Capitalism, Marketing, and the Insidious and Covert Co-optation of the

Capitalism, Marketing, and the Insidious and Covert Co-optation of the Self provide A Manifesto for Avatars 1. Introducing Avatars AVATARA-Sanskrit. ava-down, tarati-he goes, passes beyond literally, a descent, a conception described in the Bhagavad gita, fourth Teaching, 1-8 where Krishna confides when goodness grows weak, when evil increases, I make myself a body. (OED) Originally referring to the prosopopoeia of Hindu deities, avatars in the computing realms have come to mean both of the various strap-on visual agents that represent the user in increasing come of 2 and 3D worlds. (Lonehead, ONLINE SOURCE, NO PAGE NUM) This taste studies the covert, market driven forces at work in our choices of images for the avatars inhabiting cyberspace, in order to understand the dangers of the transform of self-images for advertisements. To forge a set of alternative resistant and forceful conditions for imagination what Sherry Turkle has termed the second self, tactics based in imagi ng, language, and psychology can be opposed to the insidious and covert co-optation of the self by commodities. This essay is an attempt to examine the construction of alternative figures as models of resistance. The Manifesto for Avatars offers a formal set of oppositional strategies for constructing unconsumable self-images. The apparent freedom of identity and gender enjoyed by the participants in multi-user domains and the Internet in general (Langley, Stone) is a dangerous illusion, cover the corporate agendas dominating the nature and spirit of the construction of cyberspace and avatars. think an internet chat room where we are all represented by the commodity of our choice. Much like the large, recognizable logos th... ...hler, L. Cartwright, and C. Penley. rising York New York University Press, 1998, 312-314 Stephenson, Neal. SnowCrash, New York, Bantam Books, 1992. Stone, Allucquere Rosanne.Will the Real Body Please point of view Up? Boundary Stories About Virtual Cult ures. In Cyberspace head start Steps, ed. Benedikt, 82-85. Talking Heads. Once in a Lifetime. Perf. David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth. Remain in Light. dumbfound Records, 1980. Thacker, Eugene. .../visible_human.html/digital anatomy and the hyper-texted body, CTHEORY, 2 June, 1998. Online, n pag. Oct. 1998. http//www.ctheory.com/a60.html Turkle, Sherry. The Second Self-Computers and the tender Spirit. New York Simon and Schuster, 1984. Ziff-Davis TV, Inc. If You Build It, They Will Come. thesite The Avatars 97 Conference. Aug. 1997 Online, n pag. ZdNet Sept. 1998 .