Japan’s newest Web sensation is “Webkare,” a site that’s part social network and part dating simulator. Girls (the site is targeted exclusively at females) try to win the heart of one of four male Anime characters through cut-scene “conversations,” and must collaborate with other Webkare members in order to advance their cause.<\/p>\n
The site is immensely popular–it had 10,000 members and 3.5 million page views five days after its launch–with 52% of users in their 20s and another 18% 30 or older. The article questions whether “such an idiosyncratic way of curing loneliness” would work for a Western audience. I can think of a few thousand socially-inept geeks who might approve.<\/p>\n
I can envision all kinds of add-on modules and personality packs: Ask the cute girl in Accounting out for coffee, then go home and spend the next few days practicing your moves with her simulacrum.<\/p>\n
(Of course, if she ever finds out<\/EM> about the simulacrum it might be a little creepy….)<\/p>\n Link<\/A> (via Posthuman Blues<\/A>)<\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Japan’s newest Web sensation is “Webkare,” a site that’s part social network and part dating simulator. Girls (the site is targeted exclusively at females) try to win the heart of one of four male Anime characters through cut-scene “conversations,” and must collaborate with other Webkare members in order to advance their cause. The site is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1205,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}