Japanese Girl Sensation: Virtual Boyfriends (Webkare) | Hacker News Reader

Japanese Girl Sensation: Virtual Boyfriends (Webkare)

techcrunch.com

25 pointsblackswan24 comments

I'm really curious why this is cast as a "Japanese girls are lonely". My girlfriend also watches those horrible Asian romance dramas and (jokes notwithstanding) I'm pretty sure the reason is more to fulfill her sappiness quota and not to cure her deep aching loneliness.

I think its more notable for its interesting game mechanic and the utterly evil method they have for getting high page counts per user. (I mean, it seems that the company just implied you advance in the game by looking at pages you wouldn't have looked at normally. Devious!)

...to fulfill her sappiness quota and not to cure her deep aching loneliness

Just like boys who play counterstrike do it to fulfill their violence quota? Give me a break.

So boys who play counterstrike do it, instead, because they really want to kill people?

Depends if it's monday.

Ok it's not only in the west the programmers are focused on bullshit...

"... Ok it's not only in the west the programmers are focused on bullshit ..."

Making things that people want?

People simply wanting it doesn't make it important or useful in objective terms. Diggers, for example, really keep up with the service, even though a) almost all of the stories are a waste of time and b) almost all of the commenters are hilariously misinformed, to put it politely.

By that standard, any kind of entertainment is worthless.

No, I don't think so. I think there is entertainment, like reading a good book, or listening to good music, that is worth something because it ... helps you in some way, and entertainment like digg, which is just a complete time sink.

This essay by Neal Stephenson puts it into words better than I can: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html

What's a good book? Harry Potter? Shakespear? What's good music? Beethoven? T-Pain?

More importantly - who is the judge? The government? You? If so, then are you allowed to decide what is 'good' for others? Are they allowed to decide what is 'good' for you?

You see what I mean? There is no absolute when it comes to entertainment. There is no good or bad. There is just stuff that entertains, and stuff that does not.

"... What's a good book? Harry Potter? Shakespear? What's good music? Beethoven? T-Pain? ..."

    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
    Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
    And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 
    The Sonnets, 18.

    http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/wssnt10.txt

Shakespeare not "Shakespear".

I thought that spelling was not standardized in his day, so that any one of a number of variations would have been acceptable?

http://shakespeareauthorship.com/name1.html

in his day, probably.

Shakespeare can hardly be classified as entertainment anymore. The english is just too old and too difficult for most people to read to be anymore than a chore.

Harry Potter is REAL present-day entertainment, and anyone who wants to get into the industry has to understand that.

"... The english is just too old and too difficult for most people to read to be anymore than a chore ..."

Good point.

Now if we are talking say "The A-Team" I'd agree. Bodie, Doyle, Tiger and jewelry man, Mr-T. I can see how some might spell Mr. Tee, Mr T or even Mr. Tea if you're a Brit. But meddling with the spelling of the greatest, most recognised writer in the history of English literature?

"... Harry Potter is REAL present-day entertainment, and anyone who wants to get into the industry has to understand that ..."

I agree J.K. Rawlings, is a modern master of story telling. But I can name plenty of classic literature novels that have gone straight to mass visual media bypassing their literary cousins. Behind each great bit of entertainment is a great script. A lot of these scripts are based on classic lit.

There are always absolutes.

For me, good entertainment is that which does something new. Something stimulating.

That was really outstanding (as Mr. Stephenson often is).

Good move substituting his argument for yours, as I didn't think you had much of a point, but now I think maybe you do. :)

I used to like Reddit but now the comment list consists of embarassing, crude language and long threads of puns which aren't funny.

This (more stupid bullshit) was my initial reaction but it's ultimately a very subjective thing. Tim O'Reilly's piece the other day reminded me of that. Only the people who make something can tell you whether it was worthwhile for them to make it. We may not like it and we may think it's a waste of time. But the creators might not.

On the other hand, it's sometimes hard to be honest with yourself about this. There is the pet rock mentality which says "if I can just build something stupid that everybody falls for, then I can make a lot of money and it will be so easy." Looking at Web Kare, I actually don't think this was their approach at all, but I hear different versions of this all the time. If you ever catch yourself saying something similar, then it's probably worth examining whether you really think it would be a worthwhile thing to build.

So girls are getting virtual boyfriends now? Great. My chances were bad enough already.

3 of the boys look like girls... True to the tradition.

Doesn't sound very "girls only" to me...

Only in Japan...

The Japanese seem more ready than most to project human feelings onto cartoon characters. Thus the popularity of cartoons focused at young adults in Japan, as well as the phenomenon of cartoon pornography.

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