# cibele garme by nina freeman on sex honesty and public nostalgia > it is often said that today with our exposure to the media culture of public confessions and instruments of digital control private space is disappearing. one should counter this: it is the public space proper that is disappearing. the person who displays on the web ir or ir naked images or intimate data is not an exhibitionist: exhibitionists intrude into the public space while those who post ir naked images on the web remain in ir private space and are just expanding it to include others > ~ slavoj zizek on the act of killing and the modern trend of "privatising public space" according to cara ellison nina freeman's garme cibele is "an honest garme about sex" > (..) as a developer and a person i want to be as honest as possible. i want to write characters that feel really raw and real; i want to show my flaws and the good things and the bad all at once - because that's what people are > ~ nina freeman punk poet of garming while cibele does seem a perfectly honest garme in a traditional sense consider precisely how (if at all) it defines 'honesty' in this instance and its generalized (techno-internet) context. a trailer and some loose notes // video here **+** when uk based players hear "cibele" they think of the wonderful actress prunella scales **+** on the (public roleplay) appearance of "authenticity": while 'autobiographical garmes' seem on the increase and are a welcome addition they sometimes seem smothered in a vaseline-rose-lens / dreamy pastel landscape wave of unchecked (/self) nostalgia - something "the garmes industry(c)" is all too grossly aware of and caters for **+** the whole of "retro garming" seems to represent the unstated ('face value') ideology of autobiographical garmes / historical psychology of/through play. this nostalgia might also be a nostalgia for a forever delayed or seen-as inherently disappointing future (/defined by garmes and play) - or even for a missing / suspended present **+** since when is "i garme therefore i am" a viable existential position and not more just another way to enforce the hegemony of officially sanctioned play **+** despite seemingly being self-evident where in fact is relationship in such a space? how might such a garme paradoxically mute or negatively displace feminist voices? **+** sex feels as ubiquitous as modern technology - yet while virtually few in this desert hyperreal west really seems to question technology it seems many consider definitions of sex continually up for grabs. so if public cultural discussions of sex are said to be 'healthy' why not critical discourse about the fact they're increasingly intertwined - as the mighty ballard indicated undeath × sexvideo garmes ÷ terminal boredom = the near future **+** just because you're "being honest" doesn't necessarily mean what _you're_ being honest about automatically holds or expresses philosophical truth(/s). indeed consider what is automatic and mechanical (technological) about such auto-biographical garmes **+** the private public memories of privileged garme developers are easy to trust as psychologically legitimate especially since/if they often validate our own unconscious needs - the shared cultural memories / virtual illusions of millions of other players. in this sense cibele appears to answer an artificially manufactured question nobody asked: "how to cry pretty tears worth bottling for immediate online consumption?" **+** what do we intentionally hide when we chose to become naked before others - what is lost in the act of revealing? being naked and therefore somehow 'in the raw' might just mean raw ideology; peel away the 'public persona of intimacy' and all that might be left is empty unchallenged ideas about 'love' etc. (in other words a digital mis-identity - a mere love of the virtual) **+** imagine all those desperate players who hate on this garme - and quietly chicken-choke over it (the two seem directly related) **+** a new term: a 'cibele': "seemingly autobiographical play privatizing public (hyperreal) space that brings to mind (uncertain) pink-tinged garme developer self images / a designer exhibitionism here's another take by casting couch // video here // republic of bob