How Real Is SL For You?

With the various recent postings about SL ... I thought I would toss out a question of how real is SL for you?

Yes... this is a game platform... a virtual world. But we do deal with REAL people all the time on here and develop REAL relationships with them. Is there ever a crossover? So just how real is SL?

Enquiring minds want to know.

The truth is, our brains can't tell the difference. SL is a real as anything else in my life. With a lot less unpleasant odors.

but how real is money anyway, right?

One of my first friends here warned me how powerful the emotional exchange here can be, or in any online association(This is my first experience with anything in this vein) and she was right. I take the same care in treating people properly here as I do in RL. Most of my friends here have exchanged personal data to varying degrees with me, so I have the same concern for their well being in the RL as any of my RL friends.

The way I've always thought of it was this:
I am a real person engaging with other real people in a virtual enviroment, created by the imaginations of other real people. The conversations and interactions you have with others and the feelings that develop as a result of those conversations and interactions are also real, insofar as you are a person capable of real feelings. Some aren't, so I can't answer for them.
Being able to seperate the virtual fantasy of your SL from the physical reality of your FL can be tricky for many people specifically because of the level of 'cross-over' possible in such an emmersive enviroment.
"Real" in SL is limited only by the physical. The heart and mind know no such bounds.

It's so real that it hurts, big time.

I've only been in SL for a couple of weeks but I've been surprised by the strong connections and "real-ness" of this experience. Someone managed to intrude univited into my SL house the other day when I was there (even tho the door was closed/locked) and my immediate reaction was that I felt genuinely scared! It's quite heady for me at the moment as I keep realising that imagination can be set free here in a multitude of ways not possible in RL. I am also very conscious of the issues raised above by Brenda and others - this is real in respect of the other people you meet being real. In the end I would guess that most people will end up being rather like themselves in RL while here in SL though being extended in various directions that they are not in RL. Perhaps the level of risk to being hurt and insulted etc. rises in proprtion to the opportunities for enhanced and new experiences and exploring parts of ourselves in SL that are maybe deeply hidden or unknown to us in RL? Just my thoughts - Tasha

Well said Pie.

Course some of those have feelings can be nastier to those who dont have any =/.

Ive found I need to be most careful about people who make their own feelings, at the expense of mine - a priority.

Same thing could be said abotu RL of course.

Serial experiments of lain?
Ghost in the shell?
The matrix?

They all depict the same story, a virtual world or a virtual being and a question of what reality actually is. The degree of how real it is comes from ones personal willingness and ability to suspend one's disbelief.

A coworker makes flippant comments to me about how sl is fake and wonders how anyone could care much about it. She wonders how pprole could make money in it. She wonders why people would spend real world money in this seemingly fake world. To her it will never be real.

The same questions she asks were asked only a short time ago when the internet came about. I would have to compare second life's rising to the rising of the internet.

Is it real? At least as real as the internet! To me its much more. Years ago I wrote the following in my journal and I stand by it

"the wired is real, change your understanding!"

It's real polygons.

The heart and mind quickly learn about bounds when they find out that the handsome gentleman they've fallen for is really a 14 year old boy.

Or that blonde bomb shell you like so much turns out to be a 40 year old, bald, 500 pounds in a t-shirt and underwear who has wanted to be a woman all his life! LMAO

I will stick to RL dating and keep SL for something to do.

So may people have said on their profiles, keep it out of my real life. If it is not real to them, why do they want to know what country I live in, my name and my age? They don't cross over, I think they already have when the ask this.

Providing the participants agree on keeping to a fantasy, is there any harm in this?

There is potential danger as well as potential good here I have witnessed. Damage and harm are done by not laying down ground rules. Are you for real or are you for fantasy? Stipulate this and you're on the road to immense enjoyment whichever path you choose.

I have RL chums and SL chums in SL. Some of my SL chums stick to a fantasy. Whether they are truly blonde bombshell or 70 year old 500 pounder in a t-shirt really doesn't matter. I don't need to know for the fantasy to work.

So in answer to OP? ... I've accepted it as the entire spectrum of truth and fiction ... that is, fiction .. not lies. If you don't need the answer, don't ask the question.

Handsome gentlemen are way too rare. Write down his contact information and contact him again in four years.

If it weren't for the prevasive 'real' of this virtual enviroment, what difference would it make if your hot lesbian lover turned out to be a 50 yr old bald guy?

I think it's a good learning experience for people to try to live as someone of a different social group. Try living life as a woman, or as a black person, or as a gay person, or as an older person, and see how it feels to be on that end. If taken seriously, it might help some of our social problems.

If done for pornographic value only, it's not very meaningful. But then again, I have no business telling people how they should or shouldn't have fun. (Especially if I may have done the same thing once or twice.)

Sex and gender are only part of what make up a whole person.

I'd make a good wager that everyone who is concerned about that blonde avatar being controlled by a real man has made their own avatar look much more physically attractive than they see themselves in real life. (And even though I have tried to avoid supermodel syndrome with my avatar, I'm still guilty of an avatar that's more attractive than I.)

I know this. I have read that 30% of Americans are overweight. Of the Americans I've met in Second Life, though I haven't kept a precise count, I'd say 0% appear overweight.

I think most people do a good job, either in their profiles, or in initial conversation, specifying how important it is for them that the avatar match the physical person. I respect others' privacy bounds, and generally others respect mine. For me, I'm happy to accept people as they want to present themselves.

Let's face it, a lot of us who use who use SL for socialization have some hang-ups with RL socialization that make SL attractive to us, paticularly in the category of self-esteem. I'd fall into that category. If people want to use SL to practice their RL social skills, it makes sense that they would want to present themselves as an ideal person to make themselves feel more comfortable in the SL environment.

Some people do use SL as a way to make RL connections. In that case, I can understand the heightened concern regarding how closely the avatar matches the physical person. When it comes to finding RL dating partners, meeting on SL probably makes more sense than online personal ads (which I have done, for better or worse, from time to time).

Sometimes it's very real to me. I have several friends that I consider some of my closest in and out of SL. I talk to several of them on the phone and will someday probally meet a few of them in RL.

Even after just making a post expressing universal tolerance, the omnipresent faux lesbian chic bothers me. If being an SL lesbian, when you are not in real life, helps you understand some of the difficulties of being not-heterosexual, and gives you some perspective, then I think that's a great idea. If, as an SL lesbian, you just play out the standard porn movie stereotypes, then it's just demeaning.

But, I won't worry about all the SL lesbians, if every RL person who is an SL lesbian actually goes out in RL to vote in both local and national elections, including local referenda, and vote in a way that protects everyone who is not heterosexual from government-sanctioned discrimination. Do that, and I for one can certainly have no complaints.

I took Pie's comment a different way -

Basically Second Life is real enough for many people that they do care who is on the other side of the screen.

If Second Life wasnt at all real - why would they?

OF course many people do not care about real life details at all.

- But the fact that this stereotype refuses to die means SL is more real to more people than are willing to admit it.

Including a lot of the Anti Online Relationship crowd.

It pays for my mortgage, cant get any more real than that

Sure it can! Change your real life legal name to Porky Gorky!

Man, that is genius! Will be doing that first thing Monday morning

What is this "real" you speak of?

as real as it gets