Voice and Disclosure

Haha sure, it's a chocolate chip one

~CookieManiac

ooooh yum! my fave!!

Right now I'm screaming obscenities at the red "Offline" banner on the log-in screen and nobody can hear me because I don't have voice

*prances around" NA NA NA NA NANAAAAA

ROFL (me too, well without the obscenities in any case)

I'm not quite sure what the big deal is.. unless you are working as a stripper, WHO CARES!!! Now, if you are a stripper or escort. And someone wants to prove you are a female, I would just consider it part of the biz... for too long men have been getting away with misleading people on alts. Now, in a "virtual world" i'd say who cares. But this "virtual world" deals with real money, and it could be considered scamming or misleading.

Now im sure there are some big jerkoff men who would want you to get on voice, but honestly why would you be hanging around with people like this? If you consider this person a friend, you should reconsider your friends and where you are hanging out. And then of course.. there is always the mute button.

Im a guy, obviously. And I have a fully functional female alt. (Mostly for modeling purposes) So ive been on the other side of the fence, so to speak.

Voice is here, and isn't going anywhere. So I think that its time we just adapt, or choose not to use it. There are PLENTY of other games that use voice, and when ive known plenty of females who chose not to use it. Why do you care so much if some dude on the internet thinks you are not a girl?

p.s Sorry to make this thread serious again, cookies are good too. ^^

Voice may be here, but I'm not using it. All it does is give me crappy performance and near-constant packet loss, and that's even with it turned off. (My computer is 4 years old.) So I don't even HEAR anyone.

I'm female and I don't need to prove it to anybody. I don't feel like talking my fool head off to everyone and his dog online; it's too exhausting. I might like to listen, yes - and I have - but the performance hit is even worse then. I might even like to talk sometimes - if I could. But that would be rare.

Not wanting to be outed as a female when I am a female playing a female is preceeded by some 2k other, far more likely, reasons why I'm not using voice.

I'm tired of people assuming that if you aren't talking you aren't the gender you appear. Some may be and some may not be, but I am, and I'm getting real impatient with people suggesting that everyone not talking is hiding something.

So far, voice has offered me nothing but eroding the quality of my SL performance quite a bit. Telling me, on top of that, that my problem is I'm not really a female just makes me even crankier right now.

coco

voice def sux. sl has been terrible since they started it. the only ones who obess over wheter or not women are really women are stalker types who dont seem to get it that cyber-sex is the most casual of sex there could ever be. they wanna track down the women they "fall in love with", post their picks on their profiles and say they have been through so much with...they wanna stalk em rl is all!

They were idiots, next they will be complaining there's no girls in the game anymore.
Nothing wrong with being shy & sensitive.

Ahem.



Seriously, I agree with the point you're making there, but gender-group-guilting is inaccurate, unconstructive and insulting.

I actually don't have a mic, when I told somebody this in world the response was "why not"?
I couldn't be bothered to say, I haven't got round to buying one because the need never arose before, and now i am thinking, should I get one just so I can prove to people I couldn't care less about that I can actually string a sentence together without recourse to editiing and lyricism. I think I may buy some voice changing software and make my voice sound very deep and masculine, and maybe I will put a RL pic on my profile of Meatloaf, and while I am at it I may aswell buy a talking willy.
Actually I just had a great idea, beards for girls, ok, gotta go and build a beard, but I can't get in soooo.....

He he. I'm in the same boat. My computer didn't come with a mic, and I never had a compelling reason to get one. If you wanted to goof on those prying morons I'd say getting one would be money well spent, but not out of any need to prove to anyone that you are what you say you are. Those types aren't worth spending A Linden on, never mind real money.

And that most of us don't want to have sex with you anyway.

I don't get the idea that a women refusing to voice (or a gender switcher for that matter) is looking to "trick " anyone. I thought SL is about Fantasy, being what you want to be, maybe something you are not in RL. If you are looking for a RL relationship, Ok truthfulness is essential. But for those who are SL is SL , what difference does it make what the person behind the avatar is? Even the example of the gender switching escort committing fraud, I don't see it. A male AVATAR is engaging in the business with a female AVATAR. That's all it is, avatar to avatar. Stop being so paranoid and homophobic guys.And if a woman says she chooses not to use voice , leave her alone if you don't want to type. Don't belittle or harass her. It won't prove she is really a man, but it will prove that you aren't.

Personally I haven't experienced or witnessed this yet, but it will get zero tolerance from me. Mute/AR will be my actions when it happens.

Brenda --

I agree pretty much with what you've written here.

