Our mission is to study Gaia Addiction by doing polls, identifying all signs of addiction, testing treatments and proceeding with experiments to gain insight into the phenomenon.
The Institute has many labs and offices (mostly empty right now). We have a swimming pool and fitness center for the employees. Bedrooms for test subjects involved in long term studies. But the most popular is the hall lounge where staff members and addicts share freely among themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------
29/05 - Cancellation of the dice game
15/03 - New dice game promo
15/03 - Hat giveaway cancelled
09/12 - 7 new symptoms added to list (about time too)
13/09 - Hat giveaway beggins
12/06 - Survey 251v3 updated to 251v4
12/06 - Survey 251v2 updated to 251v3
01/06 - Main survey hits 8000!
23/05 - All research assignments cancelled. (restructuring)
18/01 - Member list reaches 50
09/10 - Vice-President officially back from extended leave.
02/08 - Employee of the month : Eathlinn; Runner-up : Yero.
04/06 - Main survey hits 7000!
03/06 - Employee of the month : Eathlinn; Runner-up : Insomnia.
27/05 - Institute hits 2000 pages.
01/05 - Employee of the month : Insomnia; Runner-up : Eathlinn.
22/04 - Main survey hits 6000!
13/04 - New employee (o0Meg0o) and survey 251 up and running.
08/04 - Gaian Typology Research Project 848v3 up and running.
01/04 - Employee of the month : Insomnia; Runner-up Eathlinn.
26/03 - Main survey hits 5000!
22/03 - New cool headers
11/03 - Main survey hits 4000!
09/03 - New section: Preliminary findings.
02/03 - Employee of the month : Insomnia
27/02 - 12 new symptoms identified.
24/02 - Main survey hits 3000!
23/02 - New Proofreader hired.
17/02 - Staff nurse hired.
11/02 - New employee rule added.
10/02 - Survey 777 has been reviewed and revived.
08/02 - Symptoms are now classified by severity.
02/02 - New membership policy.
01/02 - Two new addiction symptoms recorded.
28/01 - Survey 603v3 revived and updated.
02/11 - New symptom added.
11/10 - New symptoms added.
30/09 - Survey 583 has been updated to better reflect Gaia's new and improved activities.
31/08 - New symptom reported.
28/08 - Survey 583v2 revived... slight link problem.
xp (edit: problem fixed)
24/08 - Another survey has been revived.
12/08 - New symptom of addiction added.
03/08 - Another survey revived. Put it in the GD forum this time and boy are the votes pouring in.
eek
01/08 - I decided to add a little something to let people know about the memberships and how to get on the list... Oh we've got ourselves an artist on staff now. Woot!
29/07 - Woohoo! The first of our revived survey got its first hundred votes, but instead of reviving another survey I decided to rekindle the original survey, the one that started it all. Behold.
12/07 - Yay! One survey back up and running, many more to go.
23/06 - Darn! The thread reverted to an earlier version. Some stuff got lost. Worst of all, survey results are gone. The surveys themselves have vanished and can't be brought back apparently. The survey threads still exist but they are pointless without the polls so I am remaking the whole lot of them one by one.
------------------------------------------------------------
Survey 111v3 :
Longest time on Gaia? (
reactivated : 475 votes)
Survey 216v3 :
Average hours online per week? (
reactivated : 609 votes)
Survey 251v4 :
Gaia s coolest game? (
activated : 24 votes)
Survey 487v2 :
Effect on daily life? (
reactivated : 387 votes)
Survey 583v3 :
Most addictive element of Gaia? (
reactivated : 303 votes)
Survey 603v3 :
Why have more than one account? (
reactivated : 449 votes)
Survey 777v2 :
How many Gaia friends? (
reactivated : 316 votes)
Research project 848v3:
Gaian typology. (
ongoing)
------------------------------------------------------------
(Last update: 09-03-2006)
- 18% of Gaians got themselves secondary accounts in order to gain more goods and gold.
- 20% of Gaians claim to having only one account... so far.
- 31% have undisclosed reasons for having more than one account. We suspect a part of these are actually just pollwhores, which would put them with the 18% mentioned previously. More research is being considered.
