Real Life versus Second Life

I sound like a stalker because I would like to know more about someone who IMs me everyday and takes hours of my time having a convo with them? lol. It`s ok, we dont know eachother


These are my personal views..and they go like this.

If I meet someone in sl, i talk to them- im a friendly person. Sometimes, we exchange friendship offers and begin talking via IM. If this goes on for quite sometime.. RL questions -do- come up. I answer freely. If someone refuses and is very secretive, I find it hard to be friends with them. I just consider them an aquantance or someone im friendly WITH..but if i know nothing about who they really are, thats not a friendship.

If someone can not be real and honest with me and tell me "My name is john and i live in new zealand" then i want no further relationship with them. It all makes sense in my head. How can you be FRIENDS with someone who will not reveal their name to you? You really know nothing about them. And if someone wants to be that secretive then all i can view them as is someone i am friendly WITH in SL, nothing more.


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Now, regarding the people in here saying they got stalked or are afraid of being stalked. Ive been stalked myself by 2 women a few years back.

I am not in any way suggesting you throw out tons of your RL information to anyone. Assuming you know, trust, and feel comfortable with the person wanting to know...make your decision.

Not everyone online is a psycho stalker- are you?

Very interesting topic

The idea of being somebody totally different in a virtual world like SL has some attraction to me. If I would go for that I would possibly not want anyone interacting with to know about my RL circumstances , I would certainly be able to separate the two: It would be nothing but what it originally was invented as: a role play game.

However, I came to SL with a different intention; I never had the concept of role playing in mind. I didn't come for fun or chat or relationships. I came to discover business opportunities nothing else full stop. The cold hard cash.

Hence forth a lot of RL stuff had to be communicated, such as company name, web address, corporate identity, my real name and even contact details. The plan was creating something in SL which allows me to sell in world advertising to RL clients...for cash.

I am still indenting that. But sometimes things turn out to be different slightly, out totally as panned. Actually it took me less then an hour in y SL and I found myself creating a private SL. How, met a charming character: Ginny. I spend a lot of time with her now and back to topic: I never role played with her and I am real me with her and I think she is with me. We are having a bizarre but beautiful SL only but RP relationship.

So, for me separating the two world s completely is not even possible any more

Wolfgang

I think it all boils down to what you expect from your 'SL Friendships'. I don't have any problems with people not wanting to divulge RL info. It's there choice and if you can't get past that then thats a reflection of you, not them.

I always ask my self 2 questions when it comes to giving out RL info.
1. What do I expect to gain?
2. What can I afford to lose?

That may make me sound calculated and cold, but I'm not.
If all I am looking for is someone to enjoy the SL experience with, then why do I need to know their real identity. Why do I have to reveal mine? It is possible to share RL experiences and be real and honest without giving out your identity. I have no problem telling people I live in NC. I develop medical software for a living. I have two beautiful kids. Beyond that though, I need to know you more and develop a trust before giving out more info. Trusts is not something you can set a time frame on. It either develops or it doesn't.

I don't think you can make such a blanket statement that you should or shouldn't give out RL info. It all depends on the person you are with.

Personally, I am in SL who I am in RL. Same attitude, same humor, same outlook on things, willing to chat with anyone about almost anything- including myself. Of course, there are limitations on stuff we all reveal about RL.

I think of SL as a way to use my creative skills (and education) to have some fun, meet people I'd never meet otherwise.

I am basically myself in SL. I know many people in SL who know a lot about me in RL because we knew each other in other places online before we came to SL. I know some on SL who know almost nothing (including my RL name).

There are only maybe 3 or 4 of these people who I consider actual "friends", but my definition of friend is very restrictive by many standards. The rest are acquaintances, playmates, or just people I RP with and don't care to know anymore about them than what I know of their RP characters.

If you look at my profile, you will see that my RP character's history is clearly spelled out and is clearly different from my own. When I am not in active RP, I am just me. In fact I sometimes find it hard to separate the real me from the RP me. By that I mean that the RL me gets overly upset about rude treatment in RP even though I *know* the other person is just playing a role. Or I get overly attached to my RP character's lovers. Or whatever. When that happens I dial back and get out of RP for awhile.

