How do YOU refer to your avatar?

You got it!

Pep (Cheat? Just don't tell your rl partner. )

First person most of the time. Except once or twice after a few glasses of wine. Then she needed a good telling off, the brazen trollop.

Hey no scripting required! I'd suggest a good item to start with would be the Meike Hug & Kiss Animator .... it's really cute, and available Inworld or on (spit) XStreet.

Thank you. That solves one half of the problem

Give me a call inworld then . . .

Pep ( . . . and that'll solve the other half.)

Whoa... oh dear... that cornerstone of western civilisation, the 'we are what we do' thing...

Scylla, Scylla, Scylla...

People *really* need to get past that. "We are what we do" is pretty much the downfall of *so* many philosophies, the root of so many evils...

Here's an example. Say a man in a very small town in Anywhere USA becomes its banker, works at that 20 years, builds his wealth, and then chooses to run for mayor. He'll win, because he's the successful banker guy.

Take that same man and transport him to Indonesia, same career and wealth. First questions will be: "Are you married? Do you have kids? Do they live here in our village too?" Without those three, he's regarded much the same as any young male teenager: no stake in society, no real responsibilities, and a huge risk to everybody. He wouldn't stand a *chance* of being elected mayor.

We'd all probably be better off thinking "we are what we wish to be" ~ and simply realising that for pragmatic reasons, even our inner rock stars have to be waitresses and gas station attendants for a while; suddenly the stigma's gone and people deal with each other quite differently.

Maybe the way of Indonesian villages isn't for every place, but 'we are what we do' is the social equivalent of fossil fuel dependence. It can take you far, but ooooh boy are there consequences. Just imagine if all the nascent feminists bought into "we are what we do" and left it at that...

Nice offer, but I never did take to stick drive

I usually use "me." My avatar is an aspect of my own self, so why not?

I see what you mean, but I think you are confusing contexts or categories. I was referring to it's use in ethics and in terms of personality. If I want to be good, then I need to do good things. If I want to be outgoing, then I have to do what outgoing people do.

If I kill, maim and steal habitually, I am not very nice.

I am not for one moment condoning the social stagnation you criticise: believe me, I abhor such.

May I also throw in that we are to other people only what those other people perceive us as doing. Consciousness of identity, like religion, is entirely a personal thing, not capable of being shared with anyone else.

Pep ("All the world's a stage . . . "

Precisely. Some saw Hitler as a saviour because he gave them homes and purpose; to others he was a monster, for reasons which don't need to be explained.



. . . and I have a really lousy part.

On the other hand, some were blessed when the dimensions of body organs were allocated.

Pep (Some win, some lose.)

Like Kay, I take your point, but let me add to her caveat the point that performativity, in my understanding of it, implies a radical instability of identity that is the result of always being in the state of "becoming" something or another through performance. I don't think that this is necessarily so very different from "we are what we wish to be," actually. A banker transplanted to Indonesia would no longer BE a banker: he would be performing a different self, and be in the process of "becoming" something else.

This gratuitous piece of self-puffery is brought to you by . . .

This is also very true. Which is precisely why it is so important to understand that identity is unstable. "Fixing" someone's identity in your mind, as though they were unchanging, is to be in danger of continually misreading them.

Well, if I am not going to blow my own trumpet . . .

Pep ( . . . then I'd better give someone else encouragement to do so.)

Was that a deliberate pun, given what he was referring to?

I did think about that as I was writing it . . .

I entirely agree.

Pep (Actually, I now think you are wrong.)

There's a thread about noobs next door. Why not inquire there for takers?

The waiting list is closed for the time being.

Pep (Google Apps ran out of disk space.)

Yeesh. Everyone else in this thread is being edged out by the enormous inflation of your . . .

ego.

This would have worked better as a poll.

I'm me. I'm always me. I don't always have the same name, but it's me. Even when I'm alone. I don't need another person to know it's me.