Voice and Disclosure

According to a survey quoted in the Official Guide to Second Life, nearly 20% of male respondents reported playing a female avatar. The number of females playing male AVs was smaller, but still significant.

But this statistic is questionable. Everybody lies on sex surveys, even anonymous ones. That's been true since Kinsey invented them.

Harassment needs no facility. It will find a way to your front door regardless. You obviously don't see the bigger picture.

That reply doesn't surprise me, Michael...I would say the same of you.

Obviously, we're looking in different directions.

This is not about harassment by those people who just like harassing others, and will do it by any means that comes to hand. This is about specific issues that would not exist without voice. It's pointless to try and pretend this doesn't happen because it's abundantly documented, and not just in SL.

In contexts where voice is enabled, a proportion of voice-users become aggressive towards non-voice users, where without voice, they would not do so. That is a fact.

Daisy, don't confuse Mikey with facts. They just clutter up his ivory tower.

I do appreciate your position -- an ideal world should work that way, but this is human nature we're talking about. I don't know if you are using voice, but if so, you wouldn't feel the pressure to use it, would you? If you're not feeling pressured then you are lucky. I have already encountered some pressure both in world and through reading these forums.

I am hoping the social pressure will ease when the new wears off and everyone realizes voice is too much an intrusion of the real world for a lot of people, maybe just a handy tool for DJ's, poetry readings, and close knit circles of friends. Otherwise it's just as rude as those gestures that make lot of noise and I feel it shouldn't be freely used in public venues. You won't be hearing my voice. I don't want to hear yours. I don't want to have to explain this to anyone, either. I think we should have a new etiquette or maxim: If you don't have the little white orb over your head and someone asks you to voice, it's a sure sign they are either a newb, or stupid, or both, probably the latter.
Weston

a note about gender switching

I know a guy who has a cute little female avatar that he plays off and on

he goes openly on voice, and no one seems shocked that she is a he hehe

I like that he plays a fem as well as his male, I can give his little female some clothes and stuff I made hehe

*shrug*

How many people regularily give their phone number out to people they hardly know that they meet on the internet?

Perhaps if some of the voicers consider that for a moment it might help them understand why some feel voice is intrusive.



----
Back in 1998 when Chat rooms were much newer as a social media we passed around phone numbers a lot.

People would bring huge amounts of their RL into the chat room, so much a lot of people would intrude up in other's RL business.

One person from the chat room described the whole situation as incestuous.

Just something to think about.

That isn't all you need. One of my co-workers in my RL office is a male-to-female transexual (and I believe has played Second Life, too). You don't just need to change voice pitch - you need to change return pitch, formant resonance, resonance location, pronounciation, vocabulary, and grammar! It's also apparantly actually harder for women to do male voices, but they are less likely to "need" that..

Just some very basic thoughts and responses..

Monalisa
"voice brought an atmosphere of social pressure"
Did it? Isn't it quite too early to arrive at such a conclusion? Voice is only in an infant state at this point. It's premature to conclude that it's had that much of an effect on the social state of affairs in Second Life. Isn't it?

"most lindens are probably men"
I have no idea how you could possibly have arrived at this conclusion. There are many, many Lindens who are female in real life, and I have met quite a few of them in person. You women are *very* well represented at Linden Lab, and it shouldn't go without saying that their VP of Marketing and Community Development, Robin Harper, is a woman.

"all these data will be revealed by a feature that was forced on us"
Forced on us? Voice is disabled by default on a fresh viewer install. It's up to us to turn it on, if we want it.

JessicaNichol
"Second Life is a chance for people to experience a side of life they can not experience out there in the real world."
That's but one idea of what Second Life is. There are many others.

It seems to me that the exclusionary stance being taken in this debate is the doing of the anti voice crowd, not the pro voice crowd. Voice does not impose social limitations upon those who roleplay. Roleplayers are indeed the least affected by it. If you're in an organized RP environment, you probably have already agreed that text chat is the accepted communication medium.

