Would you like some virtual flowers on valentine's day?

by phil on Sunday Feb 13, 2005 12:13 AM

On any given Saturday night, some proportion of Americans has ordered chinese take-out and is watching sex-in-the-city episodes alone while petting their cat. Sometimes this involves wearing pajamas and taking scoops out of ice cream buckets.

My version is having a food coma from take-out pizza and flipping through online personals. In addition, I experiment with writing my own personals as a sort of Tarot card for how I am. Much like blogging, the process regurtitates myself back to myself, and always gives me something interesting.

But tangentially I found something interesting. I'm floating on hotornot.com and they have virtual flowers. They say, "sending someone virtual flowers increases the chance for a match by four."

I heard about virtual objects before in multiplayer games. In these games, you could buy a diamond or a piece of jade that would do nothing except demonstrate your willingness to convert money into an icon you can keep in your inventory.