SL Inspired?

I happened to watch a new movie last night (that surprisingly I had never even seen advertised until I came across it on the On demand listings of new releases)

Anywho.....the really fascinating thing was how closely the reality portrayed.....mimicks what's happening in SL. The movie is 'Surrogates'. It revolves around a time when human beings have taken to using surrogate selves to navigate in the real world....while they remain comfy & safe at home. Interestingly, the surrogates do not necessarily represent the human literally......in fact....it suggests that the use of surrogates is as varied as what we see in SL. People can be what they want to be ..... and guess what......it's ACCEPTED!

Now there's probably a miriad of implications that the movie does not even touch upon......like the fact that if two surrogates meet and fall in love.......what happens when the operators at home find out the true identity of each other (the big over weight middle aged guy and the college frat student.....who meet at a club as young attractive male & female)

But I'm gonna bypass that for the simple reason that the movie didn't address it (it was about something else entirely....well...sort of...until the end....good movie tho) and ask my question to be taken at face value....

At the end of the day....does it REALLY MATTER to YOU....what or WHO anyone else on the grid really is?



My answer..... no, it doesn't matter to me. I think when I first got rolling I understood right away that people were likely not to be what they represented themselves as....gender, species or otherwise lol and it simply didn't matter to me. I met people....I enjoyed them.....brain to brain...soul to soul.....I don't really care about the vessel...
I think perhaps it's because I don't relate to my avatar so literally...yeah it's always female like me.....but she's a million different women in the course of a month.....and I am still me......even when she's a lioness or an elf.....I'm me.

Interesting question!

No, it doesn't matter to me what the person I'm talking to in SL actually resembles in RL. Mostly. I mean, I don't imagine for an instant that the person I'm engaging with is as impossibly attractive as their avi probably is (although I *do* tend to assume that their clothing choices, and the way in which they're presenting themselves, tells me something about their aesthetics and/or values).

BUT...I can certainly imagine contexts in which it would matter to me. Because if one's having a discussion about, oh, racism, and someone misrpresents their real-world position of privilege (eg claims to be a black kid from the projects) in order to substantiate a point of view that's informed by their real world position of privilege (eg being a blonde, blue-eyed rich kid) well, that would infuriate me. That *would* be a problem.

Most of my 'net experience has been in posting board forums, or on LJ, and in those contexts I've been lucky that people have largely represented themselves with integrity, and I've made some fantastic friendships - and found that people have been, in RL, almost exactly the same as they are online. There have, however, been a couple of occasions where I've encountered crazyhead people who fabricate all manner of details (up to and including spousal illness, or staging their own death) and get all Munchauen by Internet, and that is just...very disconcerting. Happily that's not really been something I've encountered very much in the past decade, but it's definitely out there. Mostly, though, meeting people in RL has been a case of "...of course that's you!"

But of course I'm talking about relationships where physical appearances were never part of the equation in the first place - where there isn't that element of role play that colours SL. I guess that needs to be taken into account, at least a little - I find that the particular aspects of my own personality that come to the fore definitely depend upon what avi I'm wearing. I imagine that's true for at least some other people too.

I think...I'm absolutely happy to accept people on face value in SL, and think of Amusingname McLinden as being a woman, or a blue squirrel, or a Conan-style warrior, or whatever they choose to be (and indeed shag them, if we're talking one-night-stand type deal) without worrying about whether they're REALLY a woman/blue squirrel/Conan-style warrior.

But I think that if I were in what I perceived as an honest and non-game-playing kind of friendship with someone on SL, and then discovered that they had been lying about something - not just avoiding it, but actively lying about it...I think that could be problematic, yes.

And it's not that I can't understand the impulse! I can totally understand the impulse to play at being someone else - to try how well you can pass yourself off as someone of the opposite sex, or from a different country or whatever. I can see that being a fun challenge. But to be on the receiving end of it, and to feel that one's been played - I can't see that leaving anything but a sour taste in one's mouth.

First off- I love the Munchasenn by Internet label - never thought of it that way myself but great application!

To address the question, unless I am in a relationship with the person, it doesn't matter one bit- then it would matter in that I would expect the person presenting themselves as male to be in fact a male. Beyond that it wouldn't matter their race or physical appearance as I myself am not - gasp - a 7' tall platinum blonde .

I'm only interested in the avatars as presented. I'm not in SL for any RL romance, your RL appearance is of no importance to me.

i saw it when it came out..seriously i doubt sl alone influenced the movie..
i'm sure a lot of virtual worlds had influenced it..

