Less "Virtual" - More "Real"

Lots of thoughtful stuff here - and serious too, I hope. Am going off line now for a while. So season's greeting to all. Where I am, I can now expect days to get longer. I hope all of you experience joy this season.

I think most female avatars are smaller because the clothes just fit better.. /me shrugs

Also, I think that more of the younger femmes using SL use a more sexy ava than the older. I find and have found that the older women using SL usually tend to dress a bit more classy. /me shrugs

Good topic! I think that sometimes people get so involved and so lost in SL and it's "virtuality" that they start missing what's real. You have to remember that there are many who really do "live" in SL. They spend hours upon hours a day in SL doing whatever it is that they do. They may have more fun, family, and friends in SL than they do in RL perhaps, I don't know. But I think there comes a point when someone who spends all day living in a purple pumpkin and flying around with scripted wings may just want more realism.

I own a residential sim that has a strict land covenant which basically keeps things "real". No purple pumpkins or wild looking particle displays etc. There are streets, street lights, a weather system, and friendly neighbors. You would be surprised at how long some of the residents have been there and how often they are in their homes.

I am starting to see a lot more of this in SL. There are "realistic" cities popping up everywhere and they are successful because people are beginning to realize that SL is NOT just for make-believe fantasy builds and scenarios, but a way to visit real life even when just sitting at your computer.

However, I have learned that there is no substitute for the real thing. Nothing beats taking a walk or visiting friends in real life. But somehow, many are finding that SL is an adequete temporary replacement.

What it boils down to is this. There are plenty of places where people can go and be their real selves on the net. I believe my RL belongs to Facebook, where it is very difficult NOT to be yourself, and other online things like that. But SL never claims any expectation that we need to disclose stuff about our RLs. If people want to do so, fine, but it's a fantasy world and we should just be happy to live in it as avatars.

I must admit SL seems less whimsical to me than it did a year ago. Part of that was no doubt due to my newness to online stuff, but there really has been a lot of reality creeping into it lately. I try to keep the fantasy elements alive , as the escapism is still the primary reason I log on.

You keep my fantasies alive.

am married and we still go out on dates, do not have a myspace but do use facebook

and eharmony I am soooo tired of those damn commericals, keep it out of SL please

can I stay?

Yep, if not for SL, many of us would be loose in the neighbourhood streets more often

A priest, a rabbi, and a lawyer walk into a bar...the bartender looks up at them and says, "What is this...some kind of joke?"

Im a mid-thirties, plus sized woman IRL. So in a couple years Ill fit 2Ks stated stereotype.

I have 1 avatar that is basically 30 something and plus sized.

And I have one thats more 20 something and very idealized appearance wise.

I don't see the issue with me having both of these.

If I was into pretending to be a vampire, or a Neko, or a Star Trek something, That would be okay too.

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How many are cool with strangers in SL coming up to you and asking for RL photos? How about Candid shots? Your phone number?

Everyone has their own comfort zone of where they are willing to participate in RL disclosure.

Should be up to each person. And those who *push* others past their comfort zone should be discouraged as rude.

Perhaps it is a function of debate, but this topic tends to polarise opinions.

I think in reality, we move along the slider which has Immersion at one end and Augmentation at the other, depending on the circumstances.

There are times, when I am closer to the Immersion end-stop, and the My-Space-isation, seems like a retreat from imagination, and the many varied possibilities.

There are times when the Roleplayers, seem to be pressganging me into accepting their fantasy world, and discretely vibe you, that it is ignorance on your part, to not know their code-words, jargon etc etc.

SL is large enough to accomodate both perspectives, although it is a rare day when my soul is large enough to see both sides equally.

I tend to swing from end-stop to endstop, depending on the circumstances.
I think the Immersion versus Augmentation question, has more than 1 answer depending on one's mood.

SL is a platform. Everybody is free to make it be for them pretty much anything they want. One big limitation: The other avatars are not obliged to play along with whatever you want, because they're busy living SL the way THEY want. Some people have a hard time getting their heads around this, that there are many, many ways to "play" SL and they are all good, and that is why we get threads like this one.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I dropped into Playdo, a 2D avatar chat world, which I think is intended for children to have wholesome fun in, for just a few minutes the other day. In that few minutes someone asked "Any girls have webcams?"

I don't think it was little boy wanting to make friends. Maybe I'm cynical.

Unfortunately, just abuot every chat medium ever made is plagued by that sort of thing. even if heavily moderated, the point can get across in one post so..doesnt help that much =/

might find this funny...http://www.getafirstlife.com/

It seems that the goal of LL is to integrate SL with FL to the extent that this platform becomes nothing more than a telephone with pictures or myface.com. Say bye bye to the fantasy.

How can this be true when there are many immersive roleplaying sims out there. Everyone lives the fantasy in one way or another. Some of us just chose to add more of our RL selves to the fantasy than others are comfortable with doing. If I come acrossed someone that wants 100% fantasy, I politely pass them by. I respect their privacy and move on to making friends who are willing to form friendships with more substance than just character roleplay.

The virtual world really is large enough for both types to coexist. Is it not?

I am speaking of LL's view of the future and not ours.

