Psychology of SL - Alts

My alt exists to test my stuff as "someone other than me" and to allow me to sneak online without having to immediately deal with a ton of IM's.

And while my 2 avatars are merely extensions of my self... I behave differently at work than I do at home, or at a bar or coffee shop.

Likewise, my alts are 'me' in different contexts, and don't behave identically because my choice in using one or the other sets a purpose and context.

It's not a deliberate thing.. it just kind of happens. =)

When you start sending nasty emails to yourself and need another alt to play mediator because you have yourself on mute, then it's time to be worried. Until then, it's just drama as usual. Have Honey take the alt out for some live music or maybe a little surfing on the beach. Spend a little time together. After all, alts are people too.

I co-own an art gallery in SL, and I was recently approached by someone else who wants to display my work in his new SL gallery, but only if I also have a RL web presence using my RL name. His idea is to bridge the gap between SL and RL, and he insists that people only want to buy from "real people, not made-up people." I really don't want to reveal to all of SL who I am in RL; and his suggestion was to create an alt. That doesn't solve the problem. If the alt becomes the social avatar, then all Roisin's friends need to be transferred over and they'll know who I am in RL anyway; if the alt becomes the official artist persona, all the work that was already sold in SL under my name has the wrong name on it.

If writers can have pseudonyms, I would think that artists could too. I guess I need a RL alt! I wonder if she'll behave any differently.

Well, one benefit of having an alt that handled the art and nothing else is that if something "bad" occurred in the rest of the Second Life experience then you would be somewhat stuck. I had started making some real art connections in world and then hit a huge snag when my other activities made me have to flee from being me in world. Unfortunately, then I had my artwork tied up with that account and had to leave the art world behind. When I left Sonia and started in my brand new account, I did put up a huge gallery in Sonia's name just to have it out there. But I almost never logged in as Sonia. It is hard to develop in the art world if you never log in and no one knows to visit your gallery. The art was in Sonia's name, and I was comfortable enough having it up for others to see, but I just couldn't get myself to log in as Sonia. And so, stuck.

There are some of my pieces still out there with my name on them, but the last two owned directly by me were taken down last night after everyone kept going on and on about how they really hated the stained glass (one of the very few times I've logged into world as Sonia recently).

Not everyone has problems, not everyone digs holes for themselves. I wish all the luck in the world to the real life musicians that come in world, and the artists, and heck any people that come in and present their real selves in world.

I'm still in world, though, just not as my "main." I am my alt now.

Don't give in to that guy. No one should be able to pressure another into revealing more of their Real Life than they are comfortable with.

Its completed ART, they don't need to be able do do a google search on the RL you to decide whether they like it.

If you were accepting RL commissions to do RL artwork projects for people - then a resume/ etc might make sense. But thats different.

Well, I think part of the idea is that I *would* be selling my work in RL as well. As far as I'm concerned, though, I can create a public persona in RL with the name Roisin Hotaling, or Roisin Something-else, launch a website, file that name as a doing-business-as name with the state, and that makes me no less a real person--just one who answers to Roisin (which I darn near do in RL anyway) for professional purposes.

(and I'm sorry if I'm taking this a bit off-topic.)

Hey, it went 5 pages before it went off-topic, I'm impressed

HoneyBear, Yosef is right --put those two out in the world together and let them soar! Some of my alts are so great dancing with each other! (Their pictures are on the wall of the hangout.) They *are* a bit of a worry when romance heats up between a couple, 'though. Have to shake things up and it's "change partners" then.

It was a gross exaggeration when someone suggested in a conversation that I might have 6000 alts. No, no, not so. The split personalities at my keyboard are spilt and split again, but 2x2x2x...... is only...only... Well nevermind. I'll provide the crowd for the party, if need be. Someone lend me a couple more computers and another DSL line? I max out at four at a time.

Some, I admit have not yet been seen in polite company, or even in this crowd. They'll be grist for the March madness. A couple have been created only to grab a particularly tasty name. Others to use a great skin. Some are highly specialized, created for a single purpose and then to be thrown aside.

I, myself am an alt, of course: A take-over alt. The poor old main is relegated to land baron /banker. He is just a po-faced drag in the family. Not quite as boring as the Bishop, and is much more the elegant, if stiff-necked, gent. I'm just the one most like my RL self.
The less said about my college-dropout beach-bum brother, the better.

The ladies, now, that's another matter. If one of them was not afraid of scarring Trout for life, she's go for his only-ever number 10 rating. Born the old main's mistress, she's slutty as can be. Another's a virginal ingenue, and then there's Anny, created a wanton, polished by some Cartel ladies into a sophisticate.

I learned it from my daughters: If you're going to play with dolls, people, have a family!

What Cee said ... ^^^^

Me, too.

Have those, did that - with all the same explanations. Cee expressed my thoughts and experience very well.









..and damn, Cee, nobody knows we're mutual Alts!








That last part... I'm kidding.




