Despair and Virtual Farming
by Jake Teresi
I’m 1.5 months into the post-production of a faux-documentary I shot this summer called Make Them Cry (a sort of vestigial title) and I am lost. It’s one of those films that walks the line between fact and fiction and has a collage-like structure, which I thought would be easier to edit than a straightforward narrative. However, at this point, I’m not sure what it’s about.
When people ask about it, I tell them that it’s about a teenager who rapes an older women over the internet, in Second Life. The older women has such a connection with her virtual avatar that she is traumatized by the incident and can no longer log on, and, in effect, her life loses meaning. Cool, huh? The people who I tell this to seem to think so.
The thing is it’s not really about this at all.
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