Instrumentalism in Second Life

This brings me to my discontent with Second Life this morning. It's social. Yes, you hear a lot about identity and deception in Second Life. I was going to write about deceit and when it costs and when it hurts and why it hurts. Basicly, whether deceit hurts has nothing to do with trust. Only a fool trusts people they don't know very well. I've been on Second Life about eighty days. I have a right to trust no one and I'd be a fool if I did.

Deceit hurts when the story is believable and plausible and when it requires a high amount of time, emotional investment, or money. Being cheated, betrayed, or ripped off is no fun. That is the downside of deceit. For deceit to work its most hurtful, the other party must have verisimilitude and tell a tale that requires a high amount of investment of time, emotion, or money.

A woman avatar with long sexy legs, and beautiful blond hair has a high degree of verisimilitude. We all know that females exist and that they can be blond and built like that. It is not common. She may not look like that in real life, but it is plausible she could. A while ago I met a male avatar in a Marine uniform. I wondered if he was really a Marine, a veteran, or if he had relatives in the service. I did not ask, but being a Marine is plausible. As Iyoba, a plump, small bi-racial, female, my verisimilitude is off the map high. Dragons, fairies, neko, and tinies, (nonhuman avatarim) can have verisimilitude on a different level since their form touches on known stories, but it is pretty clear that the person who presents as a dragon could not be one in real life though he could be a person who loves dragons.

Investment is where the lie has teeth that bite in. If the blonde, leggy, female avatar comes on to a male avatar, flirts, and engages in cybersex, it is easy for the male partner to believe that at least she is female. If he finds out later she is a fat middle aged man play-acting and he wouldn't be comfortable with that in real life...well...he's going to feel hurt. The Marine who regales you with his tales of duty in Iraq and holds you spellbound and pulls on your emotions turns out to have never served a day in the military (Military fraud by the way is distressingly common). How do you feel especially if you know a veteran or are one yourself? Do you feel that "Marine" disrespected something important. And what about the parent of crippled children who breaks down with a sob story and maybe asks for money too. What if she has no kids?

Most lying in Second Life is not like this. Yes, I see plenty of avatars who may not look like or be the same gender or species as in real life, but messing with demographics without the investment is a no-harm no-foul situation. Most lying that I've been a party to in Second Life is of a very different sort. There is a fancy social science name for it. It's called instrumentality. Last night I made three or four new "friends."

We had been dancing at the same clubs for several nights. The problem is that the clubs are Brazilian and I don't speak a lick of Portuguese and I don't understand it either. I also "don't look the part." I'm 4' 8quot; inches in Second Life. That means someone can accuse me of being a child. Someone once mentioned I was fat. Someone called me a dwarf, but no one in these clubs has asked about my avatar's age. Worse yet, my avatar dresses modestly in trousers and blouses or tube dresses/barrel dresses I make for her myself. Lately she's been wearing a pet praying mantis on her shoulder. Her hair is in short corn-rows not long and floppy. She carries no tail or wings. Any where else, she'd look out of place, but "people are so nice!"

Now three people who have never had a conversation with me and who only know I look weird though that may make me more memorable, ask me to be my friends. What is going on? Club owners want attendance. I show up. That's ninty percent of the job. I don't even have to be paid like a camper. If the new friends who are in the club business have me on their lists, they can invite me to their clubs when they set up shop and I can go to lots more Portuguese/Brazilian dances. I can dance until I drop and be a body forever. Of course avatarim don't drop. There is a fancy social science name for this kind of behavior. It is called "instrumentalism" and it means USING a human being as a means to an end. I let myself be used.

By the way after eighty days, I still don't have any real friends in Second Life. There are some people I can talk to. I have swapped items with others. I have talked abuilding with a few, but we are not close in the way I expect friends to be. The club people are just names on a list who send countless group notices. One wants me to invest in her real world magazines and NLP courses. The rest want me as a dancing body. Others would like me to buy conventional clothes so I can be in contests and be a broke body.

I tell myself there has got to be a better way. It's time to get the Second Life muse under some sort of control. It's time to take that photo shoot and find out it is it possible to do my designs without and I mean without sculptie prims so I can teach them to newbies. I may even have to "unfriend" some people or else develop some spine in saying no to teleport offers. You only get used if you let yourself get used. I wish it weren't so, but maybe it's the same all over.

** STACK COLLISION ** BUFFER OVERFLOW **

Maybe you should consider starting a blog somewhere..

Well of course there are people who *do* make friends in SL, real ones, and who actually even have real relationships in SL. I think many people actively avoid this, however, due to trust issues.

Yes, there are plenty of "users" and "used" in SL. This is also true in RL, but SL, due to the anonymity of the medium, seems to encourage this kind of behavior even more than RL does. I think SL's anonymity, the ability to hide behind alts, the ability to log in and out at will, to hide from friends, to change one's appearance/gender/identity at will, etc. -- all of this facilitates the kind of behavior you describe. And even without using these kinds of "advanced tools" many people simply do not wish to have real friendships or real relationships in SL due to the great risk involved in trusting people in the medium (and the prevalence of deceit) -- due to the risk, the prospect of investing real emotion or real connection in the medium seems like a bad investment choice to many. So they opt instead for more casual relationships, many of which can be based on the "usefulness" of the other avatar to this or that which the person wishes to do in SL. Now if both people are using the other and know it (as happens in say an orgy room in SL, just to take one example), then I suppose that is the "no harm, no foul" situation you describe ... but when one is using and the other isn't, that's where things go all skew-iff, and people get hurt.

Long read but I did read it all.

If you are looking for something real in SL, there are many who will tell you it is oxy-moronic; I am not one of those. It's as real as you care to let it be. I have a rather full friends list and thanks to the drama that is SL is has been pruned a few times in the past year. I am fortunante to have made 3 real friends. If we are not inworld, we email each other almost daily. What took them from being people i know to true friends is the choice I made to let them in. The dscision to love them despite being only online shadows of the real people. I now know the real people as well as I know my friends who come over on Friday night just to hangout.

The down side is for this to happen you have to let youself open up. Let yourself be used. And you will get burned at times, but if you want something real, it takes real work.

QFT.

I think it's significant that the OP says she "has no real friends". She should ask herself why...and the answer is probably NOT "because everyone in SL just wants to use me or lie to me".

I came into SL expecting to be merely tolerated if not banned outright considering my planned activities back then. What I found was a collection of very fun, silly, crazy, boring, wild, caring, indifferent, and lovable bunch of psychos. Some have lead me down the path of "meh" and others I have truly enjoyed my time with. Despite my pervy little nature, I have been broadly accepted in a number of circles. In a half a year, I have established some extremely close friendships with the most unlikely people. (^_^)

One in particular has had my undivided attention lately. Her personality has been like gravity to me and it's to the point I just can't leave her alone anymore. If she ever winds up being a 40 year old trucker from Tennessee, I could care less. She is who she is now and I accept her for that. We get along well (when I'm not ruining things by going emo) and our chats are a blast. (^_^)

Can it hurt if I ever get decieved? Sure. But, why not take everyone and everything at face value and accept the fantasy as long as it lasts? Your world. Your imagination. (^_^)y

I had no intention of having a 'relationship' in SL, after 8 months of getting to know someone fairly well I asked her if she wanted to meet in RL someday. That day came and we have met 3 times this year in RL now, one of the best things thats ever happened to me. The only problem we presently have is the distance between the USA and England.