Next topic for opinions... tricky one, this.

Wandering this morning, gridless, through the fields of the forums, idly strolling, I came upon this, and shamelessly grabbed it as a perfect illustration of... something. (I also appear to have become infested by commas. I guess the DEET didn't work.) Another aspect of the psychology of SL that the insightful psychologists of the leading edge of the online wedge should analyze:

"Janice is a bi-sexual female. I don't go looking for relationships but they usually happen anyway. The person at the keyboard is a straight male."

Trying to parse that quote, which seems to be saying about 37 things at once, in a variety of directions, about the typist, the alt, the psychology of the typist, the psychology of the alt, and the interplay between the two. It's dizzying.

Is this projection? Is it roleplaying? Is it "life-playing"? I find that I get a little dizzy when I start - maybe after quite some time - to realize that the "typist" behind some avatar I've known may not even be close to who they've said they are. That said, it is of course their business.

Here's something I found elsewhere, way down in the forum someplace that I think is relevant:

"Those of us who are internet veterans have more of a propensity to look at Second Life as a huge social roleplaying game. That's because we started out on MUDs (true games which were played with "characters"- assume personae) and went to MUSHes (text conduits for roleplaying games) and then maybe fell into other variants (like the furry MUCK, which were not games, but worlds built for socializion between persons who were assuming fantastic personae). The fact that your "character" was not a representation of you, but a completely fictional persona of your creation, was an assumed and expected part of the game. If fact, people who went OOC too much were shunned. (OOC - out of character- talking about your real self and the real world.)

People who are newer to using the internet for socialization do not bring in the same assumptions about the virtual world. They are more likely to expect and assume that people are trying to re-create themselves online to interact as themselves online. If two people get together for an online romance, one with the roleplaying expectation, and one with the realism expectation, that's where real problems are going to happen."

I fall in the latter camp. Lately I've heard people say - usually in some coffee shop inworld or other - that they "don't trust noobs, because you never know who they are."

Not an isolated feeling then.

My apologies to the posters, and my thanks in advance for letting me make use of her/his words.

Interesting one this.

I am quite new to online 'gaming' 'inworld role playing' or whatever else it may be called.

I (typist) am a female hetrosexual, so is Katie, but, Katie is her own woman. She is far more open, friendly, generous and confident than her typist, is happy to meet and help 'newbs' even to the extent of givng them stock from her shops for free and spending hours taking them to places. She has friends of all sexes and creeds.

Katie has her own style and personality and I (as the typist) cannot make her do anything she doesn't want to do, even if it is something I would be happy with in RL. The typist IS Katie when inworld as Katies personality takes over fully. Crazy I know, but there it is! Is this solely roleplay? I have no idea!

(I am catching your comma infestation, but it seems to have become inverted now! )

me = me

never cared much for role playing, not even when i got online 1 of the first times 17 years ago with my pimped 386

It's roleplaying a character. So saying "Janice is a bi-sexual female" is like Tim Kring saying "Peter is a hospice nurse with amazing powers."

It's only confusing if they're talking in the first person and you're not sure whether they're talking as their character or themselves. But in this case, it's pretty obvious that the first person reference is to the character.

Heh, Rob is my real first name. If they had my real last name on SL I would've taken it, but Adelaide is as close as they got.

I'm not on SL to be someone else, I'm just a virtual representation of who I really am(Ok, so I can't really fly around, and don't really have a spaceship with teleporters in it...)

-R

Well, theres a quote from the worlds worst waste of time (4chan.org, avoid at all costs.. you will get AIDS from your computer, srsly)

No chicks on the internet.. pics or it didn't happen

You can't be sure, without physically meeting someone, who they are in RL. A webcam can be faked, there are voice modulators, pics are readily available.. you just can't be sure, so there is always a paranoia for some people that the person they are talking to isnt at all who they say they are.

And in worlds like SL, it is often true.

For me personally, it's a little bit different. I am in SL what I want to be in RL. RL I am tansgendered, currently physically male, though that may change. I am also pansexual, and polyamorous, and also happen to be a lifestyle submissive(Unowned at present).

In SL I am female, pansexual, polyamorous, and Dominant (Yeah weird right? iono, just works for me).

So in SL, aside from the D/s difference, I am who I truly wish I could be in RL, and thats that. It is where I am most myself.

I meet a lot of people that admit to me their RL sex is not the same as their SL sex, and it doesn't bother me at all. I am friends with them because of who they are not what.. I've always been like that. The only time it bothers me, is if they blatantly lie about it.

Lots of people pretend t be something they aren't, for a variety of reasons.. and you have to understand that. That hawt elf chick? Could be some 80 year old guy, naked, in a bean bag chair. Seriously. But hey.. he's a pretty cool 80 year old guy if he's playin a hawt elf chick in my opinion lol.. unless its in a creepy way... XD

So yeah... people can be whatever they feel like online. Be cautious, always

They don't trust noobs?
They would trust non-noobs because...... ?

What do they mean by "noob"?
A rezz date within the past month/year?

Very strange attitude IMO

I came from the MUD generation, but with a huge gap in between. Maybe that's why, when it matters to me, it takes a lot for me to feel confident that a female av is an RL female. Voice has helped enormously in that respect. Maybe it's also why I notice things like the amazingly high percentage of poledancing type females who like to 'play' with other females.

In a nutshell, I simply don't trust anonymity when it matters to me.

Silly noobs think they can trick me! HAH! Age verified means they must be who they say, cause they had to give RL info! HAH! I am so mart, I am liek ge...gee...jeenyus.

Here's question for you:

If LL was setting the expectation of adherence to our core personalities while operating our avatars, why didn't they let us use our RL names?

