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Publisher: Christopher Kamper Copyright: Š 2008 Christopher Kamper - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 All Photographs, Design, Concept, Interviews: Š 2008 Christopher Kamper
Third Editon London, UK 2008
This book is dedicated to its protagonists: Ming, Philip and Cindy. Thank you so much for letting me have some insight into your life. 4
In Real Life How does somebody who spends 24/7 on the net look like?
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Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Philip (Otaku) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Ming (Lolita) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Cindy (LARPer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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ith this book I would like to introduce three extraordinary individuals. Ever since reaching their adolescence,
the world wide web became the very center of their social lifes. Nevertheless, this book is not a case study about internet users. Philip, Ming and Cindy have something more in common: every one of them has a remarkable hobby. Before this project started, I have never met any of them in person. We knew each other for a long time through chats and discussion boards, but this was the first time in Real Life.
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Otaku Otaku or (ă‚Şă‚żă‚Ż)is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly in anime, manga, and video games.
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hilip collects figurines based on animes, mangas or games. The prices of these dolls range from â‚Ź15 to several hundred
Euros. Until now, Philip has spent over â‚Ź 1500 on figurines.
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pending the days in front of the screen is Philip’s life - in his case three computer screens. One is for the Internet, one
to read manga and one to watch anime series. To quote Philip’s website: “It really all started when I got my first holy broadband. Fansubs opened the door to a world to which the commercialised majority refers as freaky, perverted, geeky and nerdy.”
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hilip is now in his fourth semester of Asian studies. He has to learn both Korean and Japanese. In his final year, Philip
wants to live in and continue his studies in Korea for one semester. Culturally, Japan would be more interesting to him but judging from his own experience, Korean social communities are much more accesible than their Japanese equivalent.
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nother of Philip’s hobbies in papercraft. Papercraft or papermodeling is similiar to Origami and can be extremely
complex. Many companies in Japan offer free models of their products or merchandise. The models you can see here are either from Star Wars or Gundam; an extremely popular anime series from Japan.
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any people might find this odd, but Philip is a big fan of metal music. Despite being the only Otaku there,
Philips goes to at least one metal festival each year. Although lately, too many Kiddies go to these festivals, he says.
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Lolita Lolita (ロリータ・ファッション) is a Japan-based fashion subculture that is primarily influenced by Victorian children’s clothing as well as costumes from the Rococo period.
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ing is now 15 old years old. After gaining access to the Internet by the age of 10, her primary occupation be-
came ‘downloading pictures’, she says - mostly pictures from Japanese Lolita fashion magazines, of course. Since imports are very pricey, Ming creates the majority of her fashion by herself. This makes tailoring her second hobby.
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hen we arranged my visit Ming invited some of her friends around for a small ‘Lolita Convention’. Please
rotate the pages to get the most out of the portrait-format pictures. It was the very first time for Ming to meet Kristina (black hair) Babette (light pink dress) and Sabeth (black skirt) in her own house; all of them only know each other through their participation in Lolita web-communities.
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LARPer LARP (or live action role-play) is is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters’ actions.
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indy was born in a small town in the middle of Germany. At the age of 14, she was first exposed to the internet.
Cindy told me that she has often snuck to the computer in the middle of the night while making her mother mad with exaggerated phonebills. The internet and the people she met there have always been as real as anything else to her, she says. Cindy is now 20 years old and studying applied informatics and electronical engineering in cooperation with Siemens.
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ther than Philip or Ming, Cindy’s hobby was not primarily triggered by the internet, it is just mainly being acted
out there now. Cindy started playing roleplaying games when she was 10 years old; ever since, she wrote stories, invented characters and became the ‘gamemaster’ (the storyteller) in various roleplaying circles.
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lthough Cindy is into all kinds of roleplaying-systems, Midgard was the first and is still her favorite. Fynn, an
elven witch from the dry lands of Buluga is her only character that made an appereance in real life, but is nevertheless played in a variety of ‘traditional’ role playing systems. On the page after next, you can see Fynn as she appears gridbased roleplaying game. You can also see Cindy’s equipment to play Fynn in Real Life.
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