A Moral Question

if you are looking for honesty on the internets you should log off right now

we are all dishonest from the very beginning


a screen name instead of our real name

a elf or undead wizard or whatever (if playing a RPG) is no different from being a robot or a 7 foot model in SL

email address instead of real life home address

you wear your avatar like you wear anything else - screenname, character, suit of armour etc


virtual reality is an escape for many. To be what they are not.

while you might be as "honest" as you can (keeping internet safety in mind) - for others that idea has nothing to do with how they spend thier time online.

it is hard enough to find honesty while looking for a real life mate, why go to a place where there is that much more freedom and ability to create a whole different persona - including gender?

getting upset at the example posted in the begining thread is like a vegetarian going to a barbecue and being pissed off at all the meat everywhere

IMHO there is no question of morality here - the question is how smart are you at the choice of venue you choose to persue love affairs?

Hiro, your arguement was definately not narrowminded. I think in the senario I presented, depending on how a person looks at it would determine their reaction (as blaze pointed out so well, there was definately a better way I could have phrased it). In your case, you had a very justified response. The ones I would classify as narrow minded would be responses like this one (which I admit is a favorite of mine):

This really isnt an issue of gender preference, it seems more one directed toward honesty. It's one thing to interact as acquaintances, but when you enter a stage in the relationship that involves intimacy, whether physical or emotional, you are offering and asking for trust and it seems more important that you are honest about who you are.

If you love a person, then you love them, who they are, regardless of what sex they are. You could view it as in the end your companion trusted you enough to tell you the truth, or you could view it as a situation where you were deceived by one you trusted. Only you can decide.

One has the right to know what gender someone is if you’re in a relationship or falling for someone, and yes I would be very pissed if they didn't tell me right off.

Again that goes back to the orignal concept I that I was trying (not very well) I suppose to address. If you are in an online relationship, and it would never go into real life, does any physical feature of the other person be it age or gender or size really matter? From the answers I've been seeing on the other forums yes it does, but nobody can say why.



and in the situation I presented that's exacty what happened. The two people hit the second level and at that point one of them was offering and asking for trust by a shared secret which they didn't want to lie about. Still most people see someone coming clean like that as a complete betrayal. I think that in saying that, the individual really shows that they want to be in a fully trusting relationship.

*though if I were the person being told, I'd really want to know why they'd never said anything before...I can see that at first it wouldn't have mattered but as the relationship grew it might have been a good topic for the two to discuss.

Snipped for brevity

I've noticed this as well ... that nobody can say why ... and I've concluded that its bound up in prejudice and homophobia which people dont want to admit, even to themselves.

There is much talk about honesty, but as has been pointed out, we are all dishonest in nearly every aspect of our online lives ... yet its this /one/ issue that pushes the big red panic button.

And in all that talk about honesty, there is little discussion of the where our obligations for honesty really are. Are they to the meat sack (term I read elsewhere which I find fits perfectly here) we walk around in? Is /that/ the truth? Or is the truth who we are inside, who we perceive ourselves to be. Is the truth in the bits I may or may not have in my britches? Or is it in what I see when I look in the mirror of my mind's eye.

I am generally reluctant to enter these discussions because so often they are fraught with emotion and rational discussion is scarce. But your comment "nobody can say why" really struck me.

I believe its not that they /can't/ say why so much as that they /won't/ say why.

Just my personal opinion, your mileage may vary.

I'll address the gender question first: Although I'm as straight as anyone can be, I don't bear any ill will toward someone who is not. Another person's sexual orientation wouldn't matter if our relationship was just friendship. If a romantic relationship had developed, however, and I felt I'd been deceived and manipulated, I think I would end the relationship.

Regarding the age question: Since I am much older than the vast majority of online gamers, I feel very sensitive about that subject. When I make a friend in-game, I always let them know that I'm a grandparent. The last thing I would want to do is mislead someone about my age, or let them entertain any ideas that I might be younger. I expect the same consideration from others -- If someone tells me they are 55 or 60, for instance, and I find out later that they're actually younger than my own children, I'm not going to be pleased and will most likely terminate the friendship.

I don't believe you owe anyone in-game your whole life story, but some basic honesty is essential, in my opinion. To lie about age or marital status is never acceptable (and to let someone become romantically involved with you, while deceiving them about your gender, is really inexcuseable).

There are analogous emotions from RL tragedies that get stirred up by this sort of relationship. In any male-female relationship, there is the tacit agreement that you are creating a future together, i.e. children. This is true unless you state otherwise upfront, because of the biological imperative towards reproduction. Even if all you are to each other is an online character, you can't entirely separate yourselves from that imperative. Anything that violates this will cause enormous pain. It triggers related things, like discovering your mate is infertile.

From a biological perspective or that of a traditional society, time spent on a relationship that is incapable of creating a future for the race is a criminal waste of resources.

This comes in direct conflict with who we are as beings. As beings we are infinitely capable of love, and it does not matter what gender the other person may be. Falling in love is genuine, and the real betrayal is that our bodies are not capable of keeping up with every future we might like to create.

Actually falling in love with someone on the internet is an alien concept to me but I know it happens so more power to those who do.

With that said I personally could care less about another person's first life gender. I am not here to form first life relationships and I could care less about their honesty with me. If I really wanted to meet people I wouldn't do it in SL. I would get a boob job and post my pic in one of those "Looking to Meet Others" websites.

Of the few SL'ers I have met in first life they were the same as their AVs! Hard to believe but true.

Just my own personal opinion.

I would mind that they lied to me. But then, a lot of people don't believe I'm a woman IRL when I tell them (yes, female AV). I think most people in EQ2 (which I also play) think I'm a man (again, female AV). I just am myself. If they are just casual friends, I let them assume whatever they want.

