A few words on honesty... a discussion.

Ok, this is one of those philosophicals, a good one too, and it does deserve more of a reply than the sarcasm of my previous paul bunyan post. I can see where you are comming from with this Lordfly, and it's something I struggled with a bit myself.

break it down : you mention we have real power over our existance, enviornment, etc. and you take difference when people utilize their power over these to transend to something else. It sounds not to be a question of what people present to us, but a problem of how we digest what is presented.

This is a point Im going to repeat a lot throughout this reply Im sure, and probably not answer where the breakdown of honesty occours, can anyone really say for sure in a world where anyone can become anything?


Perhaps the barries that need to be dropped do not hinge on what other people say about themselves, but how we process what they tell us. This is a world where people can be anything. Why be an extension of your true self in a world where anything is possible? Tell me you are the president of Swaziland in RL or tell me you are a lesbian left handed midget albino. It really has no bearing on what I think about you in SL. To be honest I could care less about your RL


In a world where reality is what you make it, so what? I know that avatar X is not really a robot in RL, and I know that Avatar Y with the slutty glamor clothes and arsenal of guns is mostlikely not a woman in RL. We can look at them and know they are creative and the image they wish to project is something they want to create.


THIS is where I agree, discrimination based on prejudices instead of basing them on someone's actions is a quick way to irk me. Take previous Avatar Y for example, the glamor gun girl who has a penis in RL. Say she builds some neat stuff, she contributes to content creation, she volunteers for Live Help. Cool stuff. Let's say instead she joins an SL nazi group and harasses people. Or, say she develops this introverted cult following of elite snobs who rarely travel outside their circle and badmouth anything not them. Uncool stuff. It's not so much who you are. it's how you act.


change the way you think about what people tell you, in VR people can be anything, cellebrate it.


I am sorry to hear you are disapointed that people are not presenting their true selves. Maybe you need to look at what they want to project and take them at face value instead. I think the freedom will occour when people stop passing judgement and just let people be who they say they are. I had a big problem with this comming into SL... like why is so and so lying to me etc... Then I realized, it didn't matter and the problem was not the fact they were presenting a character of who they want to be. But, the problem was that I couldn't accept that they wanted to be something they don't have the opportunity to be in RL.

I have been involved in SL with a few people romantically and sometimes they turn out to be something they are not. but is it the pixels or their behaviour that attracted you in the first place?


I say our perception of what is honesty needs to be redefined. I have nothing to hide, but does it matter? Would you really care?

and plah, I type too much =\

What is this 'WE' stuff. I am the most honest person I know. But then, I am a Cherub. It is my job to be honest.

Seriously, I don't care what folks know about me, or think about me. I ain't gonna lie to them. Yes, I am a fat 50 year old virgin loser. So what? I CHOOSE to be what I am. It is easier than trying, no?

Great post, LF. To answer: no, I have nothing to hide. I wouldn't, however, classify role playing that a lot of folks here in SL do as lying.

I came to SL to escape reality not to have it brandished across my chest.

Why limit yourself to your own reality when you can be whatever you want to be in SL?

I find being a purple person makes me happy.

There are a few people that I've become friends with in SL and one or two I've become very close with. But most personal details about myself I've kept with myself. Why you ask? Because I cherish the fact that they don't know the myriad of details about me that may color their views of me to something less that a stellar purple. By presenting the Camille Serpentine I want to be, I am opening up that inner core and sharing it, with none the wiser to it.... and keeping myself safe in the process.

First, kudos to Isablan and Brace for saying exactly what I was thinking. I'm puzzled as to why "roleplaying" or self-exploration are considered dishonest -- not everyone views SL as just another part of RL. Not all of us want our personal information published online -- and some of us even find that our real natures are more on display in the anonymity of VR than they are at our jobs or home.


Just a word on that paragraph, LF -- what you call "BDSM powergames" seems to lump everyone who practices BDSM into a big ugly bucket and implies that they are 'walling off their feelings' -- when, in fact, most of the BDSM folks I've ever known have claimed exactly the opposite. Their experience has been, for them, liberating. Maybe a little more understanding of the lifestyle would help avoid that inaccurate generalization in the future. Then again, maybe I misunderstood you.

