Will you use SL voice for the majority of your communication in world?

It's a talent.

I'm not going away, though

Edit - Coming from an "Offensive Broad" I have to chuckle a little at this too

If you want to meet real people, go out into the real world. Join a club, go to a bar. In other words, playing an online video game is not the way to meet real people.

As for only having the experience of my own gender - J.K.Rowling has no idea what being a teenage boy wizard is like, that hasn't stopped her novels being the most successful series in recent memory. I'm sure William Shakespeare was never a prince of Denmark, or a black man living in 15th century venice, or a young girl in Verona in love a boy her family disapproved of. None of this stopped his characters being convincing.

To be frank, your expectation that the person you talk to online is the same as the person in RL is entirely unreasonable and you simply set yourself up for disappointment. Try not to confuse reality with fiction - I'm not a doctor, I just play one on tv.

Thanks. I guess I'm just a bit sensitive about this issue. When I was pretty new I met a girl and we got on great. Became very very good friends and we both agreed we felt like sisters. We talked openly about rl issues and as she confided in me, I confided in her about some very personal subjects. She talked of her husband and young son, we exchanged photos and... well, you've probably guessed the outcome. 'She' let something slip one day in a conversation we were having with a couple of other friends, I confronted her later and yes, 'she' was a guy. Everything she said had been made up.

OK, you can say that if the friendship was that deep, why should it matter? And yes, if early on in our relationship he had come clean, then we might have remained very good friends. But it makes me sick to think of some of the things I divulged and that I was deceived into saying them. I'm not sure what his motives were; I didn't get into that. Suffice to say that he must have been getting some form of gratification from it at some level - and at my expense.

he was a damn good roleplayer though, I have to say that.

EDIT: In fairness, this was down to my naievity above all else. But hey, we were all new to this once.

Actually you do make a lot of sense - becuase the ones who throw accusations around will feel more justified by the fact that many women do voice.

So they will feel that those who wont must be fakers. In a black and white paranoid veiw that makes sense to them.

Mainly though theres two other complexities - First, people wont want to be bother defending their right to chose voice or not all the time. Second, the fact that provisions against Disclosure will soon be history will encourage accusers to spread their suspicions around.

"That Sara must be a guy becuase she wont EVER voice - Plus I heard ..." - regretable will be perfectly normal conversation in a few months.

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Oddly I think functional voice changers might help women, in a twist of your quoted concern.

If plenty of gender pretending men who can voice start to become widely known as voicing in SL and not able to be discovered easily - Then -

The Actual women who do not want to/cant voice will finally be free of this stigma being discussed. If voice is no longer a viable litmus test then the accusatory natury becomes less pronounced.

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Finally theres some women who welcome being assumed to be men. They feel it will cut down on people hitting on them all the time.

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Its important to remember there will be a lot of female avs who arent using voice who arent gender pretenders. There a whole slew of other reasons they may not wish to use voice.

There will be a lot of male avs who wont use voice who arent married, etc.

There is no reason people should be forced to defend their choice to anyone. But they will pushed to feel like they have to, thats the issue.

LOL! Just being what they are? I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that your avatar types in SL? That it buys things? That it is a sentient being?

There's SOOO much more to an avatar than its outside and it's mostly that I'm talking about. Wearing a shape of the opposite gender is compeltely reasonable and understandable for various reasons. I'm sure in my SL life I will just to play with pretty bling. What I don't understand is making that my default and acting as if my avatar was, ya know...alive.

Unless I'm in an RP sim. Then it makes slightly more sense to me.

I wont use voice, and seeing the poll results, most wont be using it a majority of the time. I wont have it turned on on any of my land either.

As for my reason why? It is my preference and anyone that cant grasp that Id just as soon not know

I voted NO. I play mainly with my RL husband anyway, and only have to yell across the room to hear his voice.....lol. I get hit on enough, even with a floating text stating that I'm taken...I actually have a very nice RL voice, which helps me in my sales job. However, I talk on the phone alllll day long....kind of like the peace of only listening to music when I'm on SL. Even my husband and I communicate mainly in text when we're inworld...it adds to the experience, in my view. I think that if someone enjoys voice, more power to them, and it does sometimes have it's place in a virtual community. It just doesn't have a place for me. I live on Mature land in SL, and can only imagine what my children might hear if I had voice activated......Hmmmmm, not good.

That's exactly the same as saying that if someone had an attractive avatar but you later found out they were quite ugly in real life you would sever all connection with them. You assume that because he was male he must be getting gratification from hearing you tell things that were secret - why? Why is that necessarily the case?

Try to understand;

We are actors. All of us. Avatars are characters. Clear enough?

If you play tomb raider, that doesn't make you an adventuring archeologist in real life does it?

All due respect but I haven't given you the power to decide how I meet real people. Perhaps my method isn't as efficient or effective as it could be, but I have something in common with every SL player and I don't have something in common with a lot of RL people.

Nor have I given you the power decide what is and what is not twisted.

I don't agree at all. This person was intentionally decieved and you are blaming the victim. Putting on an avatar does not give you the right to actively lie and take advantage of people's trust.

I tried to be clear and say that I view this as twisted. It's my viewpoint and it is true to me. You said, quite clearly, that I was doing the wrong thing by trying to meet real life people (or at least connect with real humans through their avatars).

