An Alt Pretending She is Not?

My dirty secret is . . . I actually AM an alt.

I've told a few people my "regular" name inworld, but mostly I've kept quiet about it.

How much disclosure am I obligated to have?

As long as it's not a guy behind a female av or viceversa you're ok. Disgusting, but it happens.

In RL a lot of people say " you look familiar"

Its just that sometimes.

If you think its an alt, well ok, but it might not be.

Perception is everything, I give the benfit of doubt - as long as you both enjoy,
whats does it matter.

If its not fun, Mute it.

Cristalle, thank you! You get my vote for Most Sensible Post of the Day.

There are lots of reasons why someone would choose to be an alt and not reveal their previous SL existence, even to former friends. Many of them are legitmate, many of them are highly personal.

Also, our minds play tricks on us all the time. It's easy to think you see a similarity where no connection actually exists. This person may not be an alt of someone else you know. It could be just you.

I always, always try to take an av at face value. They are who and what they say they are, unless events should prove them different. And sometimes even then. I've met female avs who eventually turned out to be played by guys in RL. I still treat them as women. I've met alts and later learned who they were alts of. Doesn't matter, I continue to treat them as a separate person.

None.

Ricardo, I suggest you work harder on raising your Tolerance Quotient. Some of the nicest women in SL are played by guys behind the keyboard. Vice versa too, I suppose, but I've met very few F to M cross gender players.

The fact of them playing cross gendered is their issue. Your disgust is yours.

I'm not belittling your feelings, believe me. Feelings are real. But, they are YOUR feelings. YOU are responsible for them. I'm responsible for mine, too. For example, I posted recently about my discomfort at some of the Dominant/Submissive stuff I've witnessed. After a lot of thought and soul searching (and talking to some of the folks who go in for this sort of thing), I've decided that my feelings are not THEIR fault. My feelings are mine, to accept, analyze, or change.

That doesn't mean I'm going to go out and buy a whip or a collar. Those lifestyles are not for me. I value my freedom, and the freedom of others, too much to ever be a slave or a mistress. But I've managed to root out the cause of my disgust: it's fear. No surprise there...fear is the root of almost all anger, outrage, disgust.

I've derailed the thread far too much already, so I won't say any more, though I could go on for pages about my fear of D/s, and your fear of gender-benders. But think about it, OK?

::blows soda through her nose::
thank you for reminding me of childhood

I say who cares, if both are nice, fun to hang out w/, what does it really matter? I've had a few friend that I knew their alts, w/o knowing they were alts, then found out later... I usually ask why, they usually give me their reason, and I shrug and go oh, ok.

Score!! 2 for today

There have been times I wondered and was curious if I was right or just being paranoid.
But I am always looking for patterns and certain people share common ones, like
speech, even when they use smile symbols,etc.
There are people I have met who do similar behaviors, or something just seem bit
off about them,etc and I have wondered about.
I figure if someone wants to do that they have their reasons but I have never asked out right
are you so and so or any other things that I have thought about.
When I was new I know there was one new character that was met and the person I guess
was bored created new avatar where I hung out and felt I was asking too many questions in forum.
Showed up in regular hang out as new person and intentionally asked series of annoying questions over and over again to for laughs.
I have no way to prove they did that but I have strong hunch they did. No clue who it was
though probably a bored forum goer.
I figure if they really are that bored to go through all those steps to find some fun they
got more problems mentally then I do I am severely disabled in multiple ways in real life..
If I am really uncomfortable with situation I keep my distance.
I got other things to deal with that are more important.

Who cares? I think someone needs a tinfoil hat.

You must be really bored? Don't have anything better to do?
Why waste your typing strength if you don't care?

*Gives him a new hat*

This I think annoys me the most. As for the Alt issue, there isn't any way to verify and it isn't fair to accuse. I can understand your suspicions though. People can established alts and cheat on you too if you are seeing each other. I've stopped the whole seeing each other dating in world all together. It's just too aggravating. Pretty soon your second life is no different than your first life. Am I a bitter avie? Maybe...