The irony here is that I was thinking of posting about this a few days ago, but from a different tack. I've encountered a few SLers who have made a habit of creating alts and attempting to start romantic VR relationships with other SLers under the guise of being someone they are not. If you're not out to deceive anyone, but are merely being protective of your RL identity I don't consider it lying. Lots of us are doing that. But when you purposely manipulate other people emotionally for your own gratification, then it's a different story. Know that if you are that kind of sad individual, you are hardly the first online predator to do so -- nor will you be the last. But also know that, eventually, the truth WILL come out (always does) and you are the one who stands to lose the most.

... 'cept for me and my monkey....

Lordfly, when you say that you have nothing to hide, I do not doubt your sincerity, but I don't believe it is literally true. Everyone is hiding aspects of themselves, not only from each other but also from themselves.

My experience with SL has been that it revealed parts of me to myself that I might never have admitted otherwise. This is because these things don't line up with what people percieve to be my RL self. When you take people to task for being a different age or race or gender than they are in RL, what you are really saying is that they should never have dreams of being more or different than they are. This is highly unfair. Not all of us were granted an existence that fits what we'd like to be.

Who are you to say that someone is "lying" when they are what they want to be, or that the things we are stuck being in RL is the truth? We are all like the layers of an onion, you can keep peeling away roles and adopted behaviors, but once you discard all that you may find there is absolutely nothing there at the bottom. Everything we do in SL or in RL is a role adopted to fit in with the scene we find ourselves in. There is not a bit of it which is absolute truth.

If you ask me, the real tragedy is that we can't be entirely ourselves in the real world.

Coming from a long tipe RPG background I truly understand what it meand to remain in character. IN an RPG setting I do not like to interact as my RL self, the reason I play the RPG is to escape reality.

That being said, SL for me is not an RPG. I come to SL to be an extension of my self. Sure there are improvements-my avi looks different, and better than me, and really is not even a way in which I see myself. He is just my avi, the product of my amused ramblings.

Besides that, however, I put my own self into the Avi. When you talk to jake you are talking to Joe. As Joe, I have a deep rooted moral and religious commitment to honesty.

I'm a roleplayer of many years too, but I have a differing point of view on SL. It's anything I want it to be, including another form of roleplaying. That being said, I put a bit of myself into every character I have ever played, including my SL avatar, but it is not an extention of my RL in anyway. This is something I do to chat with people, with the safety of the internet between us.
Reason? In RL I have a family and to set the example for the family, I don't give out a lot of my RL info, except to very close friends. I don't lie, I just don't give out information and will say so when asked. Now I will say that I'm from Arkansas, because that's just a STATE, and given that information, some people will track me to a Mush I run and find out a bit more.. but not even then will they learn everything. With the internet, how can you be sure that what you see is the truth to begin with?

Role-playing is wonderful and legitimate. People just don't do much of it here.

As for me, I don't role play here and I don't lie about anything, like those things listed on the first post. I don't TELL everybody every last little detail about myself, either, but that's a whole different consideration.

coco

Well yes SL is what you make it, but If you know I am single IRL and I have made it very clear that I do not date married women, and you tell me you are single when in fact you are married IRL, then you have lied to me and I will not be happy.

I make it very clear to everyone I talk to that I am not role playing, and 2. that I am not interested in a married woman. I expect that given my position, people who are male and acting as females and married women seeking a stable pony to fill in what thjier marriage lacks will respect me, and tell me, and go find someone who keeps SL and RL very different. I respect everyone's style of play, I just want to have my style respected back.

In the words of Devo....


"The next thing I say to you will be true...
... the last thing I said was false....

Remember you do nothing when you don't know what to do...."

I'm concerned a bit about this too... I've talked to some folks, about this 'tide' of sentiment that SL should just be a mirror of the real world --- what you're talking about, is a backlash against Second Life being anything but a mirror of the first? Saying we shouldn't deviate from our real lives; that anyone who isn't "just themselves" as an avatar is somehow, being disingenuous or at worst, sinister?