As to what to reveal and when and how much - that is entirely a personal choice, and if anyone said they could not be my friend because I wouldn't tell them RL info, I'd say, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." I really don't have any time to waste on people who do not respect me, and by demanding personal info that I don't feel comfy revealing, they are very clearly disrespecting my right to privacy.

When someone asks where I live or where I am from, I say "Kyonu", where my SL house is. Sometimes they press for RL details and they are told it is none of their business (which is true.) If they were intelligent enough to read my profile, they would see where I am from. And since they were clearly not bright enough to read my profile, I ignore them and go on my merry way.

Grace

Sharing anything, Living anywhere has risk be it virtual or real life.
I don't expect my friends to devulge information they aren't comfortable but at same time I find it very difficult to not share certain aspects of my real life but I do so carefully and only share certain things with certain people.
I have noticed that lot don't look at profiles though. Not sure why. I would think anyone who wanted to be friend would read my profile.

Well I think giving out person details is beside the point. My closer SL friends know my A/S/L as well as my real first name, and I theirs. But even if I chose not to reveal that, there's still the question of whether I talk to them as "me" or as some roleplay character. I choose "me."

Others choose to interact as a dragon or elf or whatever. Frankly I find that boring, primarily because most people have no interesting ideas at all about how a dragon or elf would talk or behave, whereas they might actually be interesting humans. But to each his own.

Oh yes. I am a Profile Reader 1st class. Anyone who I speak to for more than a moment or 2 I read their profile. Sometimes if I'm dancing in a busy club, I'll read everyone's profile. And I am always gratified when someone reads mine and asks a question based on what I wrote.

I come to SL to do things I can't do in real life, and to be what I can't be in real life, and to experience something completely *different* from my real life.

In SL, you can be anything and anyone you can imagine. So why be a clone of your RL self? To me, that is like going to an ice cream shop that offers 100 flavors, and never ordering anything other than plain vanilla ice cream. Or going to a fancy restaurant and always ordering the macaroni and cheese from the kids menu. I have no choice but to be my RL self every waking minute of my life. In SL, I can "be" someone else. Different appearance, different gender, even a different species! Why settle for "just me"?

My Second Life remains completely insulated from my Real life. My avatars are fictional characters, crafted with the same effort and devotion that a professional author or movie script writer puts into creating the characters for their books or movies. I define their appearance, their background, their likes and dislikes, and I experience their lives vicariously as I play them on-screen. I may be a cute female vixen furry one day, and a handsome and manly Scottsman the next day, or some rather generic female anthro wolf... Or maybe all of them at the same time... But they remain fictional characters. They are not *me*, no more than the author Mickey Spillane is his hard boiled detective character, Mike Hammer, or the sexy lady in distress that the detective is hired by, or the thug in the alley that threatens the sexy lady, or the little boy who stares in awe and ducks for cover as the bullets crash through the toy store window... My friends like interacting with my characters, and all of them know that they are dealing only with these characters when they interact.

Talk to Ceera, and you get an honest and consistent interaction, *from the standpoint of that character*. She will speak of herself as female in RL, and will react as she has been written to react.

Talk to my Scottish Human male character, and HE will also respond, *as that character*, referring when necessary to his Player as being male. His personality is completely different.

Both will tell you the only "true" things that anyone in SL ever needs to know about m real Player: That my Player is over 18. That I am married in RL. That I have a child. That I am utterly devoted in RL to my mate and had a strictly monogamous relationship with them in RL. That I NEVER date any of my on-line friends, and that the Player behind the character offers no more, ever, than platonic friendship to the players behind the characters that she/he interacts with. They may tell you what time zone I am in, simply to make it easier to coordinate SL interactions. They won't ever give you a phone number or a postal address, however, unless there is a pressing RL reason why that is vital - such as you want to sell me a computer and need to know where to ship it. And such occasions are so rare as to be nearly nonexistant.

As for those I interact with, the only things I ever want to know about their real Player is that they are over 18, and maybe what time zone they are in. I don't care, and really don't want to *know*, what their real gender or race is. All I ask of them is that they accept that dealing with my characters is only that - interacting with the fictional characters.

