Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: More Alt Avatar Etiquette Questions: Spying on Your SL Partner & Secret Roleplaying

Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing take on etiquette and ethics in virtual spaces

This week I'm wrapping up the alt-related etiquette quandaries (you can find the first lot here if you missed them.) So let's get right to it!

So I have a habit of making alts to learn more about my partner or see how honest they are, like by making friends with them, etc. I told someone about it and they really overreacted and said I was lying to my partners. What do you think about this sort of thing?

To be blunt, I am not even a little bit in favour of this kind of thing. It's unlikely that you're really doing this to "learn more about them", because if you spend time with them normally you should learn the same things. Instead, this comes off as profoundly creepy, stalker-like behaviour. Furthermore, if you are so insecure about your relationship with your partner that you have to set up honey traps to test their honesty, you're probably better off ending the relationship altogether. It's not worth being with someone that you can't trust. If this is something you find yourself doing with every partner you have, you might need to turn that investigative lens inward. These tactics make you look like the dishonest one.

Keep reading for more alt etiquette. Next up: secretly roleplaying as an alt!

I have RP alt accounts, if one of them meets someone another account knows, do I need to tell them who else I am? We're not OOC [out of character] friends.
                - Alt Ninja

This would be a courtesy that your RP partner might appreciate, but, much like the question of RL gender, if it's a brief encounter it shouldn't be necessary. You should only worry about outing your alts to someone if you find that you're roleplaying with them a lot, or when there may be a conflict of interest that could cause some OOC community drama down the line. For example, maybe your main account is a high ranking official who just promoted your alt to a position of power. Consider how you would feel if your character was one of the ones passed up for that position-- rumours may swirl anyway, so in this situation it's best to be honest with the other players from the beginning.

Submit your virtual etiquette dilemmas to ophelia.iris [at] gmail [dot] com, or submit anonymously to the Metaverse Manners Formspring.  Be sure to include a pseudonym (i.e. "WTF from the Welcome Area") so you know when I'm addressing your query!

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[WTF from Welcome Area]

Thanks for the post about spying partners. This kind of behavior is creepy and shows that the person spying probably has a lot of issues. More than just not trusting their partner. It is very stalker and control freak and shows some deeply disturbed insecurity issues.

[Emperor Norton]

The first step to finding an honest and true partner is to stop cheating on your real life partner by cybering in Second Life.

[Eddi Haskell]

If you find the need to "spy" on your Second Life partner with an alt, you should not be married to him or her in the first place. I am a firm believer of "open relationships" in Second Life since, as my partner of over two years has pointed out, much Second Life sex is about as romantic as digital miniature golf. Second Life is not the real world and needs to be played with different rules.

But spying with an alt? How mean spirited. If you cannot trust your partner, and have to resort to this level of underhanded and frankly, juvenile behavior end your partnership now. You do not have one based in trust anyway.

[Nalates Urriah]

It is interesting that so far all agree that spying is a bad thing. It says little about what is really happening in SL.

If SL were more like RL, trusting your partner and expecting honesty might be justified. Having run around with a couple of wild girl friends and been consistently propositioned by the guys proposing SL marriage to my friends... I think the number of players in SL is much greater than in real life.

The idea that 'If you don't trust your partner...' just ignores the fact that most of SL is RP. You never know when the other person is IC or OOC unless they tell you and you never know if they are being honest even then. If someone has figured out how to do that, I'd like to hear how they do it.

[Foneco Zuzu]

I found the idea of partnership one of the most absurd and the only thing that justifies it is the money the lab earns with it!
But Sl is in many ways more then a program (Who still thiks Sl is a game, does not have a real clue about what feelings mean, real ones, cause feelings cant be roleplayed nor emulated, you just feel them and let envolve you, no matter the surronds.) and so Love affairs on Sl can be as dramatic and as strong as real life ones (yes, guess for many Sl is really a nuts place, who would fall in love by a mere group of animated pixles!?, one of the reasons cause Sl will never be mainstream lol)!
Therefore is natural that a few, will act as they do in rl life concerning their love affairs.
The ones who never loved cant understand that, the ones who did, know that a few are to insecure and will never trust her lovers no matter what!
So no matter how open you feel your relationship is with your lover (and you dont need to have a cliche on 2nd life profile to say you are in love with someone!, fear, jeasouly, insecurance, it will be always a part of it!
Thats not Sl, is only human nature!

[Adeon Writer]

Partnership absurd? Of all the crazy things in SL you find the option for publicly declaring yourself a couple with someone absurd? How backwards.

It's a tiny breath of fresh air for me.

Happily partnered to my real life sweetheart.