I am not so sure that the virtual world is large enough to contain the reality creeping into SL. We're sure to be "interrupted' by values and expectations that connect us to our actual world. I think we are (in a vitual sense) all members of a global community and we must be very much aware of the implications that that entails. We can't be misty-eyed sentimentalists about this - world realities are NOT always so much "live and let live" but are more inclined to close down and shut in / out differences. We cause problems to each other when we bring our realities into play. The experiment here is really to allow us freedoms to become different from ourselves - I have been guilty myself of being unable to release from my own life in reality. Reality creeps in here from presidential campaign offices to even a representation of the Sistine Chapel (with all due warnings to treat pictures with respect - c'mon this is a computer screen, guys!!!). I am afraid that our fictions are going to become lost in our realities.
I really enjoy the comments in this thread.

I think this is a very complex issue. And I can only really speak based on what I've experienced, and what seems to be the case for other people who've been close to me...

It's something like this... SL is very good at providing augmentation in terms of "the world", but it's very bad at providing augmentation in terms of interaction. You can become almost whatever you like, in terms of your avatar appearance. You can write whatever background you like for yourself, you can design a house or build pretty much the way you want it. But.. because all the interaction is with other avatars, who are played by other real people, you quickly run into a brick wall. The other people who want SL to be like RL will ignore all of your augmentations, not in a hostile way, just in a "not interested/relevant" kind of way. And the other people who want augmentation.. well, they want augmentation - for themselves as well. (There is another category too, by the way - the game players - who don't really fit in either.)

So it's difficult... you can look like a rock star, you can build or buy your instruments and concert set, but you can't ever have an audience. The real-life people know you're not really a rock star; the augmenters are busy being rock stars themselves; and the game players want to play an SL-based rock simulator where maybe you'll win, but maybe you'll lose, and even if you win, they won't be in your audience, they'll be in their virtual bedrooms clicking the Practice button to earn a few more Rock Points and win next time. This same thing applies to pretty much every single augmented role in Second Life. MMO games have to do huge amounts of social engineering to make sure that it's necessary for you to do activities which provide "social proof" to successful roles, in order for you to later earn those successful roles yourself.

Of course this doesn't apply to non-augmented roles, or roles that leverage RL. If you really are a rock star IRL then you will earn an audience as soon as you connect your live stream because you are no longer augmenting. And if you want to be a club owner or a town planner or similar then SL augments things in the sense that it enables you to create these things but the skills of designing and running the club or the town are still your own, IRL, and they are still sociable and reasonable skills IRL. Antisocial skills (eg, being good at blackmailing or tricking people) generally do not work and that's a good thing, but generally they can't even be role-played either, because the role-play would not be enjoyable to the other person, so they don't want to play. The only exception to this, is that antisocial skills can be (sort of) role-played via the BDSM community, because the role of a "submissive" is seen as an augmentation by those who enjoy it, and that fact single-handedly makes that community unusually significant to augmentation in virtual worlds, even if it's rather uncomfortable to discuss.

It's the intriuging paradox of SL. By providing almost complete freedom of augmentation, SL ends up disproving the validity of augmentation. It proves that all of the things that people want to escape via augmentation are not awkward aspects of society or unfortunate random chance; they are aspects of the core human condition, of human nature, and of the universal reality of scarce resources (and even virtual worlds will always have at least some scarce resources, until someone invents a PC with infinite storage space and no power hook-up ever needed; moreover, they'll have to add more and more scarce resources to be acceptable to most humans, until people are able to relate to a virtual world where - for example - they exist everywhere at once).

That is really an absolutely fascinating answer.

Wow, what an answer, you think about the game too much, just play it! Bis it good !

That was indeed a fascinating answer Yummi, although you reversed the meanings of the words Immersion and Augmentation as I understand them.

If I may qoote from Gwyneth llewelyn's blog, which supplies some background to these terms:

"Henrik Linden, (now not working for LL any more) has coined two very interesting words that define Second Life’s experience very well. The first-generation SL residents were interested in Second Life as an “alternate reality”, one that is disconnected from “real life” but bears some resemblance to it. In this alternate reality you would be able to be whomever you wanted to be — and requests for revealing your real life data are considered rude. This group is called by Henrik “immersionists” — they want an experience where SL becomes a real country, with a real economy, where real people are going to live, have their jobs, have their fun. It will have nothing to do with the physical world. And they’re working hard to make this become true.

A later generation, the “augmentationists”, have a different point of view. They look at Second Life as an extension of real life — a tool, a platform, a communication medium, the 2nd generation World-Wide Web in 3D. For them, anonymity is as silly as faking your voice on a phone call; just because you’re a “phone number” you’re not a different person. And sure, people can have a job as virtual architects in Second Life — contracted in real life, with real customers, and paid in real US dollars. This doesn’t mean that SL is just work and no fun; rather the contrary, it’s an entertaining experience, a fun place to be and meet people. But it’s just that and nothing else."



The merits of these 2 views have been debated long and hard at The Thinkers group, which is an in-world philosophical meeting. Neither side seems to make any inroads on the others cherished opinions.

I am not sure, I fully understand your last sentence, which seems to indicate omniprescence will become a requirement for human fulfillment.

I like to think they are. 90% at least. The other 10% are there to make you feel better about yourself, as in "I'm glad I'm not like them"