Friendlist
- 40% of Gaians have 20 or less people listed on their friendlist.
- 11% of Gaians claim to have over 120 people on their list. It might be of interest to find out why some people would have such extensive lists.
Effect on daily life
- Interestingly the results are spread evenly between level 1, 2, 3 and 6 with around 20% each. Level 4 and 5 getting significantly lower numbers. We suspect there might be a threshold beyond which the addict is unable to evaluate his own situation objectively.
Addictiveness
- Playing dress up seems very popular as 31% of Gaians say the avatars are Gaia's most addictive feature. There is a chance that playing interior decorator may become equally popular with time.
- 24% suffer from gold-lust. What proportion of these are purely greedy or if this is a result of a need to buy new clothes regularly to play dress up is unknown.
- More research will have to be done on this complex issue.
Time spent
- 24% of Gaians are online between 5 and 15 hours a week which is reasonable. The numbers slowly drop as we look at higher figures.
- We see a spike at the 60 hours a week mark where another 24% of Gaians fall. Whether this time is actually spent in front of the computer is not known.
- 28% of Gaians claim they have at least once stayed online between 6 and 12 hours straight. We probably have weekends to thank for that.
- Values drop as we look at shorter and longer timespans but again there is a spike at the higher end of the spectrum. 15% claims to have stayed on more than 60 hours straight. We assume there was at least one bathroom break taken during this time.
------------------------------------------------------------
* latest symptoms identified
The first signs...
* You cut corners to have more online time, like only eating frozen diner, cleaning up your room using a shovel, etc.
(Simon Salomon)
* When conversing in real life you wait at least a minute between comment.
(darkefyre)
* You include Gaia emotes in all your school essays or office memos.
(Shyla)
- Your posting average is around 30 a day.
(Simon Salomon)
- More than half the doodles you make while pretending to listen to the teacher are drawing of your avatar.
(foghorn_moonlight_goddess)
- Words like "huggle" and "glomp" are now part of your everyday vocabulary.
(foghorn_moonlight_goddess)
- You check your Gaia messages before your regular E-mails.
(foghorn_moonlight_goddess)
- You try using Gaia emoticons in forums outside of Gaia.
- When sleeping, you dream you are still online.
- You cannot be found more than 5 feet away from your computer for at least 24 hours straight.
- You use to work "gonk" to express fear, pain or great insatisfaction.
- You Instant Messenger's buddylist is composed mainly of other Gaians.
- Your avatar figures as your icon for all your instant messenger programs.
- When shopping you reffer to clothes by their closest Gaian equivalent (example: "OMG! Looks at the musketeer shirt over there!"
wink
- You named (or are thinking of renaming) your cats Coco and Kiki.
It's official...
* You brings your iPod, cellphone, etc to the batroom so you an keep playing on Gaia without interuption.
(The-Kroe)
* You're mom/spouse/firend tells you to hurry up and get ready and you say, "Hold on, I have to equip my clothes."
(L.C.S.)
* When writing you often glance at the top right of the page expecting to see your gold total.
(darkefyre)
- Your posting average is around 60 a day.
(Simon Salomon)
- Your main goal in life is getting in the Gaia Spotlight.
(Rei Nekono)
- You use your lunch money to make donations to Gaia.
(animegurl8584)
- You made or thought of making a thread like this one yourself.
(foghorn_moonlight_goddess)
- You have enough clothes to dress your avatar in a completely different outfit everyday for a month... maybe two.
(foghorn_moonlight_goddess)
- You start skipping meals, school, doctor's appointments and other important activities in order to spend more time on Gaia.
(DDR_Queen)
- You want to change your real name to your avatar's name. You can hardly remember your real name anyway.
- In the morning, you go through your closet and all your drawers wondering where you put that damn (insert Gaia clothing article).
- You walk through a mall and see something and think to yourself :"That would look great on my avatar".
- You actually buy an article of clothing thinking it would look good on your avatar.
- You are on a first name basis with all the Gaia servers.
- During real life conversations, when a long silence sets in, you feel the strange urge to blurt out the word "bump".
