SL article updates

My much-despised article series on SL has been updated.

In part 7, I bore the reader with details of my new living situation, I suggest that the Linden/user relationship is of a religious nature, and I insinuate that all SL users are horribly ugly (while at the same time claiming I am devestatingly handsome).

Click below for the entire list of sordid journal entries...
http://www.clickableculture.com/search/index.php?weblog=&keywords=my%20second%20life&=not%2Bnone&criteria=all&where=title

What's to describe? For me at least there's no disconnect between my First Life identity and my Second Life identity. It irks me when people in SL say things like, "I was talking to my friend in real life". SL is a communication medium. SL is real life. If it's not, than neither is talking to someone via AIM, or email, or on the phone. SL is not some independent existence that doesn't touch our lives; it's another facet of those lives.

So the real difference between my First Life self and my Second Life self is in appearance. But it's like wearing a costume for fun, not a disguise for a seperate identity. And most of us stopped judging other people's personalities based on appearance a long time ago.

Speaking of appearance, judging of:

Possible Reasons:
1. They're tired of hearing, "huhuh ur hot wan2 cyber??/"
2. Despite the implication in, "few are bold enough," they don't have anything to prove.
3. Contrary to their hot babe AV, they're really a 40-year-old Korean dude in his underwear.

Re: point #3. Some SL "girls" use Yahoo Image Search thumbnails for their First Life photos, despite the fact that they are immediately recognizeable as such. Come on. You can do better than that.

P.S.: Lindens aren't gods, despite a clever analogy. Encouraging people to think of them as gods confuses the issue of what they really are, which is paid service providers. You can't gripe at a god. You do beseech them, in their mercy, to hear your plea and bestow upon you, their unworthy servant, the light of their good grace. Paid service providers you phone up and ask what the hell they think they're doing.

Thanks for sharing your opinions, Julian

In the article I was choosing a particular route with each of the two main sections and deliberately ignoring most alternatives. The articles are generally intended to reflect my opinions rather than provide a "fair and balanced" overview that considers all options. I agree with you that Lindens are not gods and that they are service providers, and I'm certainly not trying to convince anyone of anything. The article's not a marketing exercise, it's a writing exercise

It's interesting that you consider SL to be so comparable to RL. I consider it to be "mediated reality," like looking at the world through a blurry window, or visiting Disneyland. In my view, talking to someone at a cafe is real. Using SL to chat with someone else in a virtual cafe is... well, less real than a phone call. There are certain things real life affords that SL glosses over. Like meaningful silence, bad breath, the ability to punch someone in the nose, etc.

I respect your opinion that "most of us stopped judging other people's personalities based on appearance a long time ago", but I don't agree with it Every time I visit a small town or bank I'm reminded of that first impressions are largely appearance based

[edited to fix italics]

Don't worry about coming across as a marketing exercise; I didn't think you were proselytizing for Lindenism.

My line about judging by appearance was meant a little tongue in cheek. Obviously it refers to an ideal more than reality.

Your Disneyland comment threw me, however. I've been to Disneyworld and I never thought I was somewhere other than the real world. Disney parks are real places built in the real world staffed and visited by real people.

Maybe I'm weird but I consider most everything to be The Real World™. If I'm watching a movie I'm enjoying a fictional story but that enjoyment is happening in the real world. I suppose some games could be considered to be something else. If you're playing GTA, and you project yourself into the main character, you might think your actions in the game aren't occuring in the real world. But if in SL you are "playing" yourself, and your SL identity and personality are the same as your FL, and the people you deal with aren't NPC's, why would SL not be real?

It may be an issue of the importance we assign each, rather than their nature. For example, your teacher in school telling you you'll use math when you get into the real world. What does that mean? School isn't the real world? Your entire life under age 18 isn't the real world? It sure isn't Wonderland.

Of course, we might each have an entirely different definition of "the real world" in which case this discussion is pointless aside from intellectual entertainment.

I think we're mostly on the same page with regards to reality
I guess what i'm talking about, say with Disneyland, is that some things that are indisputably real are also "surreal" or are not "realistic." I'll make a comparison to spray cheese: It's real, but it's not real cheese (in fact, it's not even likely to contain much dairy at all).

TV news is real, but it's edited footage, so we are seeing what really happened through the editor's eyes--which makes it somewhat less than real.

I use the term "mediated reality" not only in the now-antiquated cybernetic sense
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/barbatsis.html
but also to mean anything we experience that is not a direct result of our primary senses (i.e. we didn't see it with our own eyes, or there is a "veil" or "lens" in the way). To me, SL is a lens. It's real, but it's not visceral.

I've posted another addition to my journal series My Second Life.
http://www.clickableculture.com/comments.php?id=1960_0_1_0_C

In this edition I get high on Route 66's gas fumes. Reviews of some of the other excellent game developer contest entries will hopefully be forthcoming.