Avatar Decsions/Actions Impact First Life?

Some people connect deeply with their online self. Others don't.

That difference is the source of much internet drama.

Enough said.

Before this game I played Ultima Online except I didn't kill monsters I killed other players thousands of kills against the avatars of real people after which I looted their corpses clean. Many kills were fair combat many were senseless murders for shits and giggles. Since then I have killed or looted in real life... gimme a second to count...


















ZERO PEOPLE

I STRONGLY recommend you grow up and recognize the difference between what's real and what isn't because it definately appears to be a concept you are having a great deal of trouble with.

We're going to TEAR YOUR SOUL APART!

j/k.

mostly.

well, not really.

I think everyone has a different answer and definition for the relationship between their real life persona and their virtual one because there's no single "norm." For some people, their SL avatar is an expression of their true self, however idealized. For others their avatar is a character they roleplay quite seperate from themselves. It's no more an expression of their personality than if they were writing a character in a novel (who might happen to be a villian). For me, my avatar is merely a bit of canvas on which to hang art, and the vehicle I use to drive around the virtual world. Not being a roleplayer I don't view my avatar as a character I play. It's actions aren't seperate from mine so it doesn't take on a life of its own that can reach back and affect me in real life (which is couldn't do even if I was roleplaying). It's more of an opposite relationship. If I personify my avatar it would be more like some hapless virtual person who I've sequestered to channel me from the beyond, hehe.

The thing I find so amusing about the Jack Thompson style argument about video games affecting people is that it attributes a kind of magical power to games which doesn't actually exist. The activities in a game might stimulate existing aspects of someone's personality (for good or ill) but it can't impart things that aren't already there. The argument against violent videogames rests on the premise that we're simply mindless automatons being programmed by the media we consume. I've always found that view to be rather irrational.

If someone loves to play first person shooters and goes out and shoots up their local post office they probably enjoyed playing shooters because it excited an existing violent aspect of themselves. They may have thought of their character in the game as being themselves acting out things they'd really like to do, rather than as a character in a work of fiction in which they're participating. The game didn't create that relationship. It's like if someone has a propensity for gluttony and goes out and eats big macs until their rib cage explodes and then people argued that big macs cause people to become gluttonous. That would be silly since a hamburger has no innate power to make anyone do anything.

Ultimately each individual is responsible for drawing the line between fantasy and reality. They're not innocent bystanders being manipulated by media. If they are then they have some sort of disassociative disorder.

heaven above the clouds is the shit!




no wait... heavan above the clouds is shit..


PS. I seen a big bear making the sex with a girl in a club one day.. one has to doubt the person who enjoys that

http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=68641&sort=PictureID+desc&Name=Richie+Waves

Your post gave me quite the laugh because I relate to it. When I play Auto Assault I race through the countryside blowing up every vehicle I encounter, running over pedestrians, and destroying whole towns. My after-work commute is not nearly as interesting... not even a speeding ticket.

Just for the sake of raising other issues about SL affecting real life:

1. Suppose someone who is married met someone else in SL and started a "fun relationship" that turned serious. Then that person's real life relationship was threatened by this other online relationship to the point of divorce?
   
2. Suppose someone who was curious about Gor started exploring the aspects of that culture until they were completely drawn into the M/s culture and wanted to become a Master/slave in rl?
   
3. Suppose someone who was not addicted to gambling in real life started a gambling addiction online which soon became a real life problem due to constantly buying Linden$?
   
4. Suppose someone in SL got involved in an ageplay relationship and was so carried away with it they became a rl pedophile?
   
5. Suppose someone who is emotionally vulnerable was targeted by someone else and manipulated into an emotional entanglement in SL that affected their real lives (marriage, kids, jobs, emotional stability, etc.)
   
6. Suppose someone who is suffering low self-esteem became so attached to their beautiful avatar that they preferred to only live in SL, to the point that their real life appearance became grotesque to them?
   
7. Suppose someone in SL was targeting other people for real life stalking, and actually meeting them and manipulating them into giving them money, sex, property, etc.?
   

Sure, it's all related to a predisposition to do these things, the person running the avatar opened themselves up to these new experiences in Second Life as a way to explore their inner wishes and desires. But I could see it carrying over to real life pretty easily in all these situations. SL may be a game to some people, while only a platform to others, but for many who are not completely in balance in their real lives, SL is all there is. It becomes the only reality they want to live.