Although a couple years back Bruce Willis did do an interview in an avatar in second life that was made to look like him and was on voice..so just maybe.hehehe

Yes, it matters. A Lot. I've got better ways to spend my precious time, than to give my heart and soul to people who are wacked. Of course, it took precious time to figure this out.

I'm sure people had visions of electronic virtual worlds long before they existed. I remember that when I first got on the internet about 10 years ago, I explored one or two old style chat rooms and was amused by the way people offered each other beers and coffees and things. I used to say things like 'can someone shut the door, please, it's draughty' - so we used to make believe even in the days of simple text chat. I did imagine rooms with characters in, but I imagined them to be very dark, bare rooms and we all sat on a bench along the wall!!

Interesting! I didn't actually think it was literally inspired by SL.....I just thought it was really fascinating the way technology is leading us into the direction of using alternate selves to navigate in the world. SL has offered a mere glimpse of what human beings might be engaging in, in another 50 years or so. So, it really kind of struck me how the movie took this possibility....and the fact that people will commonly choose something very different from their real selves........and this was all 'ok'......even normal. I liked it.....not sure I believe this will be an effective way of existing....but it was certainly intriguing. I would be happy in the idea that perhaps one day we could, actually, accept each other at face value and not look so deeply into the finer details of appearance (since none of that would be authentic anyway! hah!) but I'm not convinced it's practical given human nature.

I watched Surrogates on my flight to China and found the story to be a good parallel to SL if it had a broader cultural impact. The ending was VERY preachy, though. (>_<

As to the whole relationship thing... I've been in one relationship so far, tried and failed on another (yes, I'm a crud), and seem to be in the beginnings of another. All I ask is that the typist be 18 or over. Beyond that, they'll know all about me and I won't pry any information from them. If they feel I need to know something, they'll tell me. (^_^)

I fall for the spirit. (^_^)y

Watch Gamer instead. Anyone who has knows why

And there is always an evil corrupt corporation running the grid isn't there?

I have not seen the movie, so can't judge how much influence SL had on it. The whole concept of "living virtually" is not new; Asimov posited something like it in his Robot series with the planet Solaria.

The question put forth is really the elephant in the pixel room. What is really being asked is does it matter that there are men that might portray themselves as women by using female avatars and such. I suppose there is also the question about women using male avatars, but I have not heard too many complaints about that. My answer is trite because it has to be; it matters if it matters to you.

For me, unless there are a whole lot of vampires, werewolves, aliens, dragons, robots, foxes, and assorted other furries and things that go bump in the night running around the world I don't know about, it seems silly to complain about someone choosing an avatar that is not their sex and not blink an eye when they go out of species.

If I dig right down to the heart of it for myself, I actually prefer being around people who don't portray their AV like their true RL selves, even if it's a different species or gender. Of the people I've met, this subset has usually been the more passionate, intelligent, human, creative, and non-egotistical of them all, and that seems to jive quite well with who I am as a person. In a puppet show, I care not for the puppeteer.. for upon seeing him, the message derived from the show is lessened. But unlike the OP, I DO care about the 'vessel' as she states it. Living in SL as my AV, and ignoring all the RL that gets dragged in, those AV's are what makes all the SL immersion work, and all the RL irrelevant.

Surrogates is a movie adaptation of a 2005 comic book mini-series called The Surrogates written by Robert Venditti. I doubt Venditti had or has even heard of Second Life and the latter had no influence on the writings of the former.

There is, at least for most SL residents (I hope), a big difference between the way we jump into different avatars and appearances and roles and the world that is portrayed in Surrogates. Most of us do so as a form of entertainment and amusement to enhance the way we enjoy our lives. In the world of the Surrogates, people do so to replace the way they live their lives. People no longer connect to one another and society has been reduced to a collection of false identities forming a massive web of false relationships existing in pseudo realities that is the result of an overwhelming ennui with forming honest and real relationships with one another based on who we really are rather than who we pretend to be. It is an extremely depressing world which is a twisted reflection of societal obsession with physical appearance, and the great lengths to which so many will go in the pursuit of eternal youth and beauty. Creams, diets, exercise routines, drugs and surgery are some of the means we already employ. The Surrogates are just an obscene extension of the lengths to which we might go to as a society and where we would end up if we were to pursue that obsession to its end given sufficient technological advances.