Java House #3: The Dos and Do Nots of Online Role-Playing

A little over 285 Days Left until Dragon*Con 2010. This edition's Countdown pic is of the lovely Jennifer as Slave Leia!

Okay, so anyone who has or had a Myspace or Facebook account has seen this before; Online Role-Players. Now by Role-Playing, I'm not talking about the kinky stuff couples do to keep the romance alive, nor am I talking about RPGs. What I am talking about is a person pretending to be a fictional character online, and creating a social networking account for said character. Now on the surface, there's nothing wrong with that. Heck, how many of us went out and portrayed our favorite cartoon characters in the backyard when we were kids? However, there does come a point when it gets out of hand, and can even negatively affect others. So now I give you the Dos and Do Nots of Online Role-Playing.

DOs:

PLAYING A CHARACTER YOU COSTUME: I notice some of my costuming friends have at one time or another created a special account for a character they really enjoy costuming. I think that's really cool. They bring the character to life at conventions, so why not bring the character to life online? Plus, it's fun to see a person posing in that costume in various pics. A good example is my friend Maygin who costumes an amazing Anastasia DeCobray (aka COBRA's Baroness from the classic GI Joe cartoon). She is one of my favorites as that character, and even though she no longer uses the account, I happened to catch it and it was cool seeing her giving a favorite cartoon character of mine flesh and blood in the pics.

NON-COSTUMERS USING ART AND MOVIE STILLS: Now not all people who want to role-play are great costumers, so they use art and movie stills. As long as they are not blatantly stealing someone's personal art and claiming it as their own, that's cool. Like me playing Batman in the backyard as a kid, they are just having fun and escaping from the real world for a while.

DO NOTs:

PHOTO/IDENTITY THEFT: This is a BIG No-No that could get someone in BIG trouble. This is when a non-costumer who role-plays a particular character begins to steal pics of costumers who do costume that character. People may argue with me, but to me that's a form of identity theft. This is even more evident when they post a caption under a costumer's photo saying something like "This is me at San Diego Comic Con". I recently became the victim of one of these people as they used a photo I took of a good female friend of mine in costume. Not only that, they allowed "friends" to leave obscene comments about her. That in itself is a big No-No. You don't talk crap about my friends!

DISRESPECTING THE CHARACTER: If you are going to role-play a beloved fictional character, don't degrade or disrespect the character. Don't make an honorable character out to be sleazy, slutty, or comical. Well, unless the character is sleazy, slutty or comical to being with, but we are talking about honorable characters here. A good example here is a non-costumer Slave Leia role-player who was on my friends list for a brief period of time. She would IM and flirt with me "in character" and talk about how dedicated she was to her master. Okay, as I recall Princess Leia was 1) not a slut and 2) was not really all that loyal to Jabba since, um I don't know, she choked his fat-ass out shortly after her enslavement!

BEING OBSESSED: Okay, this goes to costumers or non-costumers. Play a character, be a character for a short while at a time, but don't "become a character". Don't take on the persona so much that you think you own that character. That's just mentally messed-up right there!

So bottom line here, role-playing can be fun not just for the role-player, but their friends as well. But it only works if it is indeed all in good fun. Don't take it too far, don't harm reputations or violate the online privacy of someone you probably don't even know. Don't turn something fun into a sick, sad, pathetic obsession that not only hurts others, but harms the REAL you.

So that's the rant this time. Thanks for visiting the Java House!