There is so much to do and see and experience in SL, almost anything is possible. For people who are mentally or emotionally vulnerable, SL has some dangerous possibilities and threats. I'm not addressing the demon issue, that's just ridiculous over-religiosity (new word? lol), but there are a lot of moral issues that aren't addressed by what SL has to offer.

We hear a lot of stories about people meeting in SL and carrying that relationship over to real life (it happened to me in fact ), but those are the happy ending stories. We rarely hear about the sad stories, but I know of several people who've had sad stories that started with SL.

Life and death and murder, maybe not, but the other situations I could easily see happening and actually know of some of these situations happening to people I know...

I can't agree more.

Mostly I AM Shockwave Plasma.
Sometimes I control a group of pixels on the screen called Shockwave Plasma.

I identify with the way I appear in SL, but I feel the need to change as I'm just to "Ruthy" this is causing me some heartache at the moment, as this is part of the identity I have built.

On the other hand I know people who change about 3 times a night , while I'm chatting to them.

I can only advise the OP that peoples identification with their AV is either very intimate, or it's very disposable. The extremes of both could be rather unhealthy.

Want to know something even more odd? I always TP home, and lay on the bed before I log out. If anybody else told me that, I might think they are a bit strange.

Psychologists have known for years about conditioning. There have been experiments done to show that acting out certain behaviours effects your attitudes towards those behaviours. The one example I remember from psyc 101 involved campaigning for politicians.

They took people that they knew were in favour of politician A and had a friend of theirs ask them for a favour. They tell them that they had promised to go door to door and help campaign for politician B, but now for some reason they can't do it. They would consider it a personal favour if they would do it for them, saying they don't have to believe what they are saying but just do it as a favour for them. The ones who agreed to do it had an altered attitude towards politician B when they were done. The very act of pretending to like politician B, and arguing in favour of him, had changed how they actually felt about politician B, even though the facts of the campaign had not changed. They had conditioned themselves to like politician B by just pretending to like him.

So don't fool yourself that what you do online doesn't have any effect at all on you in rl, because it does. How much of an effect varies from person to person, but there is still an effect of some sort none the less.

There's another way to look at this. Where do our values and morals come from? Unless you believe you were born with every value you have (some people believe this), then the answer is it comes from our experiences in life. It comes from our parents, our friends, our mentors, our religions, our readings, our television, our adventures and our failures. Every experience in our life effects and changes who we are. Our individual values are constantly changing day by day as we experience life.

What we experience in Second Life, irrespective of it being virtual, is still an experience that is added to our lives. We feel joy and sadness, success and failure, pleasure and pain. And as such, they add to our accumulated life experience. There is just no way that it could not effect us, that it could not change who we are and our values.

Marla

Agreed, but putting pixelated horns on your pixelated head doesn't make you destined to become a devil worshipper, as the original poster seemed to suggest. Had he stayed with the buying too many $L for gambling is a RL problem, giving someone in SL too much control over your RL is a problem, yadda yadda, I'd have agreed.

This reminds me of when I was a teenager (*cough* years ago) and one of our pals was banned from playing Dungeons and Dragons with us because, "it was the Devil's game". The mindset of thinking a demon avatar is inherently bad goes along with thinking perhaps demons are out to get us in the real world - although I support your right to think this, I don't agree. Slot machines in SL don't strike me as being very different from slot machines in real life, except perhaps they cost less than a nickel/quarter per play.

The question of whether external experiences determine your actions as opposed to free will or a combination is an age-old philosophical debate. I don't think everything you experience affects you with no input from deliberate reason. I once read a book by Anne Rice, but I haven’t become a complete iidiot from this one sad event (*ducks*). Everyone in SL that is building an avatar or profession that some find unpleasant but others like is just a matter of a market being met.

Now, I'm going back in-game to my devil escort Avatar with a roulette wheel built into my forked tail.

Actually, this doesn't seem odd to me, as virtually everyone I know who has a home, including me, does this. When I don't have the opportunity to do so, that is what feels odd. And residents I know who have obtained a home (rented or owned) usually pick up this behavior. Now, I'm not saying this is everyone, just those people I know.

I do this as well. Actually I don't lie on the bed, as I don't have a bed any more, but I TP home, and when I had a bed I used to lie on it.

