I make my own avatars and so when I get cloned (which I do!) I take it rather personally. This then leads to me getting annoyed, tracking the IP address, searching all the Palaces for the offender, finding them, befriending them under a false name, stalking them long enough to get their home address, then going round to their house and setting about them with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.

This, I admit, is a bad thing to do, no matter how satisfying it is in the short term. I know this, because the voices told me.

So in the interests of staying out of prison, for a short time at least, I decided to try and see the other person's point of view. I did this by venturing into the land of Squigglynames and asking cloners what it was all about. Why do you clone when there are thousands of avatars available? Why has no-one ever shown you how to make your own? And where do you live exactly? That sort of thing

The end result was both enlightening and a little depressing. From my extensive survey, conducted from a broad sample of two, I found out the following:-

Cloning someone's avatar is done for two reasons. The first is the most obvious. People clone avatars because they like them, they want that avatar you are wearing and just because you don't want to give it away, well that's just tough. In a way it is a form of flattery, because they want your creation so much they will go to the bother of stealing it.

Reason two, has nothing to do with the actual cloning process and is more to do with being young at heart (i.e. a jerk) and gaining a great deal of entertainment from making people very mad and then running away. The fact that someone may have spent several hours making the avatar, just increases the fun. And the fact that someone can get so upset over what is just a bunch of pixels, just adds to the hilarity. It is in fact, a perfect way to annoy or bully someone for pleasure. In fact, after my extensive survey, I have come to the conclusion that cloning has very little to do with wanting an avatar and everything to do with psychological warfare.

So what is the SuperScoop conclusion to this whole business?

Well, I now understand the process a lot better. I know that when someone steals my avatar it is supposed to annoy me. So I don't let it anymore. If they want my avatar that badly they can have it. I mean, what are they going to do with it after all? They'll either wear it or erase it. It's not like they can sell it on the street or anything.

Yes, I'm a lot calmer about the whole thing now. But if I ever catch that little bastard who cloned me yesterday I'm going to beat the living……


END