Made avatars last night with the family and compadres. My daughter read out loud the Daily Action. She cracked us all up when she finished, saying, 'I just don't get one thing, so what are stereotypes?' We had a discussion on gender stereotypes as well as cultural ones, but before we could get too deep K. plunged into dobbleme to get started on  her avatar, translating the programme for my comadre as she went along.  Once she saw how straightforward it was despite the English, my comadre chose to have her avatar toting a laptop at the beach, saying "No soy ñoña, soy brillante Y divertida."   I had a hard time getting her point - ñoña, she said, means nerd or geek. And the avatar was saying with defiance, I'm no nerd!!  I said, so what's wrong with being a geek?  My comadre said that was her whole point.  The problem with ñoñas are that stereotypically they are always closed up in with their computers (my comadre was quick to tell me, 'with no offense at all intended, comadre'), only interested in being first in the class or studying, with no social life or life at all. She says you can be nerdy and have lots of fun, too. Being smart and skilled with technology doesn't mean that you aren't social.

 

K. explored every single option available to her in doppelme. We must admit serious interest in the superman outfit. But you had to have 8 points for that one. And how do you get points in doppleme?  By referring other people to doppleme to make their avatars. And what is doppelme's privacy policy????  Well, it is posted, but it doesn't say what it does with the information when you refer someone to the site.  It does say: 

Information is collected for the following purposes:

Completing an activity or transaction
Website and system administration
Research and Development
Tailoring content according to user interests
Contact users for marketing

The following organizations have access to the information we collect.

Ourselves

Our web site uses cookies to enhance how it operates and ensure we better serve our visitors.

Okay, I can deal with cookies, am glad to see that supposedly they are the absolute only ones who see the information that they collect - that seems to imply they don't sell it or give it to anyone else.  But that "contact users for marketing" makes me nervous and think SPAM..... Soo, we sent off a quick email to the folks over at doppelme to ask them to be a bit more explicit about privacy and point-plumping referrals (so we can make our cool supergirl avatar) and also how much contacting for marketing they might be doing.  We'll see what they have to say.

And meanwhile, tho frustrated by the limitation to only ONE accessory for her avatar, my daughter had no trouble choosing the top priority - a puppy dog - and thus her avatar says "So I love dogs, WHAT'S IT TO YOU?!"

(k. is with me as I type this and says, can you add something? I ask, what? and she says: Doggies are sooo cute.  My daughter has a one track mind.)

My daughter also helped her dad to make an avatar.  She offered to make it for him, but he assured her that after seeing her go through every. single. image. and. combination possible he'd kinda gotten the drift. No need to translate or help out. 

He called his avatar "Mona" - which can be a name or mean "cute woman-cutie".  When he was finished I asked him what he was trying to say with his avatar, and he said - It's not what I'm saying, it's about what YOU think when you see him/her, and what Mona saying "Aren't I cute?" makes YOU think.

Hmmmm. What does Mona make you think????

We came up against a technical problem when making Mona, too. For some reason, tho s/he appeared with hearts in the background, every time we saved her image in doppelme the hearts disappeared.  My daughter asked, Why can't he have hearts?!!  And all of us gasped, thinking we had some heart-censoring for male-identified avatars going on over at the doppelme system!!... but no, the hearts didn't appear when Mona identified as female either.  false alarm!

By the way, those folks over at doppelme seem very interesting. have to admit I love that the doppelme avatars don't have super cleavage, muscle monsters, or cinched waists. And the definition of doppel was interesting, too:

Dop⋅pel⋅gäng⋅er [dop-uhl-gang-er; Ger. daw-puhl-geng-er]  –noun: a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person. origin: 1850–55; < G: lit., double-walker

 

And guess what, they got back to me ASAP on their privacy policy, thanks Andrew!! Here's what they have to say:

Thank you for your email.  I must stress that we value privacy very very highly.

 If you register with us, your details will not be passed on to any third
party. We wont bombard you with emails ourselves either - we use your
email address to send you details of your account (and also to send you
forgotten login details if requested).
We have never sent out a marketing email - and once logged in , you can
choose to opt in or opt out of any any update emails that we may send out
(which average 1 per year).

As for any emails that you enter as part of the referral program - these
details are not kept (by us or anyone else) and, apart from the invitation
email sent on your behalf, no other contact is made to those addresses you
enter.

I hope this answers your questions.
I will see if we can make this information more clear on the website for
future visitors.