You know that.












right?



Drivin is when I'm (I, the typist) not really role-playing, I'm being most like me. I'm not doing or saaying anything to be "in character". The others are more simplistic and operate/act/speak according to overt themes - they play a character. Yes I am an artsy type, primarily a musician, and I've done theatre. Alts DO NOT 'spy' on anyone or do anything deceiptful. The various characters may interact but they seldom cross-reference.

The major difference between what Cee described and what I have is that I am the patron of the group. Drivin has a house man and a bodyguard. He has a GF/mate, a slave and a whore who don't rez anymore because the whole dance/kiss/sex yourself thing seemed too obtuse, even for me.

In a femme Alt I'm not sure I could do the pixel-poke with anyone else, but I/she sure will dance! My femme avs don't flirt much but they do acknowledge flirting. Anything more than light flirting is truncated politely.

There are other individuals outside of Drivin's family.

As others mentioned, things are developing which I did not expect. For example: another family group seems to be sprouting centered around a young man who likes houseboats.


I still do NOT have an Alt who exists solely to be a greifer. Is that sick?

I now wonder if the forum hangout is five people and their alts. I lay claim to three of them (some more, but they are deleted now). All three have been by in recent days, but that is something of an odd occurrance, since I rarely use two of the three, and the third is off tied up somewhere or other.

Be still my heart, the main speaks. You have had your say, now go back into your corner and get back to feeding the mushrooms.

You are Sonia? It took days to wash that stuff out of my hair you know.

/me blinks
You can't just end the story right there, Rioko! What sutff? How did it get in your hair? Was it on purpose?

Cee, how the hell are you getting FOUR alts online at once? I can manage two but things lag so badly I can't stand it. My hubby was getting 3 on, if everybody stayed in one place, but lately, he can't keep 2 on without crashing, and is constantly after me to figure out WHY.

I couldn't understand why anyone would have an alt for a long time and even thought it was kind of creepy.
Then I slowly started to go insane with all the IMs that Ava constantly receives. Having 3 years worth of friends on your list equals a lot of IMs on a regular basis. I decided I wanted to be in SL but without the pressure of having to spend time with certain people. So, I bit the bullet and created an alt. The alt has become slightly different from Ava. She is focused on two things:
1. Looking great for free. This has turned into a really fun little pass time in itself. It's especially challenging because I made the alt plus sized, which is something I always admired in other AVs but didn't have the guts to do with Ava. (though she is outside of the anorexic-looking SL norm, I think)
2. Live music. I really enjoy listening to music events without the IM "ding" that would be going off every 30 seconds with Ava.
Mostly I would say the alt is less serious than Ava and free to have fun concentrating on the things that Ava might consider superficial and silly.
BTW I don't really consider either of my accounts separate entities from my RL self. It just seems less confusing to write it that way.
~Ava

Sonia is/was a bird and made a nest in my hair the other night.

Ava,number 1 is my alt's goal too. I did have to give her a few lindens though to buy the 1L freebies(couldnt find any working money trees for some odd reason). I took the new resident starter kit and followed all the links for the freebies in it. She's looking pretty damn good for a freebie.

I direct you to my freebie blog:

http://secondlifefreebies.blogspot.com

Some very nice finds in there!

And drop by the club some night, I'll throw a couple of pairs of shoes I designed at you

Yes I am Sonia. I need to put my alts in a sig line or something as I am not trying to hide them.

I'm also Sid, but Sid doesn't get to play any longer. He was created to see if there was a different treatment between men and women. Result? Experiment terminated, women drooling over Sid too much, some odd data indeed. hehe

So, Lexxi, Sonia, Sid. All the others have been deleted, though I still occasionally get asked if I've created yet another alt.

Hmmm, I see.

I guess it's true, reality never matches imagination

I can't imagine what you could have been imagining.

This whole thread has me looking at my keyboard, suspiciously eyeng the "alt" key.

I used to believe that I was just congenitally unable to do the alt thing; that the "fundamental gummi" would shine through no matter how I tried. This was based on a lot of years in forums and online, yea even unto before the days of the Internet.

But this year, weird stuff has been going on. It's alleged to be related to a shortish period of being knocked out as a kid, and after the key discovery there all kinds of things have been happening differently in RL. Since when, my alt has been doing very much better: responses are more natural, less recognisably mine... even with a slightly different purpose to the adventures (though to be mean and teasy for a sec, I have been using the alt to explore groups and places which I couldn't get into as "the authentic gummi", as it were).

So for me, this is definitely a "developing" topic!

How do some of you maintain that many personas without going, um...... psychotic? Or is that many alts the result of already going there? I get confused with me, myself, and I - or is that I, her, and me?

Join the groups Fab Free and Free*Style if you haven't yet! Awesome freebies and the blogs have tons that don't make it onto in world notices too:

http://fabfree.wordpress.com/
http://slfreestyle.blogspot.com/

~Ava