I've wondered about 3-4 people on my friends list as to whether or not 1-2 of them are ALTs of each other. I have no proof except a common way that they seem to treat me and act around me and the circumstances of how I've met these avatars in question. One of them asked me some offensive questions this evening. I muted and removed this person as a friend. I hope I don't need to mute and remove any more so called friends. But I will if they ask the same offensive questions as this person did. I came to SL to escape this sort of crap.

[joke]Sometimes I think there are only two people in all of SL. Myself and you. I don't know how you do it, but it's pretty impressive how you can control all those avatars and all those sims.[/joke]

The more I read of Lindal, the more I respect her.

I had this situation come up for the first time last week. There's a person on my friends list who I hang out with occassionally but she's more of an acquaintance than a friend. Last week I was with a group of people and a person with an av almost identical to her and a name almost identical showed up. She acted like a stranger but I was too curious and compared their profiles. Groups were virtually identical.

Assuming she didn't want her identity revealed openly I IM'd her to joke around. I wont give details but let's just say she made it pretty obvious that my assumption was correct while denying they were the same person. I decided at that point to respect she had her reasons and I haven't brought it up again with either of the avs.

It so hurts not to respond to this but Lindal did a better job than I ever could.

My alt doesn't speak to anybody, ever, she just wanders around kicking her money-tree till it works again and putting up my new vendors so my main doesn't get payment spammed all the time.

seconded.

Why care? Are you in control of your emotions? Or do you let your emotions control you?

I think everyone should have the right to be who they want to be.
You said that you enjoyed spending time with her so my advice would be to enjoy it and ignore your suspicions.
If she is an alt, then she obviously has reasons to stay separate from the original av.
If she is not, then you are at risk of destroying whatever you already have.
If you cannot let it go and cannot accept her wishes then walk away. It is better for everyone.

And to Ricardo, Lindal said it a lot better than I ever could but I have to say, I wouldn't think many people around here would welcome that kind of attitude. Again, people should be allowed to be who they want to be. Whether that is female or male that is completely up to them. No one deserves to be branded as disgusting. If you don't agree with it then look away, mute, do whatever but do not ever make someone feel bad for doing something that doesn't harm anyone else.

I would agree with that. Particularly in RP communities, I can understand that someone might want one av for one RP and another for something else. Also, people might react differently to AV1 if they knew there was a link to AV2 (with a negative impact on the RP).

So - speculate by all means; one can't help being intrigued, and I've played hunt-the-alt myself on a few occasions. But keep it to yourself. Certainly don't confront them, EVER. Just treat each av as a person on their own terms, it's the polite thing to do.

This whole issue, to my way of thinking, goes back to the thing about how much RL you need to know about someone in order to interact with them in SL. There was a great thread about this a while back, identifying the various types of resident - if you are in SL to meet RL people, then knowing that a resident is an alt (in other words that the two of them are ONE person in RL) is of paramount importance, and them denying it might seem to you like deception.

If you are the type that are willing to take residents at face value, and don't care about their RL, then you should "play along" and interact with each person as an individual and not worry whether they are alts or not.

As I have said before there is room is SL for all types of "player" - understand the type that you are, make it known to the people you care about in SL what type you are, and pay attention to the things they tell you. It might mean the end to some "friendships" but if they were based on false assumptions, maybe they weren't real friendships in the first place.

sage advice. follow it. that's all i have to say on the subject.

It's definitely an issue of how you view your avatar. Some people see it as an extension of their RL self; others see the avatar as an entity unto itself, connected to yet distinct from the person at the keyboard.

You'll find a lot of conflict when the two viewpoints collide, since each viewpoint has a different set of expectations. People who see avatars as RL stand-ins are horrified and disgusted at the thought of, for example, being the opposite gender from the flesh. People who see avatars as separate from the RL self aren't fazed by this at all.

Thus, alts can be seen as a kind of insult to the people who subscribe to the former view--there's only one of you in RL, why would you want to be more than one person in SL? But if you see each avatar as, perhaps, an exploration of a different aspect of one's self, then having multiple avatars is perfectly sensible and, to a degree, asking if you're the 'same person' can honestly be answered in the negative.