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Publisher: Christopher Kamper

Copyright: © 2008 Christopher Kamper - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

All Photographs, Design, Concept, Interviews: © 2008 Christopher Kamper

Third Editon

London, UK 2008

This book is dedicated to its protagonists: Ming, Philip and Cindy.

Thank you so much for letting me have some insight into your life.

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In Real LifeHow does somebody who spends 24/7 on the net look like?

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Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Philip (Otaku) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Ming (Lolita) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Cindy (LARPer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

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With this book I would like to introduce three extraordi-

nary individuals. Ever since reaching their adolescence,

the world wide web became the very center of their social lifes.

Nevertheless, this book is not a case study about internet users.

Philip, Ming and Cindy have something more in common: every

one of them has a remarkable hobby.

Before this project started, I have never met any of them in person.

We knew each other for a long time through chats and discussion

boards, but this was the first time in Real Life.

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Otaku

Otaku or (オタク)is a Japanese term used to refer to people

with obsessive interests, particularly in anime, manga, and video

games.

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Philip collects figurines based on animes, mangas or games.

The prices of these dolls range from €15 to several hundred

Euros. Until now, Philip has spent over € 1500 on figurines.

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Spending the days in front of the screen is Philip’s life - in his

case three computer screens. One is for the Internet, one

to read manga and one to watch anime series. To quote Philip’s

website: “It really all started when I got my first holy broadband.

Fansubs opened the door to a world to which the commercial-

ised majority refers as freaky, perverted, geeky and nerdy.”

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Philip is now in his fourth semester of Asian studies. He has

to learn both Korean and Japanese. In his final year, Philip

wants to live in and continue his studies in Korea for one se-

mester. Culturally, Japan would be more interesting to him but

judging from his own experience, Korean social communities are

much more accesible than their Japanese equivalent.

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Another of Philip’s hobbies in papercraft. Papercraft or paper-

modeling is similiar to Origami and can be extremely

complex. Many companies in Japan offer free models of their

products or merchandise. The models you can see here are either

from Star Wars or Gundam; an extremely popular anime series

from Japan.

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Many people might find this odd, but Philip is a big fan

of metal music. Despite being the only Otaku there,

Philips goes to at least one metal festival each year. Although

lately, too many Kiddies go to these festivals, he says.

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Lolita

Lolita (ロリータ・ファッション) is a Japan-based fashion

subculture that is primarily influenced by Victorian children’s

clothing as well as costumes from the Rococo period.

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Ming is now 15 old years old. After gaining access to the

Internet by the age of 10, her primary occupation be-

came ‘downloading pictures’, she says - mostly pictures from

Japanese Lolita fashion magazines, of course. Since imports are

very pricey, Ming creates the majority of her fashion by herself.

This makes tailoring her second hobby.

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When we arranged my visit Ming invited some of her

friends around for a small ‘Lolita Convention’. Please

rotate the pages to get the most out of the portrait-format pic-

tures. It was the very first time for Ming to meet Kristina (black

hair) Babette (light pink dress) and Sabeth (black skirt) in her

own house; all of them only know each other through their par-

ticipation in Lolita web-communities.

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LARPer

LARP (or live action role-play) is is a form of role-playing game

where the participants physically act out their characters’ ac-

tions.

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Cindy was born in a small town in the middle of Germany.

At the age of 14, she was first exposed to the internet.

Cindy told me that she has often snuck to the computer in the

middle of the night while making her mother mad with exagger-

ated phonebills. The internet and the people she met there have

always been as real as anything else to her, she says.

Cindy is now 20 years old and studying applied informatics and

electronical engineering in cooperation with Siemens.

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Other than Philip or Ming, Cindy’s hobby was not prima-

rily triggered by the internet, it is just mainly being acted

out there now. Cindy started playing roleplaying games when she

was 10 years old; ever since, she wrote stories, invented characters

and became the ‘gamemaster’ (the storyteller) in various roleplay-

ing circles.

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Although Cindy is into all kinds of roleplaying-systems,

Midgard was the first and is still her favorite. Fynn, an

elven witch from the dry lands of Buluga is her only character

that made an appereance in real life, but is nevertheless played in

a variety of ‘traditional’ role playing systems.

On the page after next, you can see Fynn as she appears grid-

based roleplaying game. You can also see Cindy’s equipment to

play Fynn in Real Life.

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