http://scoutshonour.com/donttakeitpersonallybabeitjustaintyourstory/
"Don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story" is a visual novel and spiritual sequel of sorts to Digital: A Love Story.
Seven students, three endings, one eavesdropping teacher. A full length visual novel about the erosion of privacy, gay drama, young sexuality, and the perils of modern online life for a high school literature class.
I just finished this and I like it quite a bit. I'd rather not say much more so as not to spoil things too much. Be warned though, there's some internet slang that some may find annoying.
If you haven't already, I would also recommend checking out Digital: A Love Story:
http://www.scoutshonour.com/digital/
My understanding of the ending:
The students never believed that their online communications had any privacy to begin with. Privacy for the student's generation is no longer assumed to be a default. Unlike the current notion that everything should be private unless you put it out there for everyone to see, for the students everything is assumed to be public unless you specifically try to keep it to yourself.
Arrianna mentions at the end (at least in the ending I got) that if she really didn't want Rook to see what she was saying about him then she wouldn't have posted it in the first place and had the conversation in real life.
Have you ever had something that you might have secretly wished a certain someone would stumble upon and find? This is pretty much like that.
The one big example of trying to achieve some privacy that in fact illustrates that the student's didn't assume their communcations were private by default was Charlotte's naughty pictures. While they fully expected anyone to be able to see their conversation if they wanted to, the pictures themselves were password protected using Kendall's middle name. Since her middle name is not recorded in anything that could be accessed by you in-game you would not have had any way within the game to find the password and see the pictures. This was the one attempt, and a successful one least as far as the game's story is concerned, at preventing Rook's potential snooping.
(yes, in real life middle names sometimes can be left out of school records for whatever reason, I remember mine was)
No, Kendall's middle name is not mentioned in game. In order to see the pictures you would have had to go out of your way and use means that are outside of the game, either by looking in game's files or by looking up the password online (you pervs :V ).
My understanding of the ending:
The students never believed that their online communications had any privacy to begin with. Privacy for the student's generation is no longer assumed to be a default. Unlike the current notion that everything should be private unless you put it out there for everyone to see, for the students everything is assumed to be public unless you specifically try to keep it to yourself.
Arrianna mentions at the end (at least in the ending I got) that if she really didn't want Rook to see what she was saying about him then she wouldn't have posted it in the first place and had the conversation in real life.
Have you ever had something that you might have secretly wished a certain someone would stumble upon and find? This is pretty much like that.
I got a similar ending, where she pretty much said 'really, I wanted you to see those messages' as well.
What I am wondering is whether or not Arrianna and Rook's relationship was as obvious to the students as the fact that Rook could see all of their messages was. I mean, there were a handful of times where Arrianna posted how in love she was on her wall and so on, and of course Taylor knew, as well. Sooner or later, I imagine it'd be less subtle than that.
The one big example of trying to achieve some privacy that in fact illustrates that the student's didn't assume their communcations were private by default was Charlotte's naughty pictures. While they fully expected anyone to be able to see their conversation if they wanted to, the pictures themselves were password protected using Kendall's middle name. Since her middle name is not recorded in anything that could be accessed by you in-game you would not have had any way within the game to find the password and see the pictures. This was the one attempt, and a successful one least as far as the game's story is concerned, at preventing Rook's potential snooping.
(yes, in real life middle names sometimes can be left out of school records for whatever reason, I remember mine was)
The whole premise, in that aspect, was that in that context, there's no such thing as 'privacy'-- just varying degrees of how much you disclose. Of course Charlotte and Kendall were gonna try to cover that much up-- even beyond the sense of 'I don't want Mr. Rook to see my naughty pictures, those could potentially damage his career if he's caught with said pictures. I dunno, it makes sense to me that way. Oh, and Kendall consistently remained the most awesome character throughout.
No, Kendall's middle name is not mentioned in game. In order to see the pictures you would have had to go out of your way and use means that are outside of the game, either by looking in game's files or by looking up the password online (you pervs :V ).
[/spoiler]
Thanks to that lemmasoft thread Suikama mentioned, I knew it right away, and well, I couldn't not try it. so....
Overall, I thought it was interesting, and you get used to the annoying internet-slang-in-speech thing. The only part I really didn't like was the Isabella suicide hoax. That was kind of dumb, I guess :S
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I do have to admit, I wonder how 'privacy' will actually be defined twenty years from now...