Avatar seducers and beggars

Ashley Madison' Sensuous Kitten, Gizmodo

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A New World Notes post today was titled: With Ashley Madison's Babe Bots, Life (Once Again) Imitates Second Life. If you'll remember Second Life is that virtual world that seems to have faded into obscurity. It hasn't died yet, though. It still has residents, around 43 million of them, not all necessarily actively playing.

Keeper of New World Notes, Wagner James Au, in his article links to Annalee Newitz's How Ashley Madison Hid Its Fembot Con From Users and Investigators. She writes:

The developers at Ashley Madison created their first artificial woman sometime in early 2002. Her nickname was Sensuous Kitten, and she is listed as the tenth member of Ashley Madison in the company’s leaked user database. On her profile, she announces: “I’m having trouble with my computer ... send a message!”

Sensuous Kitten was the vanguard of a robot army. As I reported last week, Ashley Madison created tens of thousands of fembots to lure men into paying for credits on the “have an affair” site. When men signed up for a free account, they would immediately be shown profiles of what internal documents call “Angels,” or fake women whose details and photos had been batch-generated using specially designed software. To bring the fake women to life, the company’s developers also created software bots to animate these Angels, sending email and chat messages on their behalf.

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Second Life: Sign at a high traffic shop, New World Notes

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And speaking of avatars that act as decoys meant to suck your money, take a look at beggar bots in Second Life (aka flatterbots). Here's a sample:

James Au: I didn't reply [to Flatterbot1] or give her any money, she just ran through her script from start to finish, even after I'd left the area. Now compare the speech above with this snippet from the second flatterbot I dealt with that day:
Flatterbot2: don't you be pushin me!
Flatterbot2: I'm just kidding but we can be bumper car avatars!
Flatterbot2: holy crap you have an amazing avatar!
Flatterbot2: I am art retarded, I never make good avatars! Did you make yours?
Flatterbot2: I just got back to SL from a long break, omfg everything is so different
Flatterbot2: you look like you have been in SL for a long time, have you?
Flatterbot2: being back here after so long I don't remember anything about the sliders at all, I keep making a chubby round face lol

Apparently, while some scripts are automated, some are being run by a person at a keyboard. James reports on Flatterbot3:

This morning I popped over to a store with a heavy bot presence and while I received the same tired story from today's bot-du-jour, she was simultaneously arguing with a customer in local chat who had presumably called her out:
Flatterbot3: I can just tell by what you say that SL is all you have
Flatterbot3: that is reserved for fat people who are quite invested in a subreality
Flatterbot3: because they can't make stuff happen irl

This is a virtual world that simply mirrors "real life (rl)."

-- Marge