- You start renaming your pets or plushies after Gaia NPCs.
- You've been drawing yourself in a realistic way for year and then suddenly find that you are drawing yourself with blue hair and mini wings.
- Your morning routine involves coffee and a shower but only after some Gaia.
- You have set Gaia as your homepage on your computer... and any other computer you get your hands on.
- For the 2k5 Halloween event you didn't bother getting zombified.... you already were.
- When something goes wrong you blame Sushi.
Beyond help...
* You've forgotten that there is more to the internet than Gaia.
(Plantmage)
* Your inventory contain enough letters to give a mailman a hernia.
(Simon Salomon)
- You name your first born after a Gaia NPCs or Admin.
(Simon Salomon)
- Your posting average is over 100 a day.
(Simon Salomon)
- You turn down a real date because of your gaia marriage.
- You don't even respond to your real name anymore.
- You keep with you a pad of post-it so you can go around posting in real life too... and go back to check your post-it for replies.
- You wake up in the morning and feel you head for your Bunny/Kitty/Dog ears and you scream in horror thinking they were hacked off during the night.
- You scratch your butt and suddenly think "Where the Hell is my cat/fox/devil tail?"
- When in public, you try to make faces that looks like Gaia emoticons and you are getting good at it... But you scare the hell out of people when you do your domo impression.
- You attend anime conventions in order to collect an autograph from all the Gaia people... on your chest.
- You have a shrine dedicated to Lanzer or L0cke or... in your closet.
- You'll jump at any excuse to dress like your avatar. Halloween, Anime convention, Birthday parties, Easter, Chinese New Year...
------------------------------------------------------------
President/founder/head researcher : Simon Salomon
Vice-president : Of Fire and Rage
Proofreader : Rox0r Mc0wnage
Staff nurse : Irion
Head designer : Crimson_wingz
Researcher : Insomnia_Forever
Research assistants : Yokochan (on leave), Areli Valentine (on leave), Sherilyn Blairlyn, Insomnia Forever, Yero Chi, Eathlinn, o0Meg0o (trial period)
Greeters: All of the above.
*
Bulletin board for the employees on page 2
------------------------------------------------------------
I want in!: Simple, just fill in the following form:
Quote:
Name: (full username)
Symptoms: (Minimum of 2)
And either post it or send it to the Head reasearcher. If, after reviewing your case, we consider your addiction to be severe enough, your name will be added to the list.
I'm in! What now?: Well not much really. All it really means is that your name now appear on a list of confirmed Gaia addict for all to see.
Member List (66):
- Adverse Collector
- ~ Aki - Fairy ~
- Alexie_dennison
- Angelic_Muffin
- Apple_coco!
- Baja
- Briikittee
- =chaos-raver=-
- Cooler_Vampire
- -Darth Oreo-
- Das God
- DDR_Queen^_^
- Dragonfly9666
- Drizzy
- Eathlinn
- Eruresto
- Faile LaRue
- Final Heaven
- Formerly Known As Jonnie
- fuctupkidd
- Garter
- Ginn Rummy
- GunBound
- ~Insomnia_Forever~
- JesterofDejaVu
- Jezter
- L i L i i
- little baby-doll_1991
- keishi_rin
- Kyoko Jun
- Lachesia
- lestats1stlover
- MagicalSins
- Man Ballerina
- Mars Voltaire
- Megumi_is_me
- Me-in-a-city-of-Acronyms
- Oabi
- of fire and rage
- o u g i r l
- pinkdinosuhyo
- PlantMage
- [Psycho Kitty]
- Punk Prince
- Puppys-kitten
- Purple Raindrop
- Rox0r Mc0wnage
- Rubylitza
- savvycrazy
- sboo99
- Shadows of Light
- Silent Flame
- Simon Salomon
- Sherilyn Blairlyn
- Snuggles.Izza.Jewel
- Tessa LaCoil
- Teishee
- the_ilse_witch
- The Monk of Flames
- TinyChinaDoll
- Star Silverkin
- .][Vermillion][.
- windswept_fury
- xKarynax
- xxCardia
- Yero Chi
- Yokochan
- zatarath