What does that leave us with? Seriously. We have a new way of communicating, and we can take it or leave it. It's there because it needs to be, because Second Life is bigger than any individual agenda. Much, much bigger.

well i'm glad i have decided that I am addicted to making clothing and other such things cause honestly i have as a result of my addiction yet to even have to worry about these choices. Its off on my land I think if not and people think i'm being rude oh well. They can come or not come. Meanwhile i have two male avatars and a female one so take your pick on gender and run with it

I think half the issue with sl is that for some reason people do expect you to play your real world gender more or something. I have enough people I know that truly are a bit shocked to hear that people do "gender bend" but then they have not played another other online type things. The crowd that has played mmorpgs for years probably doesnt' care. I dont care but these voice threads make me nervous as to the future of SL so me I'm gonna not read em. Meanwhile since I spend the bulk of my time in my little white box flipping between photoshop and the box and the forum and am in mid air alone I wont be worrying about what people think of me using voice or not anytime soon...

*walks back to his white box and works on his next pixel creation*

Hmm, it's bound to come out sooner or later,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

<DRUM ROLL>

I'm not really a Roo, Legoman or a Robot <sob> I been lying to all of you all this time...... I'm just a human being.................

Colette i agree with you on this one, myself and my SL/RL partner choose not to use voice but unfortuantly i am sure there will be those that feel they need to moan because we choose not to use voice. For the record my partner is all woman

I for one just accept that people for whatever reason use another gender in game and i will treat them as that gender whilst they are in game,w ith or without voice as for me its a matter of respect to my fellow human being, but alas there are always those that want to discriminate against others and voice has brought it to the fore

The entrenchment of views here is extraordinary, as is the limited way the respondents are seeing the overall picture. Michael is perfectly right, that someone who harrasses you will do so with whatever "handle" you leave sticking out for them to grab. Complaining about voice is about the next "handle" in the list, not about the greifers: and even stranger than that, the whole idea that you would be vulnerable to taunting is exceedingly odd - what is this, some sim where you are spread-eagled upon "the taunter's rack" and pelted with insults?

The hidden truth on BOTH sides of the debate here is that a lot of people (read; a HUGE NUMBER) play SL for the way it lets them misbehave socially. We basically never see threads in the forum about weaponry or squad tactics from the combat players - what we get is batting eyelids from transexual escorts, angels-on-a-pinhead debates about BDSM, and discussions about cross-gender play. So let's cut to the chase on both sides of the situation here:

a) People play games in the forum just like they play games in the sim. Yes, so women who want to retain privacy will have to refuse voice - noted, move on, it's not the only situation. Me, I don't GAF whether the sex-bomb I am playing with is driven by a guy or a girl, so I just refuse voice on principle: what's more, when I come across sound in most online environments all I get to hear mostly is people's bad hip-hop or thrash-metal collections, with their voice st-t-t-ttering in the gaps. What's the point of that? Turn it off, and move on.

b) a point which seems to me to lurk here and never gets articulated is, you real girls probably have no idea of the subtle psychological greifing which some cross-gender players perpetrate in the name of your sex: to my mind there is absolutely no shortage of female avs whose main aim in life is to collect rejected men - they really, seriously get off on playing the bitch, in depth. It's an immensely attractive role inside SL, mainly because there is simply no access to that social position for men in RL, at all: the Rules of Beauty say, the prettier you are, the worse you can behave. For the women who make such a fuss about harrassment, get yourself a fat balding man av and put him in flip-flops and a pair of loud bermudas, then see how you are treated while just socialising: the effect is phenomenal. After enough presumption, rejection, hilarity, shallowness, cat-calls and nastiness, it becomes perfectly clear why people who start out reasonably relaxed, get to be real "gender check nazis" about who they play with. It's just a result of the nature of the game.

