I need a cartographer, I’m so lost (The Bobba experiment)
To test my theory that everyone on Habbo Hotel only want to hook up with one another, I became a temporary hussy. I entered four different rooms, a dance party, the lounge, the hospital, and the salon, and began by asking the general public, “who wants to f#ck.” The phrase seemed generic enough considering I had witnessed countless people do the exact same thing. (An interesting note is that Habbo Hotel censors many vulgar words with the word bobba). I conducted my experiment around 3 pm. The dance and the lounge were very crowded, but the hospital and the salon had fewer people in it.
In the salon, hospital and the lounge, nobody answered my request. In each of these rooms, I went up to about five random people and asked them personally if they wanted to bobba. Interestingly, nobody answered me—they ignored me, walked away or told me to bobba off. I didn’t press my luck. One person even advised me to a specific dance hall where people love to bobba, and I should try there.
On a different note, when I entered the dance and asked if anyone wanted to bobba, I received many willing participants. People began approaching me and talking to me, asking me if I wanted to be their girlfriend and saying sexually explicit things. That was enough for me, so I left with my information.
I find this interesting because it was not what I expected at all. I thought the majority of people would be like those found at the dance; however, most people I talked to ignored me. I think this could be because of the group affect—when I asked this at the dance, everybody spoke up and then acted on it. In this way, it became socially acceptable. However, when I accosted the few people at the salon and the hospital, nobody accepted and this might have intimidated people. The lounge, salon and hospital area also might have found this statement embarrassing or taboo; it is not a space assigned for or accepting of bobba-ing.
I was exhausted and weirded-out by doing this research. Also, I felt like I was turning my avatar into something she is not; I don’t want her known as an online sexual deviant. Interestingly, on a different day when I was conducting research on what people like to do on Habbo, I approached “GlamGurl,” a white girl with a flower in her hair and a cute outfit on, and said hi to her. She did not respond, so I asked if I could ask her a few questions. She walked away saying, “Ew, get away from me, lez.” I followed her and tried to explain that the questions were for a class and that I wasn’t trying to be creepy. She ignored me; I then asked her why she didn’t want to talk to me. She responded by saying, “Cuz your enoying [sic]” and she left the room.
I called her a jerk; she hurt my avatar’s feelings. Maybe GlamGurl is as paranoid as I was in that everyone was trying to have a sexual relationship with her. However, I simply think that she judged my avatar’s pigtails and 3D glasses and deemed herself higher than me socially with her pretty flower in her hair. She’s a hata.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)

No comments:
Post a Comment