{"id":1036,"date":"2006-10-01T14:59:35","date_gmt":"2006-10-01T18:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1036"},"modified":"2006-10-21T10:59:46","modified_gmt":"2006-10-21T14:59:46","slug":"a-santa-claus-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1036","title":{"rendered":"A Santa Claus Reality *Update*"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just happened across not one, but two entries (“Avatarization of you<\/a>” and “Avatarization of you 2<\/a>“) on Terra Nova that relate to some of my previous comments (reLink<\/a>) regarding the potential for some surprising mashing up of real and virtual persona … not just on an individual basis, but on a group level on both sides. What I don’t see yet is an indication of how far-reaching this could become.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning I woke up with the thought that perhaps the best current example is Santa Claus. Here’s why:<\/p>\n

  • Santa Claus presumably started off as a real person.<\/li>\n
  • Santa Claus is “real” for children, but unreal for (most) adults.<\/li>\n
  • Real people become<\/em> multiple Santa Claus’s every year.<\/li>\n
  • Santa Claus is represented in many media formats.<\/li>\n
  • Santa Claus has been a product spokesperson.<\/li>\n
  • Santa Claus collects real money for charity.<\/li>\n

    and most importantly<\/p>\n

  • Real people who assume the Santa Claus persona behave as<\/em> Santa Claus (usually).<\/li>\n

    There are probably plenty more line items, but you get the point I hope.<\/p>\n

    I can’t think of any other persona that exhibits so many of the qualities I’m trying to imagine. What’s interesting to me is that what has taken centuries may now occur in months. And that has me wondering if someone will eventually create a virtual character and move the virtual persona out into meatspace instead of the real person and go down a similar path. What would have happened if Fatal1ty<\/a> had never shown his real face and instead existed only as a virtual adversary? And what if that persona became the seed for another kind of Santa Claus? Things to consider.<\/p>\n

    {Update – not important enough for a new entry, but I was cleaning up some links and found something I’d saved about a band(?) called Art Brut that is\/was doing something related to this subject. I might have mentioned them before; I forget. You can read about them on American Public Media Marketplace – Link<\/a>.}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I just happened across not one, but two entries (“Avatarization of you” and “Avatarization of you 2“) on Terra Nova that relate to some of my previous comments (reLink) regarding the potential for some surprising mashing up of real and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}