6-degrees

I'm playing CoH the other day on a stress-break from class-work (which, in and of itself, is a whole, long, whiny post about my complete and utter lack of understanding marketing, its significance, or its validity) and round-about got hooked up with another online homo hero. I knew it was a homo-esque meeting because the other hero was be-decked in a cool rainbow-smeared unitard and had sparkling lights dancing around him. That, and he was fighting homophobia where ever it appeared in Paragon City, according to his bio. As I was playing my Castro Clone character, all shirtless, buff, mutton-chopped and harnessed, we hit it off and teamed up to spank the villains skulking around in the sewers of the city.

At a break in the play and some time later, he left and returned asking if I my name was Beau. I was stunned. In this particular game, there is no personal identification associated with characters so I literally had no idea how he could possibly know who I was so I admitted I was and asked how he could possibly know that. He said while we were playing, a friend of his called and in the conversation, he told him about the character he was playing with in the game and the friend knew who I was, because…wait for it: the friend reads my blog. It's one thing to get recognized on the street or some other public venue from a blog as so many have experienced (or more swanky, to get recognized after a steamy steam-room encounter like a very A-list blogger experienced a while back), but it adds a whole level of geeky nerd-dom to get recognized in a virtual multi-player environment using a character with no obvious connection to me or the blog.

Honestly, after the shock of it, I figured it was cool enough to make up for the multiple times I've been dropped out of a super-hero team in the game because the people I was playing with ended up being jerked off their computers by their pesky parents who were forcing them to go do their homework, or, as happened a few weeks ago, being forced to go down and eat their breakfast. That's seriously fucked up.