LL has made each resident choose a new name, ergo there must inherently be some expectation of dichotomy.

As well as that tag line... something about imagination.. elephants.. Hippos.. eh.. something like that

I'm not quite sure what you are saying, but I *think* it concerns something about this.
Are you saying people who are older in world are more likely to tell you who they are if it is different than who they play? Or maybe newbies are more likely to be different than their characters? I understand your arguments, but not sure what conclusion you are wanting to draw.

BTW, it is OK to make use of anything posted here. If I did not want it repeated I would have left it unsaid. -- good rule of thumb I learned from RL :\

Here is how I've always looked at roleplaying (I am a roleplayer, just to the lesser extent than I used to be.)

My avatars are both me and not me. You see, they are parts of my personality I repress in RL for various reasons, including the fact that I look plumb silly in cat ears in RL. I get to explore those sides of my personality in a medium that allows it to happen freely, only limited by my imagination.

Raudf is my cranky redhead who likes creating, modeling and all the general 'work' mentality of me. She's also the older of the two and loves occasionally springing into dragon form when guys start hitting on her.

Trilliannas is my fun-girl, bubbly blonde neko. She's more likely to explore, talk to new people and in general do things Raudf won't. She simply LOVES lucky chairs for example and as her, I see a lot of places that Raudf would be completely out of place at.

But it boils down to it.. they are both ME, sharing all my flaws and traits. Including pointing and laughing at the nude guys with their junk showing saying 'It's so SMALL.' Yeah, I'm like that in RL too

I love doing that. We should go clubbing sometime. *grin*

There might be times when I create a character for some specific roleplay, but usually I'm in SL to be me, only more so. Kelli isn't quite me. Kelli is me with some of the restraints off: a bit friendlier, more open, more adventurous. Physically? Aside from being dark-haired & slim (that changes all the time but I usually come back to it), there's not much similarity.

I would say that person is Role Playing.

Only one RL John Smith could sign up for SL. The other John Smiths would either have to go elsewhere or start making small variations on the name.

John Smith: Hi! Great name you have there
John36598 Smith: Tks!
John123456 Smith: Mine is better.

Someone Else: Hi John
John Smith: Hi!
John36598 Smith: Hi!
John123456 Smith: Hi! ??

A free choice of first name within an unlimited supply of last names allows us to have manageable names. That's if we want to. I have seen names like John123456.

I had a big long post but it sounded like a whiny, self-pity post ... so, to sum up let me just say Real Life sucks. Why would anyone try to recreate it in SL?

I do interact with people I know in RL on SL, and we use it really as just a really cool IM platform! But, I do also like to explore, roleplay and participate in a fantasy world that is no way related to RL.
I didnt realize there was an expectation that our SL persona had to reflect our RL persona in any way at all!! I mean, after all, that is the point, right?
If I am out exploring and strike up a conversation with a 10ft tall purple dragon, I dont ask myself, " Uh, I wonder if this is really a purple dragon? I mean, what country do purple dragons live in? Wait, it cant be a purple dragon, because dragons cant get internet access!!!" Then I politely ask said dragon to kindly explain why he isnt what he appears to be in SL


/me wonders if people think to themselves " She can't be who she says she is! For God's sake, she has cat ears!


Allysa
=^.^=

It's a peculiar mixture. When I created Yumi, it was purely to be a role-playing character. However, when I found out that I needed to earn L$, I fell back on my real-life skills - that is, programming - in order to do so; and that brought a lot more reality into my behaviour on SL, so now Yumi is a curious mish-mash of the real me and a role that I thought, in 2005, it would be fun to try out in a virtual world!

I think everyone gets suspicious about the "pole-dancing beauties who only like girls", but there are at least some real women playing the "pole-dancing beauties" (and many of them are grateful for the fact that the perception that most such avatars are played by men means that the people watching the pole dance quickly learn to develop selective blindness to RL). Personally, I don't mind too much what role someone chooses to play because I know, from experience on SL, that basically they'll be doing the same thing no matter what role they've stated for themselves. This is the biggest problem with role-playing in SL and the reason why it can't possibly compete with WoW type games at the moment, but honestly I don't think it wants to.

If you think about it, SL's tag line 'Your world. Your imagination.' sums up the OP's feelings. Your world... for those who inject their RL selves into SL... and your imagination... for those who choose to imagine themselves as something else. Two separate sentences. But side by side.

I was just chatting with someone about this in-world last night.

My avatar, Madhu, is the same as the person at the keyboard in her personality and her interests. She doesn't look like me (hint: am not blue in RL) but she doesn't look that different from me either. And her taste is not different from mine - I haven't been comfortable, for example, putting her in clothes that are vastly different from the clothes I wear in RL.

Still, people make assumptions (or draw conclusions) about who I am based upon who Madhu is, and even though Madhu and I are not that different those assumptions/conclusions are not always correct. And when that happens I feel a little uncomfortable - should I stretch myself, allow Madhu to be a little more different from me? Or should I say, "oh, no, Madhu is ____ but in RL I am not"?

But I guess - and I'm still a noob, so this may change and evolve - my favorite thing in SL is talking to people, interacting with folks and getting their different perspectives on things. And for me to do requires being honest about who I am in RL. (I don't mean excessive honesty here, I just mean chatting with acquaintances the same way I do in RL.) I'm not really capable of role-playing. I have an alt that I've tried to make very different from myself (and from Madhu) and I don't feel very comfortable in the alt's skin (though I haven't spent nearly as much time as the alt as I have as Madhu).

Hmmm... If that's a literal quote, I'd parse it much differently than it's being taken here. I'd read it: "you never of whom a noob is an alt."

The very first avatar I friended with in SL was a dragon.

ummm..can you rephrase that? =/ I don't understand your translation