HEATHERS

Originally published May 13 and 14th of 2003 here.

In "Heathers", the 1989 black comedy starring Wynona Ryder, a trio of girls, all named Heather, all among the most popular at their high school, form a nuclear-powered clique that manages to both beguile and terrorize their peers. While the humor is totally over the top (quoting lines like "Corn nuts!" is sure to make your cooler friends giggle), the movie is also credited for being dead on in its portrayal of cliques and ostracization, especially among young women. (It was a reference point, for example, in "Girls Just Want to be Mean", last year's fascinating New York Times article on the subject.) The movie's a cult classic (and deservedly so), so when I exchanged cards with Bel Muse, and I noticed that she belonged to a Second Life group called The Heathers, I first assumed it was comprised of folks were fans of the movie, or maybe just Wynona.

Not quite either, as it turns out.

The Heathers of Second Life were formed (and quickly disbanded) a few months ago, says Bel, in response to a controversy "about a phenomena called 'rate mining'. Basically some players felt that people were playing the ratings systems and taking advantage of it." So after kidding about it with some Lifer friends, she says, "We decided to be The Heathers...kinda like a joke about popularity."

All that probably requires some translation, for non-Lifers, so here goes: In the game, players have a menu which allows them to rate other players, for qualities such as Building ability, Appearance, and most key here, Behavior. (I.E., how likeable you are.) For the most part, rating is a fun way for players to reward each other's creativity and friendliness-- though there is also a cash value for a high rating, because those with a top ranking get a bonus amount of Linden Dollars, added to the stipend the game pays out to all players every week. And if you're up there in the top ten of a category, your name is also published on the website’s Leader Board-- so everyone can see, for instance, whether you’re the most popular person in the world...

Back to Bel, and the birth of The Heathers: Eventually, there was a reaction against the leader boards. Some Lifers began to complain that others were 'rate mining': that is, pressuring other players, especially newcomers, to rate them. "According to the myth," she says, "[rate miners] would show up at social gatherings with the intention of rating people in order to get ratings back. Some people will return a rating out of politeness, so there's a certain percentage you might get back, just by rating every person you saw. Other people are so bold as to say, 'I've rated you... now rate me'."

"But how do you know you'll get a good rating from random strangers?", I ask her.

"You don't. But if you are socializing, interacting with people, being nice," she says, you tend to rate people well. "So I felt that the system encouraged socializing and decent behavior, and had a mechanism to chastise outrageous abuse. But that was not good enough for other people."

Arguing that it was an abuse of the game mechanic, some of them began lobbying Linden Lab to change the rating system, to somehow crack down on rate mining.

This struck Bel as absurd. "It wasn't as though you can 'rob' a rating a knife point, or coerce them. But to read the [Second Life website] forums, you'd have thought newbies were being clubbed like baby seals for their ratings. 'Don't do it for me, do it for the poor defenseless newbies!'" And while you might expect these protesters to come from the less popular players, bitter that the ratings system was making them feel left out, that wasn't the case at all, says Bel. "The ones that demanded the rating system be changed to protect the helpless newbies were popular themselves." In other words, the argument broke down between popular players who were fine with the ratings, and a group of equally popular players, who weren't.

"Competition of cliques, seems like," I suggest.

"Yep. All dressed up to look like it protects the little guy."

One of Bel's main objections to this argument was the judgment it made on the way people played the game. "I think people accused of 'rate whoring' were no such thing; they were just social, or popular because they were nice. But because they appeared on leader board, the assumption was that they were [there] through unsavory methods.” Accusations of rate mining got so heated, she says, when people would rate someone, they'd try to distance themselves from the debate by saying something like, "'That was freely given with nothing expected in return'." Trouble was, that just led to accusations of reverse psychology, because, "people even considered *that* rate whoring, because that was taken as a pre-emptive rate." The back and forth accusation sometimes felt like "a witch hunt", she says. And after some midnight grousing, she and two of her friends giggled themselves into hatching up their comical protest against all that.

So after having enough of the "rate mining" accusations, Bel started The Heathers, as a satirical response to the brouhaha. "Just a weird late night joke, 'cause we were fed up with a small group making all of Second Life paranoid," Bel says. "Because in the movie the characters were ruthless and had a reversed ethics. Here we were supposed to be guilty about being popular, but we didn't feel like we should."

"But which of you was the Wynona character?" I ask her.

"No one was Wynona," she jokes, "'cause none of us had a conscience." And as in the movie, "it was really only a group of three," she says, "and we addressed each other as Heather... but late-at-night sense of humor is not always easy to translate to the next day." And soon enough, someone dropped a hint to her, that important Second Life players did not think much of The Heathers. "You have only such a sliver of this particular story," Bel warns me, "it's hard to flesh it out, and it involves people still in the game. Some players have more influence than others, have followings. So if you get in bad with one person, it can have wider consequences...I did not want to stir the hornet's nest, so I let it pass." The controversy waned, but according to Bel, "The effects linger. The movement on the leader board is starting to speed up, but had stagnated for long while, 'cause folks were inhibited [about rating] -- still are."

"So that's the story of the Heathers," says Bel Muse, "the group that never was." Bel is quick to acknowledge that she's only relating her side of the story, and some of the major participants on the other side have since left Second Life. (And for those that are still here, I'll gladly let them present their side, in this space: [email protected].) But ultimately, The Heathers and the anti-Heathers really came down on either side of a judgment call that really isn't so far removed from what happens in real life. If a co-worker is extra friendly to the boss, for example, can you safely conclude that he's just butt-kissing to get a promotion? But what if he really likes the boss, and getting a promotion is only an afterthought -- while *you* don't like the boss, and your own desire for a promotion is clouding the way you see things with them?

Or, as Bel Muse puts it: "How can I tell if you are genuinely socializing with me... or just stringing me along for a rating?" But even if someone might be acting friendly, with an agenda, she asks, "[H]ow can a third party decide with assurance what is going on? And what if I don't care you had an agenda? What if I enjoy talking so much, I give the rating 'cause I consider fair exchange? Then what business is it of [a] third party?" A good question. In any case, perhaps the continued growth of Second Life makes a repeat of the Heathers incident unlikely -- and that odd eruption of jealousy and cliquish infighting a thing of the past. (Though human beings being who they are, it'll undoubtedly come out, in some other form.)

Meanwhile, says Bel Muse, "[N]ew waves of immigration have changed the shape of the board, as new people come in, without pre-conceived notions. "They rate others in their group, while oldsters rate at a slow pace, and so are overtaken ultimately. Evolution!"