Some people may find my attitude too "secretive" or "deceptive". To those people, I can only say that I am not seeking, ever, a RL romantic relationship, and if that is what *they* are seeking, they may as well move onto someone else. They won't find more than a platonic friend in me.

Actually Ceera, some here would even find you "Morally Reprehensible." But I am in general agreement with you.

I think we all tend to be works of fiction one way or the other in RL and in SL.

The same heart and mind runs all your Av's Ceera and over time, those things can be known about you. That is why I think SL is so cool.

No doubt at all of that. The mere fact that I am usually wearing a furry avatar in SL is enough to ensure that.

True. Yet there are distinct differences as well. For example, that Scottsman I mentioned is, so far, as celebate as the parish priest. Ceera isn't all that active herself, but she's certainly not celebate. At the moment, she pregnant!

Yet I have friends who have interacted with Ceera for many years now (she existed in other RP venues before SL), and who have known some of my other characters just as long, and many of those friends still don't know that the same person runs both Ceera and some of those other characters.

I applaud this, and also the rest of it, which I snipped for brevity. I would only remark that I imagine it takes some skill to be able to carry off several quite different personas - it must require some good acting skills. I suspect that over time some of the same RL attitudes will seep in to the opinions that all your SL characters express.

My own experience has been that I came to SL first as an alternative to other online comms systems, purely to have meetings with RL friends and contacts. But over time, I've become more and more a role-player to the extent that my avatar has developed a mind of her own, and is mostly only interested in SL things, to the almost complete exclusion of RL matters. So in terms of the OP's two categories, I've gone from being one to the other.

I'm pretty much who I am online as I am RL. It's especially hard to keep SL/RL seperate when you have an experience like I did yesterday during my morning show. As a sailboat was going by the property I broadcast from, I happened to look out my RL studio window and saw a boat going by at the same time.

Thankfully, the RL boat wasn't a "Flying Tako" otherwise I might have had to check myself into they nearest psychiatric facility at the end of my show...lmao

If your SL identity is worth more than your physical one, is it still underhand and untrustworthy to not give away stalker bait to anyone who asks?

Is paranoia about being stalked more or less ridiculous than paranoia about cybering someone with the wrong fuzzy bits?

Inquiring minds want to know!

I tend to agree with this, but at the same time I do not think an individual can change their basic personality. It will remain the same in SL as it is in RL no matter how much acting and role playing they do - most peoples' personalities are set in stone by the age of about 16 years. You can change superficial things - learned behaviour, but the inner core - no! It takes a heavy trauma to have an effect on that. I do recognise that there are people who have several Alts and use them to explore different aspects of their personality by putting themselves into a different context in SL. I think this could be a part of what Ceera is doing. SL can help you explore the facets of your own personality.

How the devil have I missed this thread? LOL

Bilbo is pretty much real. He's brought in real-life friends so we have a hard core of RL experience and memories which tie us. People I meet in SL might share, might not, their RL persona. I've no rules for Bilbo .. except he's not into an SL relationship. His RL fiancee wouldn't like it and if she caught him in SL ... brings tears to my eyes! So a bit of RL, a bit of SL. No great wish to separate the two.

Bilbo has an alt. Now she is ok with general location, time zone and declaring a RL partner but otherwise is a roleplayer. She roleplays an earlier time sadly missed. She has a *much* larger friends list than Bilbo (of which he is insanely jealous!) but is quite happy to accept that all these friends are roleplayers too. No need for any RL than naturally seeps in from time to time. So again, a bit of RL, a bit of SL

I accept that there is a huge part of me at the heart of both avatars. I don't put a huge effort into portraying a character for either of them. I don't see how anyone can engineer an avatar without letting a large part of their real character, which is RL surely?, in.

Ceera, you set me thinking. Take a character, for example, The Fugitive. Now David Jansen portrayed his rendition of the starring role. More recently, Harrison Ford plays the same character part but the same character? Perhaps not a good analogue. OK, stick with Harrison, Han Solo? Was Han Solo completely disembodied from The Fugitive?