It's... rather odd when you think about it, but I don't feel the need to examine it too far at this moment really. Best to simply do what feels natural without worrying that it's weird in some way.

So what explains people who're seriously messed up BEFORE the internet?? Guess it didnt exist.

People always find a way to blame their problems on something else.

Oh, it exists.

-Ghoti

[ed. hmmm guess that doesn't really fit in the context... but trippy anyway]

I had a pretty strong connection to my avatar for a long time. I made her look as much like me as possible, I had her do the same things I morally would in RL... for example, never walked around naked, never stripped or escorted, never had cybersex, etc. After a while I got bored, and figured I'm already me in First Life so I might as well do/be whatever I feel like at the moment in Second Life. (I still have no interest in a Adult side of the game though... I like sex when it actually happens.)

In my case, my personality, my morality, etc, was imposed upon my avatar, not the other way around. I don't know how much of an impact SL has on me in RL... little to none, I guess, except for noticing clothes in RL a lot more.

I can certainly see, however, how someone whose First Life is sad and incomplete may put an unhealthy focus on Second Life and have it severely affect their RL. Those same people would likely do the same to any number of things: a subculture, a science fiction series of novels, another game, D&D, etc. It has nothing to do with this game and everything to do with their mentality.

I really wouldn't waste time judging people wearing horns... Anyone who actually believes in the Devil as an actual big red guy with horns and hooves and living in a fiery pit probably also still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

LOL! Is this the woman they based the mother off of in the Book/movie "Carrie"?

This thread has some great insights, so I figure I'll add my L$0.02. My avatar is an idealized version of myself (hey, I get a perfect body and don't have to go to the gym!) but I don't really try to have a personality that's different from RL. I do like the ability to do things that I can't do in RL, like go dancing with friends (no dance clubs where I am in RL), or go shopping and blow all my money on some really cool gadget. I like the ability to live a lifestyle in SL that I cannot at the moment live in RL as a person with an alternative lifestyle.

I have no idea how many residents this has happened to, but a wonderful friendship in SL blossomed into a romance that has begun to spill into my RL. And it's a good thing. So mostly for me SL is a way to stay in touch with someone I care about very much, who in RL I have not had (and would not have had) the chance to meet.

I believe that SL is a part of RL. It is not separate and compartmentalized and isolated. It is a physical thing exists as silicon and bits and bytes on servers somewhere in California. It exists in RL for each of us as an image on a RL computer monitor. It also exists in our very real minds, and thus touches each of us in different ways and to different depths. Were my relationship with the person I met in SL to unravel (heaven forbid), it would affect me deeply in RL. But like any emotional upheaval, I would mourn for a while, then regroup, and carry on.

Perhaps that is where the concern lies--that some may not be emotionally equipped in RL to deal with life events. That's not a problem caused by SL. It is, however, one that SL simply reveals. If an SL relationship damages a RL relationship, perhaps that person was not as strongly involved in the RL relationship as they thought. If a person finds they are addicted to gambling in SL, perhaps it is a problem that has not yet manifested in RL.

However, a person choosing what I might consider a distasteful avatar doesn't mean that that person is unbalanced in some way--they are most likely exploring aspects of their personality that they can't in their daily lives. The same goes for someone taking actions in SL that seem counter to choices they'd otherwise make.

SL exists as a way for us to explore the possibilities of our personalities, and is a way to realize some dreams we may not be able to reach outside SL. I think that fretting over other people's avatars and actions (griefing excluded) is to deny the SL's reason for being--an outlet for creative self-expression.

I tend to disagree only because that statement is too generalized. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the statement.

I view my avatar as a cartoon, nothing more, nothing less. Somedays my cartoon is a person, one day a fairy, others it is a blue anime panda bear, tomorrow it could be something entirely different. None of the representations are visually like me in RL.

To me SL is just another method to talk to my friends and hang out; much like calling them on the phone or chatting with them on AIM but in a different venue. The fun difference is we can do it while building, skydiving, shooting the crap out of each other in Jessie or listening to streaming live music at an event.

How each person mentally intertwines themself and their visual personification in SL differs. Some folks I know are VERY tied to the visual aspects of their avatar and others, like myself, are not.

First, let me thank everyone that responded! I think quite a number of valid and interesting points were raised-- and a few of these I want to chime in on.

