The dread secrets that lie behind the profile...

Oh dear. Should I tell? I have to tell. Yes. Got to tell. Sometime last year, my dear, sweet and probably far-too-trusting friend "C" was SL dating a dentist, told her all sorts of good dental stuff, good story, held together... ok, he's a dentist. Sort of a noodnik profile, I looked. Guy lived somewhere in the Northwest, complained about mowing the lawn.

Skip to a week ago. C says to me - oh dear, check the dentist's profile. I look. How to describe this? Ice Cube, plus... Borat?... plus... mafia? Oh dear. The profile quote from - like I'd know... something from MTV Cribs? That how you spell cribs? What a maroon.

Rant follows - please skip if not interested.

I suppose I should be more "sophisticated", and not let such discoveries annoy me. I just remember how my friend became interested, and not a little attached to this guy who, like so many others, apparently reinvents his persona with some frequency. Who then did the usual SL guy thing to her. She invested real feelings, as many of us do. Who's he doing it to, now? Smooth talking jerk.

I'll paraphrase my friend Angelique LaFollette on this topic - and she no stranger to inventive roleplay - that the moral basics always hold true, regardless of the venue. All the intellectual discussion about "new worlds, new lives, new mores" is baloney. Using people as toys is using people as toys. Being deceptive - and on the other side, being gullible - those never change in their essence. Claiming (later) to have been roleplaying ("it's just a game, babe" - and not telling the other person? Morally awful.

I got badly hurt myself recently - by someone I believe now was lying to me, for the better part of five months. The inability to verify someone's identity (what if it's his brother using his account?) - is making me more thoughtful all the time. I'm not sure how good this all is for us.

Dental roleplay. That's a new one to me.

LOL

"Is it safe?"

Molar moral

SL is not a good place to hook up. There are too many visual and interactive distractions that can get in the way of communication on a personal level. It's just too seductive.

Some would say that even pure text Net is not a good place to hook up.
The anonymity and physical separation tends to make people feel less responsibility towards others.

Gee, you met someone in a fantastical, unrealistic online virtual world and found out that they weren't actually the character they portrayed?

THIS IS MADNESS

You should always 'CHECK UP' on the persons profile..

Maybe he was just 'FILLING' a need in himself...

He should stop lying and 'em-BRACE' the truth...

I hope he didn't just take her 'FLOUR-A-RIDE'....

(I apologies for those absolutely awful puns.. )


On a more serious note though.... there's really no way of telling if what a person puts in their profile is true or not. But I'm sure that if you have a 'relationship' with person who is 'creatively dishonest' about themselves in their profile, eventually, they'll slip up or make a mistake.... I always take them with grain of salt personally...

(but I think we date ourselves, to get this reference.)

Of course, the whole "dentist / patient" history isn't known to us, but our DDS would hardly be unique in adopting a different in-world persona. Dentistry may not have been getting him the sexxors he'd expected, despite the ever-popular surgical mask fetish.

But, if I were to bet, my money would be on this guy being a RL dentist in the Northwest with a lawnmower, etc. A lot of people start out supposing SL to be a kind of VR match.com, with profiles and in-world interests ever so mundanely tied to RL. If they later manage to escape those limits, they should be congratulated.

And remember, as a last resort, you can EXTRACT quite a bit of info by reading between the lines!

In Second Life I look after my own teeth. I wouldn't trust any SL dentist.

LOVED that movie Although having spent more than the average time in a dental chair...that scene also creeped me out.

If someone escaped their RL limits to be intentionally deceptive...then I would have to respectfully disagree.

I don't understand. Are you saying that he can't both be a dentist AND have enjoy MTV, or the movie Borat?

Damn - I was going to say "What's the molar of the story?" - but you got there first!

/me grinds his teeth

Ok I'll bite. My opinion for what it is worth. SL and the Internet in general may be a place to initially meet people, but until you meet, face to face in Real Life, or use some other method to prove who is who, I would always keep it light, and take it with a grain of salt.

*BTW that scene in "Marathon Man" always mkes me cringe, too.

I'm probably being typically male dense and insensitive here, but I just can't see the deception. Some boring lawnmowing dentist decides to augment RL geek with SL goon, and changes his profile accordingly. Heck, I've known avatars to change their very skin and shape and move to a different sim--it's like they're in the witness protection program or something!

And we have no information how any of this is or isn't correlated with the end of some past courtship. For all we know, "gangsta" may be the poor guy's way of dealing with the disappointment of a failed relationship.