... I just... don't think SL should be FL... We have the latitude to not be. I don't get it though, you talk about "grandiose displays of furrydom" being a bad thing one breath, and then condemn people who put others down for being different?

... Is it insulting, here? Of course it is. Two years now I've been trying to fight against the tide of folks who think it's wrong that I'm not, basically, just what I am in RL. Do we really want that? Do we really just want a place that is nothing but digital representations of our 1st-life selves?

Is it really "hiding" or is it expression? I don't know why you assume that people have to 'go with' what they were born into, when they have the opportunity to not be that.

If someone's born a 95-lb little girl, why should they *HAVE* to be that if that's not really what they're in tune with? If someone's a hulking 250lb football player IRL, why should they -have- to ahdere to that demeanor and mindset and way of being in SL? It's kinda like, "if you ain't acting like or look like what you look like iRL, you're being dishonest."

Is that really the road we wanna go down with SL?

Everyone enjoys SL in thier own way...

Just because you don't like it, doesn't make it wrong...

If you don't like the way someone plays, don't play with them... that simple.


I was told the other day that I shouldn't be so crass while wearing a Tiny Av.. my reply was to invite them to the secret tiny city so perhaps we could play a rousing game of hide-and-go-f*ck-yourself.

I won't tell anyone how be, I won't judge, and I won't care... All I ask is that courtesy be applied liberally to everyone else.

To some folks I can see how this is the 'wondrous new social forum of the millenium' -- but for me its a lego set...

Siggy.

I love this Travis and wholeheartedly agree. All my RL emails that I send to people who I know in game is signed Lale. For the simple reason that the people I know in SL know me as Lale. If I wanted people to know me as my RL name and persona...I would have created an AV that was named my RL name and looked very much like me. Thats the beauty of SL. And there have been 30+ posts before mine that say basically the same thing. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in


I can think of nowhere else that I can be so free than in SL. I can think of nowhere else that I can meet such a diverse group of people. In SL, I have orange friends, big huge blue friends, a squirrel friend, a vampire friend, friends with horns, the list is endless. I embrace the fact that I may know absolutely nothing about these people's RL's. I very rarely even think about them as RL people to begin with.

SL for me is like a superbly written book. One that you get so caught up in that your mind whisks you away...INTO the book itself. And if you get inturrupted from your reading you are almost surprised to find yourself sitting in your living room. I become Lale for the time that I am in world. My RL persona does not exist. Im sure I am not the only one who finds this to be true.

I know some people feel the need to be deceitful in SL. And even though I become Lale while I am in world, I am not oblivious to the fact that Lale is actually a small extension of myself. Therefore, wouldn't it stand to reason that if you are deceiftful in SL you are also deceiving yourself in RL? There are RL feelings involved in SL just like there are SL feelings involved in RL. I dont believe it should matter how old you are in RL or what you look like in RL when you are inworld, but that is just one person's view on the subject.

I don't feel the need to be anything in particular, least of all a mirror of RL me. How boring would that be? I used to change my av more or less daily, cuz I got bored looking at it. I've been male, female, alien, robot, furry... you name it. Now I've got bored with changing it, while everyone else seems to have got comfortable with my current av. So for the most part, it's stuck, and 'this is me'. I make no guarantees or claims that my av in anyway represents the person at the keyboard!

Anyone who doesn't like that and thinks I'm being dishonest is very free not to talk to me! In fact, if that's your attitude, I'd positively encourage you not to talk to me because I hate small minded people anyway

From my perspective, I'll take you as I find you. I couldn't care less what your avie looks like, and I care even less who or what you are in RL. If I like you, we'll prolly hang out, and you can be a male sumo wrestler in RL playing a 10 year old girl in SL for all I care. If you act like an asshole, I'll treat you like you're one - and I don't care if you're Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie irl

As for 'we lie about our ages/genders/relationships/true intentions' etc... Jeez, I think you're hanging out with the wrong people. Or being overtly suspicious of them and judging them far too harshly. As for 'we shun and reject people who are different... again, I don't. My friends don't. Maybe you need to check yourself and who you hang with? Cuz it doesn't sound much fun at all, and this account of SLers sounds nothing like my experiences in the last 20 months or so, and its frankly quite a disturbing thought that there might be so many small minded bigots out there.