Lastly: isn't there already an external SL centred forum site where people are encouraged to post RL pictures to "back up" or coutnerpoint their SL avatar(s)? something like slprofiles.com?

any vehicles created for people to communicate with one another on the SL platform may cause griefing. Should this platform stop evolving based on everyone's fears that they will be found out. Is voice killing your profits(do you play a prostitute)? I've sat back for a while to hear you selfish people whine about voice. You say voice will discriminate against people who text. Yet i never heard that when faced with a bunch of people who text, is the same discrimination possible(yes).

As for people losing some of the fantasy because of voice. What is the issue? Don't use it. Because some sims require that you enable voice, does that mean that you have to use it. And if so, can you not mute them. Please let me know where you found the fact sheet that informed you that voice is responsible for more griefing. I have yet to use voice, and it really does'nt matter if i do.

There are more men in SL, thus the main concern should come from them (because one can make more money as a female). Men don't understand what it is to be women, and in RL you can be verbally harrassed, however SL comes with a device that women don't have in RL. Mute. And what are you sensitive people call being griefed through voice? Did someone say hello and you took it wrong? If you don't like how the Lindens are doing things, i'm sure there are alot of casino owners and gamblers who would agree with you. You guys need to at least act like you know how to deal with potential issues, and not adopt this "sky is falling" mentality. Voice is an option. Stop discussing it as if you had to use it. Griefing is a reality, it does'nt matter what mode of communication is available. Voice will not change everyone's fantasy, just you sensitive people who complain about it.

"a lot of people (read; a HUGE NUMBER) play SL for the way it lets them misbehave socially. "

Your views and mine on this issue are so far apart that there's not much use in discussing them. But I wanted to address this one thing you said, and I hope I'm not taking it out of context.

I sincerely hope you're wrong. While I'll admit there are instances of social misbehavior, from griefing to the sort of mind games you mention, the vast majority of people I've met in SL have been wonderful. Some are touchy, some quirky, some shy, some aggressive...sort of like, um, real folks, you know? Almost to a man/woman/thing from another world, though, they have all been reasonably polite, very helpful, and well worth meeting.

Thank you, Residents of Second Life, for making the world a fun place to be!

There are many different types in-world, and i have fun there, but the forums are where it gets interesting.

With the new laws just signed by President Bush you can bet that LL are going to be forced into allowing government access to the data stream. So don't expect you voice chat to be totally private. Somewhere someone may be listening. Or even worse, the whole thing is being recorded somewhere.

which new laws are those?

The laws on tapping international phone lines without the prior consent of a judge.
Yes, of course this pertains to our voice chat as well

When you speak to someone on the phone, or skype etc, it is instinctive to create a mental picture of how you perceive that person to be or look like. Now with the VR environment, the role has switched, now we get the mental picture before pehaps gaining the voice.

How many times have you thought when you actually meet someone in person, that you have spoken to over the phone.. 'I imagined you to be much taller!'? Or 'You don't sound like your picture' when your first encounter was a picture passed to you (yes it's strange, but true).

Humans rely very heavily on instincts and perceptions. My only worry, was a time I was in a voting queue waiting for my turn to vote for a polictical party, in front of me were 2 old ladies discussing the political merits of their vote, one said to the other 'Oh I like his picture, he looks very smart and I'll bet a woman bought that tie he is wearing, he must be a very nice man, I'll vote for him' EH???? lol...

Yes, I did see that in the papers yesterday.

Not that laws seem to have stopped the government from tapping into pretty much whatever they liked in the past.

Well, they're welcome to eavesdrop on all my chatter about shopping and boyfriends. I'm sure it's vital to the National Security. Or at least contributing to the National Debt.

I'm deeply disappointed. Oh, and thank-you very much for the folders I really enjoy exploring the LM's inside them, and really enjoyed exploring Greenies while it was in preview.

No problem , pass the folder on to someone els one day, it copies automatically.

Ok, will do so Oh, and a skeleton, you forgot to mention a skeleton.