SL blogger Biscuit Carroll sings the praises of virtual sex and romance in SL-- not just for their titillation, but for removing age imbalance as a factor from erotic competition:
[W]here this becomes a great gift to humanity is that middle-aged women compete on an equal footing with their younger sisters. And the mind of a middle-aged woman is sexually and emotionally evolved. There is a sophistication missing in most younger women.
As a 45 year old male I can't help being attracted to women in their 20s and 30s... [but in] Second Life, almost all women choose to look this age. Women of all ages are equally attractive. Behind the veil of the avatar is the full spectrum of female sexual identity.
Suddenly I'm lusting after middle-aged women.
He thinks those are woman behind the female avatar, rofl!
-runelogix Au
Posted by: runelogix Au | Wednesday, June 07, 2006 at 09:37 AM
I'd say it removes ALL components from competition -- making it pointless. When one's physicality is completely (to the point of gender) masked, people become free to "become who they want to be".
That might sound all fine and dandy on the surface, but we show our personas differently. Your baseline personality might be the same but we'll show a slightly different persona/mask to our boss, to our buddies, to someone in line at the ATM. We change our masks accordingly but are bound within the framework of who people -see- us to be.
With SL, it gives us the freedom to shrug off that limitation and reinvent ourselves. Sounds great until we are asked to, somehow, mesh that new mask back with our public (RL) self.
((I, for one, will never be giving someone in SL a rating point based on "how hot" they look. It's about as meaningfull as calling them a good shopper.))
Posted by: Gabriel Commons | Wednesday, June 07, 2006 at 10:16 AM
Biscuit: So, when you say "As a 45 year old male I can't help being attracted to women in their 20s and 30s" ... are we to infer that you can help being attracted to women in their 40s and 50s and older? Also: do you suppose that women in their 20s and 30s are "able to" not be attracted to a 45-year-old male such as yourself? And that they, too, find themselves grateful for whatever younger-looking, full-body mask your avatar provides? I'm just, you know, wondering ...
And, Gabriel: You find a lack of meaning in being a good shopper? Pfft. Easier to find a lack of meaning in a sentence where a plural pronoun clashes with a singular noun and the word "meaningful" is spelled with one "l" too many!
Posted by: Memory Harker | Wednesday, June 07, 2006 at 05:08 PM
SIMPLY BEING LOVED LOVED LOVED IS MORE THAN ENOUGH!!!!
I can imagine two senior citizens in their 70s getting it on in SL in young teenage avatar bodies. Maybe recreate the first time they met, which was an inverse golden anniversary ago. In the backseat of an automobile from the era.
Or, you know, a Mom who's about to die: her masterbuilder son gives her a special gift. Creates a lot of familiar spaces in Second Life, including a recreation of Mom's house where she grew up. She walks through them, mental images flashing vividly--literally her whole life flashing before her eyes. She passes shortly after, and the son turns the inworld site into a memorial.
Posted by: Torley Linden | Wednesday, June 07, 2006 at 11:06 PM
I was never attractive in RL. Now, in my fifties, I'm suddenly young and beautiful in SL. If it hasn't happened to you, you have *no idea* how that feels. My SL ladylove is in her forties and the two of us are having the time of our lives. And we're hoping to carry on carrying on for many, many years, and not age a day.
Posted by: It's a secret | Friday, June 09, 2006 at 06:13 PM
Torley, that is a kind of spooky but touching comment. Reminds me a little bit of the book Passages by Connie Willis.
Posted by: Alexander Basiat | Sunday, June 11, 2006 at 07:25 PM
I've had a few (not many) beautiful romantic involvements with people in SL, one of which (ongoing) is with a lovely guy. He has another girlfriend, and I eventually found out they are both in their RL sixties (I'm late twenties), using SL to expand their horizons I guess. Finding out set me back on my heels a little, but I soon got used to the idea.
SL hides age, ethnicity, gender, ugliness, waistline, everything physical. And a good role-player can (like an actor) replace their personality as well. I long ago decided to see people as they want me to see them, and I wish them joy of that.
I became friends with one girl (mustn't say who) and spent a lot of time chatting with her about all sorts of stuff. In the end it emerged she was totally deaf in RL, but FULLY functional in SL (she used to claim her sound card was faulty). So SL gave her an opening into society that would normally be closed.
A pity that SL can't hide stupidity and rudeness as effectively.
Posted by: Xeni | Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 07:38 AM
i am soical worker in jaggarta soical walfare org in mirpurkhas sindh pakistan this time working in redlight area with sex worker avarness on hiv/aids
Posted by: abdul haque | Sunday, March 04, 2007 at 09:07 AM
You know ... I stopped being on SL since 3 months now... after 24 hours of introduction I've seen enough. Technologically spoken it is a nice things, humanly spoken... most people on SL need a psy, because they lose any contact with the reality. Everybody cocooning behind his/her PC looking to interact with avatar (can't say people because you never know wh's behind the avatar) running away from the real world... EOS
Posted by: ae | Saturday, June 16, 2007 at 03:38 AM