Maybe you saw her at Creek Cooking, chillin' and skillin'...Perhaps you were behind her in line at that tatoo joint,
where she giggled as she got a moon and a pentacle etched on her right breast? Or was it left breast? Were you LOOKING? Then
you saw her prancing around some of the top wiccan lots, asking lots of endearing, innocent questions? You may have danced
with Selene under the Sim moonlight, whispering sweet nothings into her ear....played at a pool table with her to green yourself
up, while admiring her lovely leather outfit. Maybe she IM'd you, "hi hon how r u" and you asked yourself -- how old
is that girl?
Now you don't have to wonder about Selene anymore, or ask, "Selene, what's your story?" Because Selene is a hoax, made
up, a Sim, a simulated being, who is not run by a 15-year-old girl in suburban Houston who's dad works at NASA (she made that
stuff up about the Mars rover), but by Dyerbrook, a 29-year-old unemployed warehouse clerk dividing his time between jobs
in NYC and Chechnya, ME....otherwise known to you as the bartender at that seedy Motel of Last Resort, Flamingo Court in Alphaville.
There were a couple others involved, but we will protect their names for now so they won't be hassled.
Yes, Selene Moon is an utter fake! A group of three-four players got together and thought her up one evening as a way
to spike the Alphaville Herald. Selene Moon is our spoof Sim! Well, sure, as the great Hiawatha Bray, technology reporter
for "The Boston Globe" reportedly asked another Sim we know, "Aren't all Sims spoof Sims?" Why, yes, of course! But this Sim
is more spoof than most: there is no 15 year old girl in Texas (yes, Uri, we know you always check the ISP addresses),
there is no aunt, there is no cousin in JP, no witches, no spells -- they are all pixels. *There isn't a grain of truth in
anything that Selene has said because it's all made up.*
Why did we do it? AV Herald's editor, Urizenus (Prof. Ludlow at University of Michigan) wants everyone to believe he
is engaging in serious research. He gets paid to do what we spend money on! He's writing a book, so he says, about how people
form groups in games, and these interviews he does on Yahoo Messenger or in the game are the material he is using to make
judgements about what goes on in the game. We thought it was high time to pull the rug out from THAT bubble-machine dream....and
show him the power of the individual, the role of one Sim who tries to do something different, and doesn't fit in the group
or the crowd or the pattern sought by the scientist...
Let the academic world -- and the public at large -- beware! It's shockingly easy to create a Sim, make up a story,
and tell it to Urizenus and have him publish it -- no questions asked! *This is his research material -- the stories
of simulated characters!*
How did we do it? One night a few of us were tossing back a few pixelated punches at a well-know AV gathering
place and we said, "What kind of story could we make up to perpetuate a hoax on AV Herald? It better be something credible..."
Your faithful correspondent wanted to have some migraine-addled middle-aged soccer mom dressed as a young Sim hottie
wih a headline like "I Was Will Wright's Love Slave Bot" -- but my co-conspirators threw cold water on that one. The
real Will Wright has *long since* left the game -- he was taken off further TSO design -- and doesn't make story bots or any
cheat bots for that matter and doesn't care. That was a non-starter. Hmm....how about the story of Walt, age 55,
a Walmart store clerk in Kenosha, WI, who unwittingly takes up with a 12-year-old girl in Tightwad, MO dressed up in Bella
Goth's leather jacket who says she is 32 and is a very good speller? "I Was a Kiddie Diddler--And Didn't Even Know It!" Um...the
cybering cradle-robbers bit had already been done a bit ad nauseum already in AV Herald. Certainly nothing about BDSM -- yikes,
THAT's been done to death...
What's left? We wracked our brains. How about Selene Moon (heck, Selene *means* moon), teenage witch? Thus, Selene, age
15 (we were all careful to memorize that birth year of 1988) was literally born under the light of the full moon last month
-- SUCH a coincidence! (As Selene would say, careful wat ur playin' with hon!)
One of our number said she better be in leather...oh, and a tatoo would be nice...and for pity's sake, don't let her
spell TOO well...in fact, make her a bad speller. Another of the co-conspirators helped out on teenage Internet chat slang
and witch lore. A different person was 'driving' Selene at different times, so we had to keep frantically IM'ing each
other with updates to keep her credible -- and then AV would be busy and someone would flub their lines!
Thus Selene tripped her way through Alphaville, and in a surprisingly short time, had befriended some of the top witches
and pagans of AV, picked up all kinds of lore about witch stuff, and got to work. We aged her out a bit, picked up some
skills -- cooking and charm (that's what the kids call it so they don't have to spell charisma LOL) to raise folks from the
dead -- and before long, she showed up on the doorstep of the AV Herald. "how come u nvr write about witches?" she tapped
out to Uri in an IM.
Uri, pretending he was "just a friend" of Urizenus (who happens to operate the same Yahoo Messenger address) *immediately*
asked to interview her. It was THAT simple!
We made sure that the person who dialed into Yahoo Messenger was in another state, not with the same ISP as Dyerbrook
in New York LOL (yes, Uri, we know you're always snooping on people's addresses). The interview was given, and some more titillating
material delivered later in IMs (if only we had the patience to wait for THOSE particular chestnuts to roast on the fire!
mmmmm!)
And walla, the deed was done. After what seemed like days of blogging about BDSM and what-all, and a few stories about
other games and issues where we began to get worried that Urizenus had forgotten to "write more about wiccan," bingo, there
she was, "INTERVIEW WITH SELENE MOON" at www.alphavilleherald.com. It was just that easy.
