The Absurd and Amazing Adventures of Cafe Girl: Forget E-Harmony, This Is Way More Fun...

September 30, 2006

Forget E-Harmony, This Is Way More Fun...

And here it is. The result of a 14 hour labor of cyber obsession. Here is my very own WeeMee, a personalized avatar of me, complete with purple hair, Starbucks cup, and remote control.


I discovered www.weeworld.com last week. There was little ad on it on my AIM start page. I usually abhor IM--it's just a tool for work, so I can communicate with the work folks on the West Coast while still working out of Chicago. I almost always close out the AIM start page the moment it tries to load, but for some reason, the ad caught my eye. It said I could make a mini-version of me for my AOL Buddy Icon. One click, and... obsession.

Turns out Weeworld is a Scottish production, and MSN, Excite, Skype and Friends United users in Europe have been creating Wee versions of themselves for years. Weeworld launched in the United States in late September 2006 with a partnership with AIM. Days later, it became my addiction.

What's there not to like? You can create everything about your WeeMee from face shape, to hair style and color, to emotions, to wardrobe, accessories, and interests. Once your WeeMee is your AIM buddy icon, it has emotions and responses based on what you type and what emoticons you use. Type in LOL and your WeeMee's head expands. Type in YES and it gives you a thumbs up. A NO gives you a thumbs down. Add an angry emoticon and dark clouds form accompanied by lightning. I've had conversations with real human beings that weren't as emotive.

There's something about being able to control and create something in a life that is otherwise unpredictable that makes WeeMees so fascinating to me. My WeeMee is a combination of who I am, and who I want to be. I spent at least 20 minutes scrolling through the available cartoon hairstyles to find the one that would most look like mine. I picked a Starbucks cup (and hooray for WeeWorld for adding Starbucks as a selection) and television because I am addicts of both.

And yet, when it came to selecting an environment for my WeeMee, I picked the beach, my fantasy, where I hope to be. Yes, given my way, I would be at the beach with a cup of Starbucks (grande Americano in a Venti cup) with my television. Granted, real beach combers will roll their eyes since neither Starbucks or television really embody "the beach life", but in my Weeworld, I can do whatever I want.

And that, is precisely the joy of the WeeMee and the WeeWorld. It's a space to make what ever you want, whenever you want.

Hey, it's a much better (and cheaper) cyber obsession than eHarmony.com, which was my cyber project this summer. Who needs to be charged a fee, in hopes of finding love online, just to be rejected by total strangers from Wisconsin? Not even Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but middle of nowhere farmland Wisconsin.

I'll stick to the old fashioned way of finding love for now--church potlucks, awkward flirting, and office crush stalking.

I'll save the cyberworld as a space for my creativity and my imagination.



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