All I'm trying to get at is no matter how hard you try, your RL persona is going to seep past the keyboard and into your avatar - no matter how hard you try not to

I think Nigee poses a very good question and I firmly believe the answer is no.

Put aside your personal rules, your limits on divulgence, you ambitions or your intentions. I think eventually, your fingers will betray your heart.

Use of internet based 'programmes' will always evoke certain levels of escapisim, alter ego's, alter personas and for the most part, until familiarity developes, our 'Sunday Best'.

As a 'social based' programme like SL is viewed by the masses as a 'meeting' place, it revolves around social elements, along with the levels/layers of drama/gossip etc.

For those that see it as a means of escapisim, it can become an alternative world, where by they may seek things denied to them in RL.

For some its a platform to excell beyond RL means.

For those seeking to create a business platform, it caters well for them, and is probably related quite well to their RL.

To some it's simply a place to 'play'. Which can mean elements such as regainning lost childhoods, exploring alternative life styles etc.

There is an element of those that also explore their sexuality, perhaps using the relative insulation of the internet, to see if others still consider them sexy, whilst still enjoying a stable relationship in RL.

There will always be degrees of how much exposure people are prepared to give, in divulging just how much RL and internet 'Life' they wish to blend.

Social studies have proved, that a large proportion of people view the internet based programmes, to have the advantage of 'action without consequence'. If you upset your neighbours in an internet based game, you can wipe away all that history and begin again with a clean slate, by simply creating another character representation, or use an alt to dual role. I have 'known' some people to have quite a few alts, and have 'healthy conversations' with themselves... or use them to gain the trust of the main characters friends, in the hope that they would find out exactly how they really feel about their 'main character', without exposing themselves. You can't do any of this in RL unless you have either a split personality and can convince people you also have a twin .

Personally, I try and portray my best features in SL, I don't have the memory capacity or the inclination to lie in RL or SL. I enjoy the relative freedoms of platforms like SL.. and I don't think my Boss in RL would like me to wear what I do in SL, to work... would probably scare the pants off most of the clients LOL . I also use SL to apply my business accumens from RL, to continue my creative cravings, not always satisfied in RL. I like helping people in both RL and SL, even when it can be detrimental. I dislike drama and people who lie, but a lie is but a truth undiscovered, so its a continous learning process. I love my mute button and vote it should be included in RL lol.

I'll say it in this way and it applies to me and only to me: "There is a time and a place for everything."

If I am roleplaying, my RL will have as little as possible to do with SL. If I am not, then I am all RL, but either way, once SL is shut down for the night, that's all there is to it.

Real life and Second Life don't mix. Nothing to do with self-hatred, or wanting to roleplay to escape real life, but quite the opposite - I have many friends and do many social activities in real life so that I don't need a computer simulation of real life.

However, sometimes it rains in real life, then going outside is no fun. That's where SL comes in

I have to disgree with this most strongly. Personalities can be changed by sheer will. We act and think what we want, there is no core self to our beings that dictates who we are - we decide who we are, both in Second Life and real life. To suggest there is an inner core is basically the same as saying we have a soul, which I find equally ridiculous.

We are, however, limited by our brain chemistry to certain modes of behaviour. They tend to be universal to all humans though, with the exception of those with some sort of deficiency in their brain chemistry.

Any hack actor can do that. (Ok, maybe not Ben Afleck). I agree. Personally. I only take people I meet in SL at their Avatar's Face value, along with whatever information they wish to share. I never initiate a question on RL, and will not give any of my RL details if not asked, beyond what is in my profile. My friends know varying things about my personal life based on the level of the relationship, and vice versa.That's how I approach Second Life, it works for me. It escapist entertainment for me, not an addition to, or substitute for Real Life.

Cuba Gooding Junior is way better than Ben Affleck.

I question we act and think as we want. I believe we are affected and directed by various factors in our upbringing to shape us. Yes, we act and decide on these factors to a degree but there is often that unknown quantity that makes someone an individual.

I also suggest that what you call certain modes of behaviour, others might call a soul.

Most posters here seem to put forward an opinion. My opinion is that no matter how much you say to yourself I'm not letting RL into my SL character, at some point something will happen, be asked or be witnessed, to fire your true self into action.