The response that caused me to reflect the most, initially, was the Budda quote. Interestingly, it exactly echos the view of sin expounded in the Christian tradition: that if you think of doing something that is sinful seriously enough, it is as if you have actually done it. This raises the issue so often responded to from my post as to the seriousness, what I would term 'the level of investment', with which people play their avatars. A fair number of individuals wrote as to where they stood on this and it seems we had the whole spectrum represented. The general conclusion seemed to be that there CAN be an impact on an individual from SL... but that it is dependant on the investment made in the avatar. And, this in turn is based on real life stability and real life issues. This seems entirely reasonable.

Here is the distinction I would draw with Second Life: it allows for a greater consummation of action than a general video game where the people you shoot, stab, kiss, get inimate with or run over are computer generated. And, to be sure, there are plenty of games like EQ2 that do allow player-on-player fights, deaths, etc.. I submit that it is a greater victory for a person on a number of levels to best or bed a human controlled avatar/character rather than a computer generated one-- as the former is quite a few steps removed from some obscure programmer that designed the whatever-it-was to fight or adore your character. As such, the experience of interacting (positively or negatively) is more "real". From this let me make a few points:

1.) I suggest that the unbalanced may find the SL closer-to-reality experience is enough to affect RL behavior because it goes further. So, while I am not into banning games at all, I simply raise the prospect that without the more real aspect of SL, certain individuals would not get the intellectual 'push' composed of the greater mental satisfaction they need to potenetially do harmful things to themseleves or others in real life. Conversely, some people may also gain confidence in themselves in the SL enviornment to become, for instance, more engaging with others in real life. This does go both ways.

2.) I want to clarify why it concerned me that in game, highly-detailed demon avatar was taken so lightly by those that saw him. By way of explanation, I have met people engaged in a dark side of spirituality and there is, from what I have seen and heard about, an argument to be made that some (not all) avenues of spiritual exploration can create unforseen consequences. For the people I knew, the consequences were quite negative. An avatar can never be more than an image but... I would add that sometimes visual representations facilitate a deeper and more focused embrace of things both good and bad. My point is simply that I do not see the level of effort to produce this Hollywood-worthy demon as altogether a good thing from that standpoint. That being said, Halloween costumes of guys with horns, pointy tails and pitchforks do not alarm me... but they would also not be my first choice for a costume. My concern here is primarily for the player. My hope would be that he is out for shock value and to have folks admire the work of shaping his avatar. However, even if that is so, and that there is no real investment in this... is there a line to be drawn anywhere? For instance: would avatars perfoming human sacrifice, cannibalism or demon worship be a reasonable thing in any on-line world-- even if it was with the consent of the principals? I say 'no' but the Lindens probably have little choice but to permit this. My guess would be that at least some aspect of this is probably in-world (SL) already because if you have visited the shops... the supplies are already there. Any thoughts?

2a.) Aside from the girl that turned to prostitution in the demon-avatar's club.. let me add in a conversation I had with another girl that works there. She said, " there is a very dark side to me you do not know". Roleplay? In all likelihood, yes-- but, I do not know if she was in character or not actually. Either way, clearly the person playing this avatar liked the avatar-demon representation her avatar was working for and was intimating a kinship. Good thing? Well, again.. it goes to her RL psychological balance and to her 'investment' in her avatar. But, even if she is a well-balanced person... there is still an element here that bothers me. Am I alone in this?

3.) 'Good art affects people' - a profound statement raised in many a philosophy aesthetics class and raised in response to my initial question. I submit that SL is not good art but GREAT art... and it is improving. Therefore, there is a moral dimension that should not be ignored if anyone embraces this statement even minimally. Your thoughts?

4.) For the record, I put my avatar in his house at the end of each session too. Seems like the reasonable thing to do-- bringing him to where he would likely go at the end of the SL day. ...Ah, but I'm not that invested in my avatar... or am I?

I think it has less to do with the visual representation than it does with what is projected through the avatar. The visual image is an extremely important channel, but it is not the entire signal.

-Ghoti

But none of that is your buisness. For all you know, the guy is a satanist, or an athiest who doesn't believe in demons, or a shintoist who has an altogether different understanding of the concept than you. This is not Second Christian Life.



Of course not, but, again, it's none of your buisness. Some people use SL to explore their darker sides, and that's their choice.