As to someone not being truthful with me...
I wouldn't care if it was a male AV with a female IRL person (or vice versa). I would care that they lied about it but I'd probably get over it pretty fast. I think how I am online is WAY different than how I am IRL. So, if they present themselves a different way online than IRL, I can totally understand that. Sorry about rambling. I can't think coherently today

You know, that one where he makes an avatar to look like his real life self actually happened to me. In another virtual world it began to be possible, with some difficulty to apply a real life photograph to your av's face. I did this, and everybody started complaining about how ugly my av was!

The easy answer is that it ruins the fantasy. If you're in an online relationship, you're fantasizing about your partner. Not just sexually, but the whole 'playing house' bit. The whole relationship. Finding out this person is not only not what you've been fantasizing about, but not even the right gender for your sexual preferences, ruins that.

If you think you're cybering with Johnny Depp and it turns out to be Bob Newhart, it does make a difference, I don't care how open minded anyone claims to be. If you think you're cybering with Johnny Depp and it turns out to be Bea Arthur, it's an even bigger difference. It's a splash of icy cold water.

Because I am bisexual, the person being a different gender would have no bearing for me. Neither would race. Age, however, has big bearing. I have once hung out and kind of fallen for someone (in a small way, not yet the "let's turn on our webcams" kind of way) in TSO who later confessed to me that he was younger than he had led me to believe. Much younger.

I just can't be with someone whom I could have given birth to cronologically speaking. It creeps me out too much. Maybe I'll grow out of that bias by the time i'm 60.

Overall, lying is a really bad way to start a relationship. I tend to run as fast as I can when I find a prospective partner has lied. About anything! (May be why I'm single. lol)

Nice point. Lol, I do have a little monkey wrench to throw in there though, see how your cogs work it and what you think but...

what if they don't even realize it, it's not that they won't say it so much as they don't notice it. They might just read the post and feel rising anger that any person would cross what's become a social taboo. It's like incest or cannibalism. Most people don't say WHY it's wrong, just that it IS because they've been brought up to believe it and that anyone who thinks differently is either socially unacceptable or insane.

In that light you might see the internet having created to social taboo that any woman you meet online is a sick perverted man. In the posts and I admit even I tend to see a female character and automatically assume that a guy is playing it. Thus the anger is actually focused not on homophobia so much as it is focused on an individual breaking that "golden" social norm.

When you hear about people getting into internet relationships and meeting offline what's your first assumption? That one person is a fool? That it will probably end badly? How is meeting someone on the internet and then going to meet them any different from picking up someone at the bar? All we've done is swap what you can't see. At the bar you don't see their personality so much as their physical looks. On the other hand with the internet you see their core personality before you see them physically? Does it make that much of a difference if I lie to your face or I lie online? Either way one could be skilled at deception.

I'm not interested in romance either, although I don't think it's wrong if some players form those kinds of relationships. Basically, whether in RL or SL, I appreciate people who are essentially honest, and the people I do call friends tend to be like-minded.

Here's what I want to know...

Why do people assume "You LIED to me" ??
Think about it...
Online anonymity assures us that there is no way, other than being told, that you can know what gender a person is. (And in fact, you cannot know for sure what gender a person is even if they tell you, because they COULD be lying when they tell you... but we will put this aside for now)

I would think that you should be lauding this person for their HONESTY! Whoever is doing the telling is going out of their way to be HONEST with you. The environment allows RL guys to wear female avs... there are some people who will take that path...

The fact that this RL guy is taking a stand for honesty and TELLING YOU that he is a guy says that he respects you enough to be honest.

Did you deserve that respect from the start?
Not necessarily...
You had not yet earned the right to know personal RL details about the person behind the av.
Telling RL gender is a lot like giving out personal details. Most smart people won't do it right away on the web. When you have associated with someone for a while, then it might be time to share some RL details.

What I see happening here is that people ASSUME that they should know gender from the start because lazy thinkers don't want to have to hold the state of amibiguity between "Baggable" and "Not-baggable" for longer than it takes to say, "HI".

The Web is a different place than RL. You have to be more mentally alert...and flexible. You shouldn't be classifying people into "Baggable" and "Not Baggable" upon meeting them anyway. THAT behavior is disrespectful... to the person being assessed as well as to the person doing the assessment.
Shame!

How beautifully, precisely and simply put: Baggable vs not-Baggable

*applause*

LOL you had me right up to this paragraph. Lol sorry the baggable and not-baggable comment had me rolling on the floor.

Does this mean you agree, or disagree with my assessment?

Takes clinton approach: I can neither confirm nor deny the bagged check I did with that furry.....



j/k XD


I think I said something similar on the second page...however I think you worded your statement better.

Heck... in Second Life, you can turn around that old cartoon and say "On the Internet, nobody knows you're not really a dog".

EXACTLY my point.
Thank you!

You did, but I missed it since it went in between me starting my response and it finally posting.

Alain I think you are answering an entirely different question to me. I agree with everything you said apart from one part. I really can not aplaud people for being honest (generally). I hate it when people go round patting each other on the back for doing the right thing. It just seems all a bit backward to me.

Hiro, in a perfect world, I would agree with you; however, we live in a world where basic right behaviors are falling out of fashion, and I applaud anyone that goes against the grain and does the right thing not because it will get them anything, but because it is the right thing to do.

Being honest under the circumstances involves taking a risk, and courage in the classic sense(as opposed to bravery, of which courage seems to have become a synonym...). I applaud anyone that shows courage in their daily dealings with other people.