Avatars Scare the Shit Out of Me

In order to share and watch online content with friends, I send them links through StumbleUpon, Facebook, or Twitter. I am not actually watching or enjoying anything with my friends at the same time, instead we give each other feedback sometime after through comments or tweets. So far, this system has worked pretty well. Qlipso seeks to expand upon the idea of sharing online videos with friends by giving them a platform to watch and share together--at the same time. Qlipso is sort of like a chat room where you get together with your friends and watch videos or play games. You can connect Qlipso to your other online accounts like Facebook, Myspace, or AIM so that you can easily find your friends and start watching together. To make the experience slightly more interesting/interactive/creepy users can have their own avatars that move around and interact with the video, like throw tomatos at the screen or flip around (..yeah).



Here's the thing, linking to content through Twitter or Stumble and commenting on it later works so well because not everyone is online at the same time doing the same thing. I love that my friend Christie will StumbleUpon funny sites while she's bored at work and send them my way. At the end of the day when I get home I have a bunch of cool sites to check out and I can write back to her about what I liked. If I could get five friends to not only be online at the same time, but to want to watch the same dumb viral video with me at the same time--as Qlipso is suggesting--my head would explode from the sheer unlikeliness of it. Also, avatars are fucking creepy. Mii's were cute for about a second before I wanted to run out of the house and as far away from technology as possible. Honestly, I just don't need a weird virtual representation of myself to watch online videos with me. I'm not that lonely, yet. There are just too many unanswered science fiction questions that are attatched to avatars. I'm not ready to accept them.