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Media Ecologies 51relationship status and affection for one another on their social networkingpages, share their passwords, and have created a blog together. Clarissa saidthat when she first gets home she checks her MySpace page. Her avatar featuresher girlfriend and her kissing on the bus on the way to their seniorpicnic. Her list of “Top 8” friends prominently features Genevre in additionto her other close friends. Genevre’s presence is threaded throughout thepage, from the pictures of Clarissa and her at prom to the notes declaringlove and support Genevre leaves for Clarissa.During our interview, Clarissa expressed surprise when we logged on toher MySpace and saw a new addition to her site, saying to me that her girlfriendmust have added it. Clarissa explained that because she shared herpassword with Genevre, “I have not done my MySpace. It’s all my girlfriend,except a very little bit of it. My girlfriend’s done all the colors and all that.”Recently, Genevre changed Clarissa’s website again, altering the backgroundfrom a ballet dancer’s foot en pointe to a background of fanciful coloredhearts and transforming the text from a standard font to a whimsicallarge script. She also changed Clarissa’s avatar to a picture of her friends.Flirtatiously, Genevre left a note on the site reading, “So . . . yet again . . .Clarissa was hacked. . . . Her girlfriend was bored and her MySpace was boring,so I spiced it up!”Beyond the intimacy they created by sharing a password, the couple keepsa blog together on LiveJournal. While the site itself is public, Clarissa says, “Ido a lot of private entries that my girlfriend and I can read, because we knoweach other’s passwords.” When Genevre took a motorcycle trip for a week,Clarissa said good-bye and wished her well by posting a picture of an elaboraterose accompanied by a poem. In this way the two could remain digitallylinked, a way of being together even when they were not.In addition to her MySpace and LiveJournal sites, Clarissa spends muchof her online time on Faraway Lands, 7 her preferred hangout. Clarissadescribes Faraway Lands as a “really nice-quality, good, inviting, comfortable,fun place to be.” She finds it to be a community of supportive friends whohave high writing standards and creativity. Members must write intricatecharacter applications to join the site. These character applications areessentially 25,000-word descriptions of a given character, its race, its history,and its location. For Clarissa, an aspiring writer and filmmaker, this siteallows her to use “words like clay to create whatever stories suit your fancy.”She finds the community to be a “nurturing” one in which she is “able tofully develop intricate personalities and plots that in computer games, sports,and academics are simply not possible.” Faraway Lands is a text-based sitewhere members weave long and detailed tales about their characters’ questsand adventures.