I broadly agree with the first half of your post. Your profile can say whatever the heck you want it to. If someone forms a relationship with someone on the basis that they are a dentist in SL - good for them (both). If that person later becomes a roadie in SL, so what? Maybe they just got tired of the BDSM scene.

If you met someone in RL who claimed that they were a registered dentist, and you allowed them to "operate" on you, perhaps drawing out healthy teeth and damaging your gums, and then they turned out to be a roadie with a fetish for collecting teeth, take 'em to court.

Well, I'm not male, but I have to agree with you.

I was going to say a pert "it worked for us" but on reflection that would come across as facaetious.

I agree actually. Pure text is not a good place to hook up. A good place to break the ice, exchange views, empathise, sympathise, converse .. all those things that might lead to an emotional pull. That's where it worked for Morgaine B and I. It gave us the drive and appeal to meet for real.

Heck, penpals were doing it before instant messaging and chat but I agree SL is just too damn seductive for most people to keep a clear head. I'm very glad I was 'hooked up' before I found SL.

This is a surprise because..........???????

Yup...I agree..... SL invites deception. Let's face it...noone HAS to be themselves in a virtual world and very few seem to take the moral high road in being truthful about their real life selves.

Interestingly....every prson I know in SL who has 'hooked up' has been burned. And I mean EVERY. For myself.....I remain single and happy and I don't take anything or anyONE so seriously that I even CARE if I'm mislead. I take the friends I make at face value and enjoy what ever good conversation they offer in world. The rest.... I'm really not too concerned about. I appreciate and respect honesty....and require it in my genuine friends. But....to say I 'expect' it in SL... no, I don't.

I have met a couple folks who are who they say they are..... have proven it with behaviors outside of SL.... photos, instant messenger.... life details that have not changed in over a year (I'm referring to one married couple I met last spring that are uber cool.....but no longer even do SL, yet we're still in touch)

That seems to be the irony......the most honest straight forward people I have encountered (myself included cause I really don't RP or otherwise deceive in SL) are the ones who remain single and simply don't take the whole that seriously. Nothing to hide....nothing to lose.... no static at all.

I feel for your friend.... but I've seen this kind of crap so dam many times in here.... that it's really just getting to the point where I feel like grabbing people by the ears and saying "WTF has got you this far in life being this naive!!!?" It's CYBER REALITY people and collectively we have a right to be anything we want. I do agree it's wrong to mislead people where emotions are involved.....very wrong. But accountability is absent here....it's one of the psychological appeals.

A very good friend of mine in SL just had a terrible expereince with SL romance...turns out her partner is a textbook example of an abuser.....and decided it would easier to go into SL and take out his anger issues on some anonymous bleeding heart, since he can't do it IRL and get away with it. Sort of like some serial killers seemed so 'normal' to their family and friends..... it's the strangers they victimize. Severe example I know... but it's human nature. SL is a mask.....a stage that some people step off of without ever looking back...believing everyone else is also just a fellow actor. *shrug* I trust ONLY with-in the confines of cyber space. Beyond that.... who you are, or are not is NOT something I am going to allow to effect my RL.

This is the best advice, and even then, just like in RL, a romance still may not work out. At least if you follow this advice, for the most part it will or will not work out based on the usual RL reasons and that is all one can ask for.

And sometimes eventually meeting face to face doesn't result in learning about the true nature of the person either. It still wont reveal if he is married or ends up being a stalker until even further damage is done to your life than if you had found out such things before meeting in real life.

new SL bumper stickers-


my other alt is in the wintenss protection program


and


my other alt is a bigillionaire hardbody model running for public office

Hey! Maybe he really IS a dentist, but he's a dentist to all the gangsta rappers, and he's the one who puts bling into their grills. Maybe he's just connecting with his patients, and wanted to be a little more exciting to the average female... heh... who knows. I usually believe about 0% of whatever is in the 1st Life tab, cause there's no way to prove/disprove any of it. At any rate, *hugs* to your friend. Tell her to use some mental floss.

SL is definitely not a place for RL meetings. Must better and faster places for that (Yahoo members, Match.com etc..)

I don't mind sharing rl info and a pic, but if someone thinks a sl relationship will lead to to rl....no no no Think of the odds it will work, and the disappointment when that hot 21yo blond in sl turns out to be....

...a lawn mowing dentist