The dread secrets that lie behind the profile...

I agree with the sad truism "there are jerks everywhere".

I know people who've met in SL, then met in RL (after the obligatory exchanging of photos, chatting with each other on the phone, etc). Such meetings seem to have the same success rate as more usual methods of meeting people with shared hobbies. I know two RL moved in/married success stories, and a few others that are ongoing Relationships.

So it can work, but really, one need get to actually meet the fellow before you start naming the children.

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.

I agree with the sad truism "there are jerks everywhere".

I know people who've met in SL, then met in RL (after the obligatory exchanging of photos, chatting with each other on the phone, etc). Such meetings seem to have the same success rate as more usual methods of meeting people with shared hobbies. I know two RL moved in/married success stories, and a few others that are ongoing Relationships.

So it can work, but really, one need get to actually meet the fellow before you start naming the children.

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.

SL makes a crappy dating service. The draw to the thing is ' Be Anything'. So your already appealing to the crowd eager to 'get out of their own skin'. Your encouraged to hide behind a facade of deception and trickery. So being something one is not, is to be expected. However.. when people break through that wall of fantasy and start bringing their reality into the equasion, we figure we're hearing truth since everything here is fake.
As a rule, whether they speak the truth or not about such realities shouldnt really matter.
We are in here, flying around, making spaceships out of plywood cubes. But once you decide to take your friendships outside the box, reality just might rear an ugly head. You really do want to trust that SL sweetie of yours. They make you warm and fuzzy. But they could just as easily be a potential stalker whackjob. You want to get real with somebody cus they say all the right things, asking you how you feel, what you dreamed last night, listening to you, making you think they really do care about a womans needs?
Quite a naive position to take, you may as well bend over and make it easier for them to blow smoke up your ass. Plenty of guys out there reading Dr. Phils latest book so they can try manipulating some lonely soul out there. Is your SL partner a doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, out there in the real world? Who the hell knows! I'm gonna go home and put on my TRUST NO ONE t-shirt.

Say "AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"

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.

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

Well if he was honest about his real life and the things he told her and then told her that his new profile was just role play that is one thing. But if he deceived her about who he really is in rl that is wrong.

Clarification: apparently he was indeed a dentist, whose original profile was mild-mannered, rather Clark-in-the-phonebooth stuff[...]

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.