to have a real life orgie. okay, never heard of this one happening, but i am sure it happens. its gotta be – hell, its the internet, all kinds of weirdos around, including you and me.

cyberwife/ cyberman
Dare we think such things are happening? people are virtually each other’s cyberwives? cyberhusbands? Shall people one day spend entire days in virtual worlds, living there, earning there, fucking there, playing there? thus one could have a complete marital life there – actually, i think I had even heard of people getting married virtually – anyone know how they do it?
(you know what? I’ll tell you how cybermarriages will happen. someone who chooses to let someone look upon him/her all the time, will be considered to have shared a relationship? So bingo, the way to cybermarry with some is to remove the veil – cut the wall of privacy and share one’s full life with him/her. Well, what do you know? you can be in the next city, be with the other person all the time through video, audio, and co-live his/her moments when you feel like. You do know that there are tools that can let you have cybersex with someone, right? which may be controlled by the other via the internet? Dude, with these tools, someone can have a better sexual life in cyberspace than in real life.

(Oh yeah! Sex was always more between the ears than between the thighs!).

So you know what, till they popularize sexual interactive gadgets on the net, this cyberwife cyberhubby thingy is not gonna catch up – because you can’t have a hubby and wife who don’t have sexual access to each other! that would be stupid to expect!

And sharing all of one’s virtual friends with him/her. How about that? Being able to swap one’s buddy list on a messenger. Don’t we let our spouses into our friend circles, and does not a spouses acceptance into one’s circle of friends/family mean acceptance of the relationship by society? Any sociologist will tell you that a bond that is accepted by society is a stronger bond than the one that is not recognized by society.

So, would they need to build a buddy introducer into messengers? You bet they do. And someone soon will. It is destined to happen.

“Cool_guy, meet dapper_girl. dapper_girl, meet cool guy.

You guys have the following things in common” (choose tags – brazen, artistic, weird, post-graduate).

How many messengers allow you to mind-map the buddies on your IM?

Up to you from thereon, whether you hit it off or not or add each other to your buddy lists or not.
cyberbarrier/cyber-paat
This is the antar-paat, the cloth held between the cyberhusband and cyberwife that is cut. You know what this is? This is the veil of privacy. The veil of privacy is to be cut at the time of the cybermarriage. you may maintain financial details as confidential, of course. In the world of tomorrow, to be able to connect with you would mean to be able to share your money. Hence, one will need to have the cyberbarrier/cyberpaat to clearly exclude the cyber.
(antar-paat = sanskrit word for that chadar they hold between the bride and the groom, which is taken away just when they have to garland each other in the climax of their vows. maharastrians do that. and I believe bengalis, too?)

And, to put it in other words, to cybermarry is to cohabit, in a sense – you share the same space – in a way, one lives with each other in a common virtual space.

Just think – what is the virtual equivalent of co-habitation in the real world?

cyberpriest
cyber priest will be the dude/gal who officiates the cutting of the cyber-paat, when the couple gets married. What he does is – he essentially gathers a cyber-party together, configures the AV streams and then presses the button that cuts the cyber-paat.

(and hey, won’t we have a meeting organizer? to someone who you hand over your audio and video feeds and he/she connects them into the real-time graphic representation of the event? event representators – graphic programmers and UI designers need to think in this direction)

And yeah, you know – the instant messengers will come up with a funny thingy – the cyberwife or cyberhubby panel. cyber kid panel. this gives your messenger complete different panels, which still kinda stick inside each other and denote the cyber hubby. the messengers can charge for these panels – to empower cyber-hubby/cyberwife connections. so, even this is destined to happen. obviously dude.

And btw, if any of the messenger running companies have not clued in to the fact that they are only helping people talk better, and that they are not creating an entirely new social structure, then they would be really really daft. Obviously – see – the modern lifestyles leads to more isloated kind of lifestyles. however, we have always been following social structures that are old old old.
this is the turning point. and you can see it coming
After thousands of years, the social system changes suddenly.

ah, and can someone have multiple cyberhusband/cyberwife panels? I dunno.
and you must be thinking, this guy can’t be serious, he really thinks people will cut the veil of cyberprivacy?

Ah – consider that spouses will have their own panels – cyberhusband panel and cyberwife panel. (there will be cyber-kid or cyberteen panel, or cyber son cyberdaughter panel on their messengers.

And I am not just talking about cyberspouses – I include real-life spouses sharing the same virtual space – you have a common pool of friends, virtual spaces, environments, etc. Very obviously, a messenger that provides a couple panel will promote a virtual lifestyle that promotes bonding between spouses.

Not just the IM companies – every institution that is trying to promote the institution of marriage needs to promote this direction. Someone like the Church – which promotes monogamy and fidelity.

If the church does not promote new virtual paradigms that promote fidelity and monogamy, it will be fighting a losing battle. The virtual world is actually something that brings people closer. And this “bringing people closer” doesn’t have a format.

For those who wish to retain some of the old-world formats (like Marriage) will need to promote interactions that recognize the specialness of a bond between spouses. Right now, hardly any virtual space or application recognizes my spouse – her virtual designation is the same as that of any other person I know virtually.

Seriously, one wonders if all those vanguards of the sanctity of monogamy and fidelity and marriage are not able to see such simple things?
—————

Forthcoming post -

The Evolution of the Instant Messenger
Like I said, if any of the messenger running companies have not clued in to the fact that they are only helping people talk better, and that they are not creating an entirely new social structure, then they would be really really daft.

Summary -

The messenger needs to fuse with a mind-map system, where it shows contacts and people in a different manner. more important people are seen with greater prominence.lesser important people may float around in a really really tiny font size, and you are in the centre of this screen.
A simple search function can pull up their name and you are pointed at how distant you are from that person.

Do you know how fascinatingly the instant messenger can evolve in this direction of social organization?

The sooner the instant messengers can do it, the better it is.

Firstly, the IMmer needs to fuse fully with the phone. Then…

(to be continued)

. . atrakasya . .