I had posted earlier. . .then I got to thinking (always, always a dangerous thing).

In my wanderings, I came across a name, Matthias Fuchs, and another virtual world, much like SL, called FluID (because I am frightfully ignorant, many of you might be familiar with both the virtual world and with the writing of Fuchs). Essentially, the purpose of FluID is to create an identity. Avatars begin with no identity (in SL, on the other hand, gender and gender markers are chosen on Orientation Island). Identity is built slowly in FluID. I imagine that the same breadth of choices are available in FluID as are available in SL, but the point of FluID is to build identity.

Is a small portion of the difficulty with 'dishonesty' in SL linked somehow to the ease with which one can change one's Avatar's identity (this has been mentioned in this thread in several different ways)? Before an AV emerges in the Welcome Area, name, gender, physical shape, eye, hair, clothing choices have been made. Would SL be a different (more honest) metaverse if AVs and identity had to be built over time? If some of our amazing possiblities/options were removed, would our AVs constantly 'shape-shift'? Just a question.

http://www.freeflowuk.com/home/media/mediagenres/computervideogames/fuchseckermann_fuchseckermann.aspx

thanks for the link, Euterpe - that looks really interesting!

I sometimes wish there was a way to identify role players. I have a tendency to start topics of conversation that revolve around real life after speaking with someone for the third or fourth time. Not everyone welcomes this, especially if you're a role player. I would hate to ruin someone's immersion.

The people I chose to hang out with are very open and honest about their real lives, as far as I know. I've seen pictures, I know the details, their coordinates etc... That kind of honesty to me, is a step towards a real friendship, although it might be irrelevant for others. Happily, I haven't encountered anyone trying to fool or trick me for any reason.

It would be hard for me to consider someone a real pal if I knew very little about their real lives. Perhaps this is a shortcoming of mine.

I'm just me. Many have met me in RL. I'm fairly insane in both RL and SL.

And I'll admit it... I'm really a man! I hope Jennyfur doesn't dump me!

Honesty is a dubious virtue on its own. It generally has to be paired with other traits, such as compassion, to become truly valuable.

I would prefer that people be weirder in SL than they are in RL. Whether that means they become a more focused distillation of their RL personalities, or adopt a completely different personality, it doesn't matter. I find SL most interesting socially when people experiment with their identities, and I would never consider such experimentation to be dishonest.

I know in the back of my mind that people lie about stuff, but I generally take the things they say and do at face value. I guess I am actively naive.

I try to relate to people in terms of SL. I am more interested in what sim they live in or what project they are working on or planning. I really dont care what people do for a living or if they are males playing females. They look and act like they do and I accept that and treat them as I would want to be treated. I do understand for the need others have for RL info and I am selective at revealing details, but I never lie about anything.

I am guilty of sometimes asking about a RL location or age, just to make my understanding of a conversation clearer. The people that hang around me the most learn things about me in RL just because I am not really playing a role, I am myself for the most part. But, I have no obligation to out myself to just anyone about the boring details of my RL and I respect the privacy of others. I wont demand to know things about people and feel let down or betrayed if they fail to answer an inappropriate question I may ask.

I look at SL as roleplay, even if the character they are playing is based on themselves. There are a lot of people that have a pretty amazing second life, enjoy what they have to offer on that level first.

When people withhold RL information, I do not look at it as lieing. I never ask RL information, it is irrelevent to me. RL Sex, Age, Marrage status and everything else mentioned does not matter to me. When people ask me questions, I am sometimes too honest, that is me though. I do not expect everyone to be as open about thier RL as I am.

The kind of dishonesty that does bother me is if an AV I trust in SL plays me with an alt account or something along those lines. People who scam $L, sell free content or act unrespectful to others is the kind of character flaws I do get concerned about in SL.

I guess my point is, you can have good morals in SL without bringing your RL self into the mix.

Oh, by the way, Beau is really a Yankees fan!

Someone, please notify my next of kin!

Now calling someone a Yankees fan is just the basest of personal attacks. I think I might have to AR this thread.