Hi everyone,
Have you ever heard about the ‘Cloud girlfriend’? Now it is the time for every lonely man, they are being given the chance to boost their Facebook relationship status - by dating a virtual girlfriend. By this service, you can change your status to be ‘in a relationship with XXX’ immediately.
What is a ‘cloud girlfriend’? How does it work? The "perfect girlfriend" then sends you public messages on your Facebook wall, so you can deceive your friends into thinking you have a girlfriend as well as make you feel like you have a companion.
For the cloud girlfriend, there are some details about it. Cloud Girlfriend will consist of a network of real human beings, not automated bots, which users will interact with over Facebook. The virtual relationship can help guys to get a real girlfriend. As the visitors might think, "Someone else thinks highly enough of this person to date him, so maybe I should too.
Cloud Girlfriend is not a porn site or adult chat service. It is a creation of human relationship. It fulfills psychological needs like intimacy and friendship even though the interaction is virtual. These interactions can even build self confidence and help users navigate real-life situations.
So we can see that cloud girlfriend is a kind of product in sense. It is packaged as a real friend or partner to the user. This issue refers to the topic of Week 6, our ‘Friends’ in network.
Most of the user in facebook regards their profile as important; their status is a sign of them. Profile construction is a need for every user, how do you represent yourselves to others? It is what we called ‘The impression management’. People know you by your status and profile. In mediated environment, people must learn to write themselves into being. It is not only to flavor yourself, but also to contain a good image to your friends: You are a good guy, so it is welcome to have a friend like you.
Cloud girlfriend is advertised as a 'public long-distance relationship'. In my view, it is only a kind of commodity or product. The service is a commercialized relationship; it is under a structure, to contain a good feeling or mood to the user. Satisfy their real need, but in a virtual world.
Besides, cloud girlfriend is not controlled by machine or computer, all of the cloud is run by real people. It comes to a question, can it be a being? A virtual girlfriend is managed by a real officer; I would argue that it is a constructed relationship, a fake of being.
Moreover, this case tells us that most of us can do anything on the internet. There are variable of ‘self’ on the net world, no one really know what you have been done (maybe you are chatting with friends on window massager, but on the other side, you are visiting the porn website…) You can be what you like: open a fake account, meet a lot of new friends, create a new network with others, that is your new identity on the net.
Ref:
Dailymail.co.uk. (29th March 2011) “Lonely men looking to boost their Facebook status with a fake relationship can now apply for a 'virtual girlfriend'.”
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1371115/Cloud-Girlfriend-offers-lonely-men-fake-Facebook-relationship.html> (accessed 17 April, 2011)
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