Is the Digital "real"?

I suppose one who is a manwhore lushdrunk with a dozen lovers and two dozen ex's, stealing cars and building miami cocaine mansions and dj'ing strip bars in SL, while being a married mormon school teacher in RL, might answer your question.

but I wouldn't know.

I don't consider SL as "real".

It's a medium that allows us to express our inner beings, desires and personalities.

FYI: I met my fiancee of 7 yrs in a chat room. We found out we were local to each other & started chatting privately. From that we were able to realize we had the same beliefs, problems, ideas, humor and so on.

We constantly IM'd & emailed other. Then we met in RL. The chemistry was there, but we just weren't sure at first.

In fact- I can tell you HOW it came about- I was dropping her off at her mother's house late one night. I said "if this keeps up, they'll think we're dating". She said "Maybe we should be?" One long kiss later, we were hooked.

Well... 7 years later, we're still together.

First of all, wow, what an awesome thread (I know - awesome is an overused word in SL circles !). The point is that this has cut right through to the very essence of why I am in SL, even if I would sometimes try and answer obliquely (its the music !).

Without repeating all the various comments already made, I see two essential factors here which establish the relevant emotional state. Communication, and immersion. Honest and open communication takes time, as it involves trust due to sharing. Immersion is a personal factor, based on how easily the person can accept the rather alien concept of using a machine to communicate. - I remember those first hesitant steps in using a telephone when I was young ! Immersion is also used when partaking of other fantasy states, eg watching a film, or reading a book.

The result for me has been synergistic, ie friends in every aspect except meeting face to face.

An issue which can happen, as mentioned earlier is falling in love with love itself. I compare this with the holiday romance, which is an indulgence in fantasy, and doesnt take on board all of the harsh RL issues. True love is possible, if both parties are ready to accept the warts'n'all as already mentioned.

Certainly a digital relationship can be as real emotionally as a physical one, You can fall in love with someone without meeting them first. Even in a physical relationship a person will generally if asked what is the main reason they are with a partner would not be physical looks but would be personality, the physical looks of a person tend to attract two people together, but as i`m sure most people quickly find out during life is that the most beautiful people in looks are not always also the most beautiful people on an emotional level, so love works mainly on a non physical basis, meaning love over a non physical medium can be just as real and valid as love in a physical basis.

A relationship in SL is possible, but how real it is all depends on how real both people are being, if both are roleplaying characters then the relationship is just that, roleplayed, however if the people involved are being honest and open and being themselves with each other then a SL relationship is just as real and valid as real world one and comes with all the same emotional responses, both positive and negative.

SL is very real
Real can be very SL.
I am in a very rewarding relationship with a man I never have to meet in "real" - he and I are successful in our ways in reality and busy enough to find real relationships conflicting with our schedules. We'll never meet. He is in his sixties and I am in my 20s. But in sl we have a reality. We have never argued, never typed sharply at each other - always had a deep appreciation of the other. Age matters to a point - yes we have sex in sl and it is meaningful. We have discussions and similar interests.

All relationships and realities are what John Donne referred to in "Air and Angels" - he just wrote metaphysical poetry 400 years ago - so he was just a bit ahead of his time ...

By the way, I love it when we get people (read a few threads above) who get really huffy when sex is mentioned and start proclaiming they would never do it in sl - Sex can be a Computer Science, too. I guess some people who use SL use it for more than building odd scripts and adjusting wind conditions.

I will add that I dont use SL to "visit" places in-world. My "land" simply offers a venue for meeting my sl partner and a place to put up artworks we buy. We dont do much of what sl offers because we "do" much of this is our real worlds already. But for those who want to ride horses or go ski-ing in sl, well good luck to them. That is as real to them as my skybox is to me. They may not be able to do so in the other world.

I'd say so, yes. My husband and I spend time together in RL and in SL, and I don't view SL as "less real" just because we're communicating in a different way. ^^

I assume dis already came up?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/13/LVL211GP5C.DTL

AMEN SISTER!

Have to say though, ultimately there is a cut off point I think. That's the point whereyou meet up and take your chances or not.

/me returns to the preparatory RL not being who she is by dint of dieting

There are other aspects to it tho, for me. I can sit and make a dinner in SL but never taste it, or share it, or feed it to him with my fingers, or ... well, you get the idea. I guess with a long IRC background, particularly one which was the flipside of the actual BDSM scene in the UK (i.e. I met people online first, or rl first, but eventually didn't see a distinction as I knew them both ways) well I suppose I do view the digital as real. I find people who don't, or don't care that there's a person behind the screen, or who are lying first and foremost to THEMSELVES, very hard to understand.

I just wanted to second this, frankly. I also spent some time on IRC and met people from there, was frequently baffled by the difference between some people's online personas and their RL personalities. Never understood why changing the method of communication would alter someone's way of behaving, and it often made me wonder, basically, who they really were; which variation was closer to their actual selves.

At the same time, I got a lot of comments about being the same in RL as I was online, which equally surprised me. I'm not against a bit of RP now and then, but this concept seems different, somehow. I'm not sure I understand it.

Funny, innit. I don't view roleplay as being a different person though, just a different situation. There's that VL/RL thing again tho - I RP in reality too. I'm the same in personality online or off, maybe a little more lazy offline

I think I view RP as... facets of my own personality, run through a filter for a given situation. I've annoyed one or two people before by doing this, though--they were basing their actions on what I personally would have done in that situation, but I was constrained by my character, at the time, and didn't do what they expected. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it's great to see other people relax and get more into things based on the additional immersion your performance provides.

