I blame my aversion to online chatting on my parents. Somehow the idea that their 13-year-old daughter could unknowingly chat with a 55-year-old male from California really hit home with them and my online capabilities were severely limited. So when I started my week on Second Life, it felt wrong to just walk up to avatars for a quick chat. Since avatars can be created with literally any type of hairstyle, clothing, and face, I never knew for sure who I was talking with. By the end of my week on Second Life however, I realized that this is part of the game’s draw for people who want an escape.
I’ll start first with my avatar. Lucie Causten is younger-looking with brown hair and a long pink dress. I didn’t take a ton of time to look through the different physical options for Lucie, but rather just picked someone who kind of looked like me. Somehow creating an avatar that didn’t look a thing like me seemed wrong, and I wasn’t really interested in leading people to think that I was that 55-year-old male. The whole creation process took probably five minutes.
My first day on Second Life was confusing, counter-intuitive and boring (as Jackie mentioned in her blogpost.) I tried to get my bearings and figure out how to control my avatar while the program itself was running slowly. By the end of the day, I managed to “teleport” to once place (Hyde Park, London, one of my favorites in real life) and walk around by myself – very uneventful. I did not find the tutorial world until today, my last day on Second Life, so I had more trouble than some would trying to figure out the program. How a program can allow you to get through a week before discovering that there even IS a tutorial is beyond me.
While I’ll never be entirely comfortable with Second Life, I grew more accustomed to it over the next few days. I started to talk to people. One of the most “meaningful” conversations I had was with someone named “MichaelJ Doghouse.” He helped me to turn on/off some of my conversation options like typing animation, which makes your avatar literally use a typing motion as you are communicating with someone. Why this is even an option to turn on, I don’t know, but it was good to be able to turn it OFF.
I was surprised at the kind of information people would divulge to an unknown avatar. For instance, Doghouse is apparently a grad student from Oregon State, getting his masters in adult education. From this conversation I learned about his studies of virtual classrooms where the students only have to meet once or twice a month. In turn, all that Doghouse knows about me is that I like to wear pink dresses (wrong) and I’m not from the USA (wrong.) All reinforces my weird feelings about anonymous chatting. You can get away with anything. Also, I realized by the end of the conversation that I could probably Google or Facebook this guy to see if he’s real. It’s all too creepy for me.
I tried to talk to a few more people. I had some success, but depending on which world I traveled to, people were just looking to stand around and dance - I'm not kidding. There are all kinds of places you can go including dance clubs, bars and parks. It's amazing to see the array of places to suit any whim.
Looking back on my Second Life experience, it really is an online version of SIMS, although I always found SIMS to be much more intuitive. It took me too much time to figure out how to maneuver around this online world and that’s time I will not get back. You would have to be a die-hard fan of these kinds of games to take the time to build a house, make virtual money, buy clothes & accessories, and actually care about what “you” look like. It’s never something that I would spend time on, but if you are comfortable meeting friends in a virtual world, then this might be the game for you. It really is a good way to meet people from all over the world, just don’t get too bored as you try to figure out how to even have a second life.
Second Life seems really cool if you need a lot of time to waste online, and are sick of your real life that you may find on the Facebook/Twitter etc. machines. But, in all honesty, Second Life does actually seem pretty amazing. Though it may seem pointless to just fly around and do things without an inherent purpose, the fact that you can be anyone you want and just talk to random people around the world with your new identity, seems astounding.
ReplyDeleteI played the SIMS all the time when I was in middle school, and liked having to maintain a certain lifestyle in order to make a family or get promoted in your job.
From this description of SL, it seems perfect if you just want to see how crazy people can make themselves seem when they have the ability to be as creative as they want.
Ethan
These posts are so interesting! (Although they both made Second Life sound boring :P)
ReplyDeleteI noticed that although SL allows people to become whoever you want to be-- males can pretend to be females and vice versa, and you can even choose a non-human creature as your avatar-- both of our SL explorers chose a female human character as their avatars. This reminds me of a paper symposium I attended at a conference about a month ago. Some researchers found that on SL, human characters were the most commonly chosen avatar, and the gender of most users' avatar was consistent with the users' gender in real life. The study also found that people were doing normal things on SL: clubbing and shopping were the most frequent activity; whereas some adults worried that people would engage in virtual sex on SL promiscuously since it's hard to find out who you really are, virtual sex was actually one of the least frequent activities. Finally, the study found out that the number of avatars was associated with avoidant/diffuse identity.
It seems to me that for most people, avatars on SL is just a reflection or extension of their offline identity. But for people who have some issues or for those who are in need of a place to try out different identities, SL would be an option for such exploration.
A part of this blog post really hit home with me... The idea of using Facebook to check if someone on Second Life was really revealing correct information about himself. I find this extremely interesting - Facebook has become such a part of our everyday lives we forget that it too, is a virtual world exactly like second life. Say we were to look up this Doghouse character on Facebook, and low and behold, his information is verified there. But is this really verified? I could easily upload a photo of B Spears to my Facebook page, but does that make me her? I think not. What's to say this guy didn't create the same false identities on two different virtual sites. The possibilities (and identities) are endless - I find this scarier.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that you thought you could "Google/facebook" this person to see if there information was true. If this is truely a 'second life' the person could have made up the Oregon State/grad student information, just like you said that you were from outside the U.S. Another thought I had, was what if you pretended to be someone you admire in Second Life? Maybe the person you were talking to was channeling a tutor they had because they think in their ideal world, they would be a grad student from Oregon State.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you said that you chose to be a young girl in a pink dress so people wouldn't think you were a 55 year old male. Even though "the gender of most users' avatar was consistent with the users' gender in real life," I'm sure there is at least one older male with a young female avatar.
Another way to utilize Second Life is to travel if you have lower economic status. For instance, you said you visited London. For people who do not have money to travel around the world, Second LIfe may be a way to travel around the world and vacation on a budget.
I never played the SIMS when I was younger, so maybe that's why I don't appreciate the idea of creating an avatar and maintaining a virtual life. However, after reading the posts, I do see the potential of Second Life solely as a form of entertainment. While I would never pay USD to buy better clothing or accessorize myself with a dog, visiting London would be pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteAs far as meeting and making friends using the Second Life platform, I think the quality of the relationships formed there depends upon a person's understanding of the virtual world. Though I didn't play SIMS, there was a stretch of time in middle school where I frequently played cribbage online through a chat room. Mostly I would play with random strangers, but there were a few people I regularly played with. While I don't like to think of Fries5978 as a 55 year-old male, I realize that when I asked asl? (yes, I asked that because if people admitted to being a 55 year-old male, I would leave the game) the 15/m/FL response I got could easily have been made up.
But I wasn't looking for a boyfriend or best friend, just someone to make conversation with while playing cards to pass the time. Sure it's a little bit creepy to think that Fries could have easily been my father, but since I was only looking to talk about music and tv shows while playing cards, that didn't really matter.
For this reason, while not something I personally would do, I think the use of avatars to either explore another dimension of oneself or as an extension of an offline self is a normal and acceptable way to pass the time.