The issue, though, as I see it is that while some people play SL as a fantasy world and take it on its own terms at face value and don't seek to "pierce" beyond that into real life, there are others who very much play SL as an extension of their RL. I find it's generally the second group who get all up in arms about the RL characteristics of the person typing behind the avatar they are interacting with, because to them SL is mostly a graphically-enhanced communications medium between the two typists rather than a self-standing, self-contained world to be taken on its own terms without reference to the two typists. It really is a gap in viewpoints based on how people choose to experience and interact with SL, and that's why we can never really find agreement - it relates to a more basic difference between how SL is approached.

There certainly is a homophobic element to all of it, but I think again that this really applies to people who are of the second type -- namely those who see SL as an extension of RL, and therefore the RL "a/s/l" of the person they are interacting with becomes very important. It always boggles me as to how much people want to know about these things, because I'm not someone who interacts with SL as an extension of my RL: I mean do the guys really want to know that the hot stripper/escort they are chatting with is not a man but a middle-aged soccer mom whose kids are screaming in the background or an overweight college student who is using SL as a social/sexual outlet? There's such a thing as "too much information", and particularly in the area of escorting I would think that the fantasy aspect would be recognized and respected, but apparently not.

It really relates to a fundamental difference in how people perceive SL and interact with it, and that's why those who are on different sides of that experiential aspect will in most cases disagree about the utility of voice, even leaving aside the problems with griefing (mostly ) women than voice allows.

I don't deny that's the way people see it, though I personally think it's a false dichotomy anyway: I think it's both simultaneously - not so much in a 'different things to different users way' as it is both simultaneously to me. I don't see why, just because it's digital in nature, it somehow suddenly becomes 'not real', but I also don't see why it should be constrained by 'reality' just because it -is- real in a way. There's simply no reason for those two viewpoints to contradict each other unless you go to an absolutist extreme. And I suspect that a lot of the problems are coming from people who think it has to be one or the other...

Well, let me explain what I mean.

SL is "real" to me, but it isn't what people refer to as "real life" (I prefer the more cumbersome words "Material world" but I know that everyone uses "RL as a shorthand for the life we lead outside of the SL grid). So SL interactions are very real in that the typist is engaged in what is happening and bits and pieces of his/her persona will show up in SL no matter what -- but it isn't real life, the way I take SL. I take what I see in SL at face value and live within SL as a parallel reality to RL, subject to the limits of that reality. I don't see that as "absolutist", but I suppose it could be viewed that way -- to me, the RL characteristics of the typist behind the avatar I am interacting with are not very important. If the typists wants to share them with me I won't stop him/her, but I'm much more interested in how the typist projects herself/himself into SL, because that's the context in which I am relating to them.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does make sense... I wouldn't call that absolutist: it sounds pretty much like what I was getting at with the way I see it.

Basically what I'm saying is that my SL identity is, to me, a -real- part of my identity, even if there are parts of it that don't correspond to the rest of my identity (this could include gender, although most of the time it doesn't for me). Whether anyone else sees it like that is, to me, immaterial: what I see is, to my mind, the part of their identity they're choosing to present, and I respect that that's what they're choosing to present. Awareness that what they're like in 'real life' (or, if you like, the rest of their identity) might be quite different is always there, but I've never seen it as that important: I see someone having different characteristics of identity in Second Life in pretty much the same way as I would tell quite different jokes with my friends to those I consider suitable for the workplace. If that analogy makes sense...

Yes and I'm not faulting group 2. If that is how you approach SL fine, then ascertain that from the other person. If they are of similar mind proceed. If they aren't, you can politely decline to interact with them. I state in my profile pretty much everything i feel you have to know about the "Real" me. I also state several times, that I don't carry SL out of SL. Armed with this knowledge someone can easily decide whether they wish to interact with me or not. All that is needed is a polite disengagement. No snide remarks, no intimidation, no harrassment.

Pretty much exactly the way I look at things. Good post!

*walks to blackboard and picks up chalk with sweaty hand, the eyes of the other classmates burning a hole in her back*

*nervous cough*

SL out of SL equals... um..

Wait, carry the nine... uhhh

*drops chalk*

I don't know why, but I'm awfully glad you're back.........

Do you have ANY idea what I log in as? What my alts are? Who I am, and what I do? Then please, for the love of linden, don't assume and belittle.

Thanks in advance.

I don't know why you're glad either....lol

For the record, I've been playing "games" of all genres with voice, and I've NEVER encountered a person with a voice changer...in over a decade of play. And I'm darn sure I would be able to tell...you always can.

I'm kinda new to all this and terribly non-techy, but if you never encountered a person with a voice changer in a game, how do you know you'd be able to tell (and always can) if you never encountered one?

Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet..

Amen.