I also RP in RL, same basic style and methodology... but that's relatively easy, imho, when there's a set time limit on it and everyone's aware that you're doing it. To do otherwise... ah... that's the sticking point, I suspect.

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Looking back on this thread, I wonder if there is any commonality of experience among those who do -- either by way of choice or simply due to disposition -- perceive of the digital as being "real". What I mean is whether there are common indicia, common indicators, that these people share which mediate their experience of the digital as being "real" -- which perhaps others who do not view the digital as real do not value, or recognize as significant or important, or at least as unimportant in comparison to relevant indicia in the physical world, which are given priority status. It's an interesting thought.

As for the suggestion to narrow the discussion to a topic such as whether someone would choose an SL relationship over a RL one, that could be an interesting topic for discussion, but wasn't at all what I was trying to get at here. I think there have been quite a few interesting responses to the topic I chose for the thread, even if some people seem to have found it frustratingly vague.

Totally th' same here.

I would have to disagree. For the RL me ... the SL me is not an extension of myself. Yes, the SL me has been influenced by my own personality and RL interests, but that's as far as it goes. The SL me is her own entity.

Consider it like method acting ... where the actor becomes the character he is portraying. The same is with me. When in-world, I am completely and 100% Lita. She has a life all her own. If you find yourself attracted to Lita and try to enter a relationship, you're only having that relationship with Lita, not her RL counterpart. There is no crossover. The RL and SL personas do not intermingle.

So everything that happens in SL is real, to Lita ... but complete fantasy to her user.

You will often find Lita referring to her RL counterpart as her 'user' .. a throwback to the movie Tron, where the SL community has pulled other references such as the grid, or rezzing.

Some people view their Avatar as a separate thing from their RL self, in some cases its a way to experience a world from a completely different viewpoint, this in someways also explains why some people cross gender/race in SL because they don`t want to be the same person as in the RL in SL, but want to see things from another angle.

However other people,and I would include myself in this category, use the avatar as an extension/representation of themselves. In some ways in SL i`m probably a lot more outgoing than I am in RL because in RL I would not do or say certain things in larger groups of people where as because i`m more shielded in SL my inhibitions of RL are far fewer. You could argue that the RL me is more roleplayed than the SL me because in RL I hold back from saying and doing certain things and don`t let the true me out, whereas in SL i allow the full me to come out, so someone who meets me in SL actually gets to see a much truer me and in the RL they just see the parts of my persona I allow them to.

The OP asks if there is a commonality of experience among those who perceive the digital as real (I would number myself among them). Perhaps one could also ask if there is a commonality in brain composition? I'm no expert here, but I seem to remember reading about studies that showed brain differences between people who experienced text they read as more real and those who experienced texts as less real--the former displaying less of a difference in their brain's reaction to reading about walking and actually walking. Perhaps some people are more hard-wired to respond differently to physical sensation and the representation of physical sensation, while others are hard-wired to respond to both in similar ways. I would be very interested in seeing such studies done on the reactions to being inworld.

Yes that's an intersting avenue of investigation, potentially. It seems at least plausible to me that some of these peceptional variances are, to some degree, wired. If indeed this turns out to be the case, it could have interesting implications for the further development and expansion of the 3D digital space in the years ahead.

my SL wife is moving in with me in real life... 12 more days and she'll be here with me... RL wedding is roughly planned for december.
'nuff said.

Yes I think it is possible - for me. I have loved exclusively in the digital reality. I have heard others say they have too. Unfortunately, I have not found a partner who has really loved me in the digital reality.

I have been told that I expect too much. That is probably true. I have always expected of others what I expect of myself, and I do know that i can genuinely feel love, loyalty and commitment in an online relationship.

I think a lot of people choose to interact and have relationships here for the precise reason that they don't have to satisfy anything in the real life physical space. Personally I have known a lot of those. *sigh*

imogen

No

No?

Reality is a funny thing to talk about.
Its kinda like trying to see your own back.

It is difficult to talk about reality, as a totality of all experience, so we tend to break it down into different "flavours".

The tears we shed when reading "A Tale of Two Cities", or watching "West Side Story", are real enough though engendered by fiction.

The emotions caused by Powerful dreams can haunt you all day.

I have seen SL compared to reading a book, watching a movie, being IN a play, etc etc

Though these other media, can partially explain why SL can be so gripping, I get the feeling a certain undefinable, something extra is going on.

Is SL Hypnotic. ??
Is it like a Drug. ??

Shrugs. I dunno.

There have been times when I have been totally immersed in My Avatar. Feeling it to be me.
But if this feeling evaporates, my connection to other Avatars, seems to weaken as a consequence.

" A Tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying..........Nothing "

This thread raises the question 'How real online experiences are...but, how could experience be otherwise?
........'How real are experiences off the Internet?' someone may ask.....

This issue needs lots of discusssion.......

Morgaine and I spend very nearly as much time in SL as RL due to our distance apart. They are both part of one whole; the humour, the choosing, the chat, the pregnant pauses, the smiles, the stony silence. We will arrive at some point in time where the chat is more important than the moving, we may ignore outside of the text box for an hour, it's our time.

The play can be therapeutic, the cosmetics anaesthetising, it can be as real or as fake as we agree to make it.

And we soo desperately need SLU's 'agree' and 'thanks' buttons here!

84 Charring Cross Road ... probably the dullest action I've ever seen but I was rivetted.