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

I still don't get it.
I have an alt that I made for testing stuff nearly a year ago. She doen't look noob either.

I have an alt that looks slightly noobish.. Kaddaj Vita... I dont use him tho.. Oki Anatine doesn't! Luskwood kitty av, with Spider Productions (Or w/e) spikes and boos, I recoloured his hair, made a new shape.. I love him lol....

THen again, being without Oki Rayna for a week while she was stuck did that.. before that Oki anatine was a pseudo-skunk girl...

Am I me? Guess so, but what little I want to disguise about my RL depends on the company and different people get to see different aspects of my RL. Does that mean I am roleplaying? I guess so. I don't look like my RL self in SL (don't have a tail and kitty ears, nor tiger stripes and an albino skin in RL, nor do I mew), yet the set of values I use to judge things in SL is the same as in RL.

Yet, SL offers me opportunities to - a previous poster mentioned it already - explore parts of myself that would not be possible to explore in RL. In SL, I am a nice kitty and I behave like such. I can RP without too much trouble and explaining and fuss (at RP sims, yes. Where you know people are really acting).

So... I guess my SL personality is just a mixture of RL and RP, depending on the context I am in. With people I have known for a longer time it's more RL, at other places it's more RP (and full RP at designated sims). No separate personae, but two distinct personae that borrow from eachother freely depending on the circumstances.

=^.^=

Aen

Sounds perfectly understandable to me. The guy uses that avatar for roleplaying as a bi female. He is simply being candid and up-front about the fact that his girl character is being played by a male at his end. Considering how some people get bent out of shape when they find out that a male is running a female avatar, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that someone might choose to disclose that right up front.

I play an anthro fox. I certainly don't have fur and a tail in real life, unless you count the fur tail that is hanging in my closet, for the rare times I attend a furry con in RL and attach that to my skirt. Lots of people play genders or species that don't match what they are in RL. Why? Because here, they CAN do it, and if they are a good actor/actress, they can pull it off in spite of the fact that their voice or body doen't match the chosen role.

Two interpretations, actually, in order of increasing paranoia: First, "noob" meaning just having a recent rezdate: a freshly-minted avatar in a RP community is suspect because s/he's likely the alt of somebody everyone knows, on some covert mission. And second, same subterfuge, but actually acting and looking like a n00b (harder than it sounds... uh... or so I've heard).

I think I am much more tolerant of people in Second Life than in RL.
But I think I find it easier to express my opinion and know that I am not going to have any hastle over doing so.

I had the hardest time with this last winter. Rihanna is a character I've played off and on for twenty years; I wouldn't have chosen that name if I hadn't expected to be in character (IC) in SL. But once I'd logged in and was let loose on the mainland, I found it was nearly impossible to stay IC. There were classes to attend -- where I was in gown and veils and everyone else was wearing jeans. There were random people trying to talk to me who didn't even know what IC and OOC meant (and some of them were people I actually wanted to talk to). There were landlords and shopkeepers and neighbors to deal with, who were either OOC themselves or IC from a very different milieu. I tried in vain to find an appropriate roleplaying sim to make my home in, before giving up and settling into an uneasy blend of my IC and OOC personas.

I have an alt that _is_ strictly IC and I'm going to try my best to keep her that way; I'm hoping it will be easier since Rihanna will be around to manage the OOC things that need to be done. And if I ever get serious about bringing my editorial business to SL, I'll create another alt that is strictly OOC to handle that. (Except, of course, that the definition of "OOC" is wobbly when it comes to the professional world; aren't we all in character when dealing with clients and colleagues? At least all of us who are certified curmudgeonly weirdos when we're off the clock and have to pretend to be extroverted mundanes when at work.) And I'm still not easy with Rihanna's IC/OOC blend, but I'm hoping that over time it will evolve into an IC personality that is truly Rihanna Laasonen of SL, and not "Rihanna Webster of Flat Earth who's using Laasonen while she's in SL".

Or as Julian Caesar said: Mudroom, Mushroom, Muckroom.

Or was it Mudroom, Muckroom, Mushroom?

Interesting topic and I bear out the OP's analysis.

I did not come up thru the ranks, have 0 interest in roleplayers except as actors in future films and am pretty well the same in SL as in RL.