There's a difference.

It's a bit unfair that the pool asks for a "majority" of time. If things were thought up like that you wouldn't have as many features as you have now.

For instance, "Do you plan to hear the stream from SL in the majority of time?"

Well I guess sometimes yes, sometimes no, it depends, but at least I have that option.

To be frank, anyone who believes any kind of online relationship to be real is living in a fantasy world (which, ironically, is precisely what SL is). Until you meet a person, you do not know them, they are not your friends and you do not have a relationship. Being perfectly honest, I find your belief that you can have count Sl acquintences as friends a bit twisted too.

As for use of the word "victim". I find that laughable too. My male avatar is taller than me - does that mean I am misleading people. He also has long hair, which in real life I cut short when I left college a few years ago. Is that misleading? No one has taken advantage of anyone's trust. This person who believed themselves a "victim" is just being anal.

No, actually it isn't.

And of course he was getting some form of grafification. That's why he contnued the charade. I am not sure if your are interpreting my use of the word gratification as sexual gratification. That is not what I meant.

There you have the human condition in a nutshell.
"I don't understand it. It makes me feel uncomfortable. Therefore, it must be wrong."

The "it" can be any sort of behaviour, including religious behaviour.
I'm not picking on Merovigan here. It's a universal knee-jerk reaction.
We drift into wars and genocide due at least in part to that reaction.

I do have to disagree with you here Conan (gets ready for his 3rd AR from Conan of the day. )

Chris, is an extension of me. When you talk to Chris, you are talking to me. Even my look draws from my RL appearance. I do have alts that are roles or characters, a female and two males who are both very different than me. Chris is in relationships and friendships. The alts come out to play, have no one on their friends lists, and go away with hardly a ripple in the surface of SL.

I believe you are trivializing gender by comparing it to height and hair length. Moreover, I'm not saying that I believe wearing the opposite gender's shape is entirely twisted. It's a step, but it's also a long road from normal to twisted. There are many nd various reasons to wear a shape of the opposite gender.

But to pretend to actually BE the opposite gender? I don't get that and yeah, I view that as twisted. I'm ok if you don't like me for that, I really am. I'm just being honest - if you say you're a girl and you're a guy, outside of roleplaying, and in what appears to be a "real" or OOC conversation, something may be a little wrong with you (in my opinion).

Divluging real life information to someone you've met online is probably not smart. But we do not smart things when we trust people. We don't trust people immediately. Thus, if someone intentionally decieves someone else (violating their trust) I see a moral "crime" of sorts. It's a bad thing to do to someone. Perhaps they should have known better; or perhaps you should have known that some people take what you say seriously. If you say you're something you're not (in actual words, not in shapes) then that does make you a liar, again, in my opinion, and I'd rather not hang with you

And I present them to have them battered about while I try to cling to the nugget in the center. As time goes by I hammer out a more robust and sound opinion.

this poll is skewed though. By the nature of the forums the people here are generally comfortable reading and many comfortable with posting in text based environmnets.

On the issue of voice especially using a text based medium is going to skew results in favor of text.

How much? its hard to tell. From my conversations in world theres some pretty definite trends. Ive spoken to quite a few about it.

-Single Men who dont date much IRL seem to be all in favor of having voice availble.
-Some young single women who dont date much IRL are in favor of voice availble.
-Many single women who are over 35 dont want voice anyhow.
-Single people who date a lot IRL are pretty much neutral on the idea of voice.
-Most married people that I know of either gender arent very interested in voice.
-the Gender pretenders that I know are all pretty much against voice.

-A LOT of people who are for voice are interested in its use as a gender identifyer.


Now these are just the results of conversations - they arent a scientific sampling at all. Just the results of conversations Ive had since voice was announced. Of course its interesting to note what people will say when the magnifying glass of the forums community isnt pointed at them.

I think voice will have many practical applications inworld, but it isn't something I'll use on a daily basis. Lectures are probably the best initial application of voice. But I'm sure some enterprising folks will find others.

As I understand it (and maybe I'm wrong), landowners will have to pay additional tier to have voice available. As such, I suspect that a large percentage of SL will remain mute for a while. So, schools and rl companies will likely be the first to offer it. Then as new applications are developed, others will.

My thoughts...

To some, (probably many) Just being in Second Life is Roleplay, and are never Out of Character. In any case, you are entitled to approach Second Life however you wish, just as we all are.

A few thoughts come to mind:

Your avatar argument is false and I think you know it-- the point is not about looks, but about mindset, and yes, different "plumbing" and hormones leads to different mindsets.

and

SL is obviously NOT just a RP game or site-- it is much more than that already and has potential to be even more.

and

I say it's only roleplaying when both parties involved KNOW it's roleplaying, and the depth limits of roleplaying each is comfortable with , otherwise it starts to slide into dishonesty or, really, just plain lying, deceit, and fraud.
The person who took advantage of Kelly K was clearly the latter.

and

It is clear that there will be a "newsworthy" problem with someone taking a deception too far eventually-- let's hope Fox/Murdoch doesn't try to destroy SL to protect MySpace.


And, back to topic (sort of), I think voice won't be a huge preventative to quell deceit, for reasons many have already posted.

Though I do not see voice being my main form of communication I do see it playing a major role in my second life.