Trope-a-Day: Karma Meter

Alistair Young

Nov 7, 2014 — 1 min read

Karma Meter: Reputation networks are everywhere, functioning as effectively a public record, social network, and barometer of public opinion for everyone. Of course, there’s not a particular standard of karma in use – they exist for all kinds of different groups and different themes – to steal an example I’ve used before, the Iniscail City Righteous Enforcers of Social Propriety and the Lechers of Iniscail aren’t exactly using the same metrics, never mind the special rep-nets for businessmen and scientists and celebrities and Fusions and drivers and every other interest group you can possibly imagine.

Swirl them all together – by professionals into meta-rep nets and by each individual who decides what matters to him and how it should be weighted – and everyone has their very own Karma Meter to measure everyone else by.

(A special note, here, should go to the Public Exclusions COG, which runs a private-sector kind of ostracism by looking for people whose aggregated/averaged cross-network meta-rep score falls below a threshold of public acceptability, and then offers them money to renounce their citizenship and depart forever.)

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