I think virtual worlds had to get to a certain point to snag me...the Myst series was my only experience with games (except Syberia) and there it was the beauty and puzzles..My RL life is fulfilling and rewarding and it would have taken a lot to get me to move away from it as much as I have to be on SL. Though the cross over is that I can do films in both places.

I am very visually oriented and like working on teams so SL is perfect for that.

People should be allowed to role play.

There are just limits to how close you can be with someone who is a being a pretend person all the time.

People are allowed to roleplay.
There are entire sims devoted to role playing.

Here's how I see it, after having been here two years:

"SL is SL and RL is RL" == "I look absolutely nothing like my av"

male horse furries == dudes that would be referred to vulgarly as 'needledicks'

herms (which there WAY too many of) == gay dudes in denial.

How many should there be?

and what should we do with the excess?

castration

RL or SL?

I love to pick through poetry and examin the words and wonder over why the author choose certian words and why they broke the meter in certian places. Thank you for saying "who is a BEING a pretend person all the time" rather than "playing a pretend person."

If you want a long explaination, I will give you one. But in short, when I am on Janice, I AM Janice. My thoughts, moods and emotions change. I do not play Janice, I become her.

Yes, Bree's response seemed to indicate the OP suggested they shouldn't.

People should be allowed to role play wherever they want as long as they aren't breaking some conduct or landowner's rule

But if someone is going to always playing up a fake person to me all the time, I'm simply not going to have the same meaningful conversations with them that I might with the 33 year old Accountant who lives in Toronto.

Not that I ever press people for any RL info. I just find it easier forming friendships with people who are being themselves, rather than acting on whatever level.

Its not an either/or of course. Some Role-Players do both. Participate in RP then stop role playing and chat.

I'm comparing to the actual population.

And as far as teminology goes, I refer to every last one of 'em as 'it', 'cause there's only three ways to refer to someone in the english language: 'he', 'she', and 'it'. Since they don't conform to the first two, has to be the last one. Don't try to be cute and mutilate the language.

Just SL.

Won't work. They can always go to Xcite and buy another one.

I didn't say anything at the time, but there are herms in RL. Never meet one. Ok, maybe it is a myth, but I've heard that there are herms in real life.

Oh, I know there have been Olympics where someone has been disqualified for being "too male" and was competting in female events. Not exactly sure how "too male."

There are so many different directions to go here: questions of identity, of honesty and trust, of reasons for being in SL....

Roisin is primarily an extension of myself, as I wish I might have lived in my twenties. She's more attractive, to be sure, and more outgoing; but as Ro, when I talk about 'me' I'm usually speaking as much as the typist as anything, and Ro was made to look a fair bit like the RL me.

As for my alts, all are more of a roleplay even though they're still attractive humans in form. They don't look like me (one's a guy), and when they speak of the RL me, they refer more often to 'my typist.' I identify with them less than I do with Ro. I've never done any kind of role playing game before SL, so I'm still learning how to stay IC.

As for sentiments about newbies, I may be one of the people the OP has heard commenting about my wariness. After experiencing a situation involving an alt created for SL subterfuge, I try to be cautious about what I reveal to anyone with a recent rez date, especially if they look a little *too* good to be so young and know how to use chat tricks like /me. Of course, really, you don't know who anyone really is in SL--newbie or not.

That said, what is more likely to give me pause about getting intensely involved in a friendship with someone new to SL is that they are often still walking around SL with stars in their eyes, a bit infatuated with the glamour of SL. Someone new to the platform hasn't yet figured out how it fits into their RL and where they draw the line between the realism and the roleplay (not to mention the tendency to be a bit addicted at first, spending more time in world than they can really afford, and then having to back out significantly). And that's a recipe for misunderstandings and misplaced expectations.

My take is that within SL I exist, I am the reality. The same is true on these forums because we use our SL names. I don't give details about my RL keyboarder on principle as there's no need to do so as I'm not trying to deceive anyone about anything, I just hang about in-world having fun, exploring and being creative. I like to take other avatars at face value too.

But like I've said before, the exact nature of the psychological interface between the RL and avatar is variable.

One person might be their RL self in SL with a good replica avatar. Another might still openly be playing their RL self but with a SpongeBob avatar. One person with an opposite gender avatar might see it as an exploration of what it's like to be a member of the opposite sex. But another person might choose an opposite gender avatar as a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend, a very different thing.