I *dont* embrace the statement, it's intelectual hogwash as stated since there is no standard of good art. Even were it true, again, what buisness is it of yours? If you find the art too dark in SL, you don't have to pay attention to it - but others like it.

Gosh, I think about shooting my neighbor's dog every day. Why does he keep barking?


Yes, it's called "personal choice", something neither you nor I NOR the Lindens should have any say about unless it interferes with our own lives.


Not really. "Reasonable" people don't play furries, demons, angels, prostitutes or gangstas. Creative people might, but most of us aren't in SL to be "reasonable" - we're here to enjoy ourselves.


You're suggesting that SL behavior drives RL behavior, and I think that's bass ackwards.


Jack Thompson, is that you?


No there's not. Such arguments are superstitious claptrap. You're free to believe it if you want, but please keep it to yourself. Wearing a demon avatar in SL does not put you on the short list for Christian Hell.


Maybe for people incapable of rational thought, but not for me.


His welfare is not your concern. Nothing to proselytize here, move along.


The Lindens have plenty of choice, and they have chosen to allow it. There is a small niche of sexual play that features serving women as food, complete with faux spits, basted and sauteed. It's purely roleplay but it goes on in SL, too, and it's none of your or my damned business if some people want to do things like that. Start posting your philosophical ramblings about morality and the next thing we know, you're forming lynch mobs to go after the unbelieving infidels. Just stop. Right now.


I'm sure you're not - lots of people around who want to dictate other people's morality. If it's that bad for you, why not just cancel your subscription and save yourself the bother?

To me it seems valuable to discuss the potential impact of a person's SL life on their RL life. Here is a summary of my thoughts.

1. Clearly some are able to seprate SL from RL more easily than others. One reaction to those that are unable to completely separate SL from RL is to tell them that they play at their own risk and that because they can play in any way they want any fallout is their own weakness/fault. This may be (mostly) true but it nonetheless seems that the kinds of potential impact is an interesting topic for discussion.

The rest of this post applies to those that cannot separate SL from RL a 100%. The more one can separate the two the less the impact should be..

2. There does seem to be a difference between SL and many other "offline" games. The potential impact of playing/interacting with real people could be greater than playing with completely artificial agents. I have no proof of this but state this as a possibility. Thus the arguments against the impact of TV/computer games may not be as applicable here.

3. Because one is playing/interacting with real people as opposed to limitedly programmed agents one is open to all kinds of influences. As an example it is possible that one may never have encountered a Master/slave realtionship in RL or a Gorean one. Seeing intelligent and independent people enjoying and defending such relationships could potentially impact how one views such relationships. Not that anyone would go engage in one in RL as a result .. but just how one views the world around us. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on one's perpsective. To argue that there is no impact ever for anyone seems erroneous at best. And I don't think the impacted person has to be weak for this to happen. Another example is that the relative safety of SL experiences may allow someone to develop an aspect of them that circumstances have prevented developing in RL. For example, their abillity to relax, to be funny, or to be sexual, or to be aggressive, or whatever.

4. Those that spend a significant amount of time in SL make physical, emotional and moral choices all the time. Clearly some of these, e.g., TPing, are not relevant to RL. Others that are more emotional and moral are relevant to RL. And I would think that perhaps given the compressed nature of time in SL we make more (frequently) such choices in SL than in RL. Thus, if nothing else, there is the sheer practice of making particular kinds of choices that may bleed over to RL if one is not careful. This might be particularly true of immersive kinds of SL interactions.

5. The argument that if one engages in anything controversial in SL, such as furry play, Gor play, D/s, demon whatever.. that it implies that such behavior or interest was already there in that person seems simplistic at best. Life is not programmed to such an extent surely. Carried to an extreme this would imply that nothing in RL can affect us. One may see a best friend in SL try something like furry relationships or bdsm and decide to give it a try as a lark and perhaps hate it or perhaps like it. Perhaps a woman tries this and meets a really interesting and skilled Dom and gets swept up into a lifestyle she never would have considered or even disdained. There are real people in this game with different abilities to persuade/influence others and different proclivities to be persuaded/influenced.

Will keep this short and stop here.. laughing. But overall it seems to me that this topic could be discussed without resorting to the "they are trying to dictate behavior" or "they are immoral beasts" extremes.