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[recollecters]

Welcome to Retrospec™, the last social media network you will ever need. You are one of the few selected to test this exciting new platform based on our cutting-edge algorithms. Less than two hundred invitations have gone out, and membership is not currently open to the public. However, we hope you will come to see how useful Retrospec™ is, given time. We have for your use a variety of features such as text, voice, video, and image posts. We encourage you to explore our many options. Anyway, now that the copypaste part is out of the way! Jim here, requesting you guys make your secret meetings a little more exciting. It's not like you're not trying with the whole "let's meet off the network!" dealio, but I have some serious concerns. For one thing, no secret handshakes or phrases? Not even dramatic meeting locations? The trying rating is about half a star if that. And I'm almost bored to tears with the whole back and forth about what's going on. Not bored enough to give you a cheat sheet, but still. I can't get myself taken off surveillance duty, so at least try to make it a little more exciting! You guys might like this wikihow. Later! Jim Halloway Research & Development Retrspec Incorporated Please feel free to use this post as a network mingle. Every toplevel can be considered a new post, and threadjacking is permitted. No NPC response will be given. Usernames are the character's full real AU names, not aliases or chosen nicknames or usernames, and seemed to have filled themselves in; nothing characters do can change or obscure their names currently. Characters who have been in game for more than one month will find they can change their profile pictures; newcomers are locked into their first choice. At various points throughout the day users will be sent images of themselves from behind, regardless of where they are. There doesn't seem to be any way to catch whoever might be taking and sending these, however, especially since being alone in a room doesn't seem to be a deterrent.

Comments

[roseblooms]

I suppose that begs the question of whether it's an accomplishment I should really want to have...well, accomplished, in the first place.

The forcible registry and candid photographs surely must be illegal, though, hadn't they, professor?

[daemonized]

Who knows? Maybe they'll let you choose which photos they post of you online. Wouldn't that be generous?

But to answer your question, they very much are trampling on various aspects of privacy law. However, they're hardly concerned, considering their lack of transparency allows them to evade any consequences. Since February, I've pointed out the lack of ToS. They've not changed a thing, and I don't think they plan to.

[roseblooms]

A dubious honor, to say the least. Even flattering photos are still photos I'd prefer not to have posted for anyone and everyone to see.

I suppose filing a formal complaint is the next step in the process, then, regardless of how likely it is to get results.

[daemonized]

Then allow me to be so bold in saying that you'd be wasting your time. Does dear Mr. Jim Holloway seem like the sort of man to take complaints seriously?

[roseblooms]

No, but I do think that this sort of thing is precisely the reason why a police force exists in civilized communities.

[daemonized]

The police are just as confounded as everyone else. If they've uncovered beyond anything what we already know, then I'm certainly not privy to this information.

[Sorry, Recolle PD.]

But it isn't all doom and gloom. Maybe you'll be sent something questionable from Retrospec in the mail. Again, how generous.

[THAT'S NOT REASSURING AT ALL PROBABLY but Ardyn is just being Ardyn.]

[roseblooms]

Something...questionable. In the mail.

I hope you don't mean the head of one of our missing horses, for example.

[daemonized]

Not at all. But if you'd refrain from giving Retrospec ideas, I'd be grateful.

Items don't need to be severed heads to be questionable, you know. They've sent pets, weapons, and clothing before. I think there was a golf club once.

[roseblooms]

I'm not sure what I find more disturbing — that someone sent a pet through the mail, or that I'm having a hard time imagining how a mailed golf club could end up disturbing.

[daemonized]

Would you not find it disconcerting to be mailed a completely innocuous item from a mysterious, unfathomable company like Retrospec? You'd start to apply meaning to it, wondering why, potentially losing sleep over not /knowing/.

[roseblooms]

Frankly I'd probably assume that was exactly what they were doing and refuse to let them engage in psychological warfare against me.

If it's a reaction they're seeking, it only seems reasonable to deny it to them however possible.

[daemonized]

Perhaps it is unrelated. But maybe it isn't. Some items are related to the memories. It's another level of worrying when the notion has been given physical form -- through the post, moreover.

[roseblooms]

Related to the memories? What do you mean by that, exactly?

[daemonized]

A friend of mine received items through the mail recently, all from Retrospec. One of them aligned with what he had experienced in one of his memories. A weapon of sort.

[He ignores the fact that the item in question was... sci-fi wrist blasters. A frivolous detail for now.]

[roseblooms]

...I hope you're not suggesting that this app is reading our thoughts.

[daemonized]

There are more fantastic theories floating around, you know. Mind-reading is tame in comparison. Alternate universes, past lives, et cetera. I feel as if anything is fair game at this point.

[roseblooms]

Plenty of cultures have subscribed to reincarnation beliefs over the years, but I think alternate universes are still fairly recent in comparison, and mostly the product of science fiction.

What basis have people found for a theory of alternate universes?

[daemonized]

Oh, certainly. But many here were not so willing to subscribe to this idea, at least not until Retrospec appeared and became keen on giving us existential crises.

[Is he exaggerating on the existential crisis part? Maybe. Is it something that might actually come to a head in the future if all of this keeps up? Probably.]

There is no basis, only speculation. The idea that some have been seeing impossible things -- magic and monsters, what-have-you -- is more easily rationalized when you discard the fact that it happened to them specifically. A glimpse into another person's life is easier to parse, even if one has to rely on the notion of getting a glimpse into an alternate universe.