Online Caroline, non-guilt, Big Brother

I first logged onto Online Caroline for about 30 seconds, looked around, thought she was a real person, and then logged out. I thought she was just another blogger. I was tired that night and decided to put off "playing" with her until the next day.

The next day, I read Jill Walker's essay on Online Caroline. It was during the reading that I realized Caroline was fake. I "spoiled" the story for myself before I could even start my "friendship" with Caroline. I walked into this "relationship" already skeptical because of Walker's analysis, and after about 10 minutes of being Caroline's "friend," I was convinced this was not for me. I echo a lot of skepticism that others, including crashingintowalls and tophat1,talk about in their posts. I mentioned in some comments in other people's posts that the over-friendly tone, though aimed at making the situation believable, actually has the opposite effect. Caroline's attempts at moving this friendship forward had a negative effect on me. The web designer's "tools" of friendship, including personalized emails and a conversational, direct tone makes the "player" realize that this situation is forged, fake. Like other people have mentioned, the personalized email does not feel personalized--rather, it seems contrived to me. It seems to me like the web-designers are forcing the friendship onto the participant, wanting desperately for us to buy into their scheme. But, as many of these posts seem to suggest, it hasn't been working for the most part.

After both getting to know Caroline and reading Jill Walker's essay, I have to say that I disagree with Walker's points about feeling guilt. Impotent, yes. Guilty, no. Walker says that she's "left feeling responsible for her [Caroline's] fate...I've distracted her by being her friend and reading her story. If I hadn't read, she'd have lived. Reading, in Online Caroline, is being an accomplice to murder." (308) Well, quite literally, the willing interaction of the participant allows for the progression of the story; however, because the story is very much pre-determined, it is NOT our fault that Caroline suffers the fate that she does. While I agree that the reader gets "played," I disagree that the average reader becomes a guilty, responsible party.

Also, I'm still trying to figure out what the "point" of Online Caroline is. From Shock and Awe's informative post, we find out that PlanetJemma is the educational tool of a worried British Council bent on turning the British Isle's teenage girls into science lovers. What's the goal of Online Caroline though? What I took from it was that it was yet another experiment for us to test out our relationship with narratives and the internet. It also seemed like another way in which an already-overstimulated population of adults can find another form of online procrastination and waste their time. If the creators are serious, are they encouraging us to become "friends" with fake computer people? It also seems to suggest that we need to supplement our social skills with relationships with these fake actors. I'm kind of uncomfortable with this, and I guess that's one of the reasons why I was pretty hostile to Caroline during our friendship. I don't know, maybe I'll warm up to her just a little bit later? ...hmmm, I kind of doubt it.

Another thing that I wanted to comment on was Walker's note about the attempted personalizations that the website makes based on our choices. Walker compares this aspect to sites like epinions.com or amazon.com which give us personalized recommendations based on our choices, and it reminds me of how big-brotherish the internet will soon become. This incredible access to information is at once scary and amazing. And that scary part is also exactly why I gave Caroline a fake name, fake information about myself, and my "other" email address. We mustn't reveal too much about ourselves, now.