Why Do So Many People in Second Life Decline to Have Much of One? (Comment of the Week)

Interesting conversation over this post about how some men roleplay as female avatars in order to befriend a woman in hopes of revealing their actual gender and starting a real life heterosexual relationship. To which phenomenon, "JohnC" observes:

As interesting as this conversation is, and I have lived it from both sides for many years, I often wonder why we have it at all. We go to a place called Second Life where, as I understand it from the name, the idea is to live a virtual life of your choice, whatever that may be, and to live it if you wish totally disconnected from your RL. For many it is an escape from RL in fact. And that does not always mean you are having a bad first life, you just have other parts of yourself that maybe cannot be expressed openly in your otherwise fine RL.

But all around in SL you find people who just don't get it at all. People who have a chance to be something else, anything they wish, and they just create an avatar that looks exactly like them in RL. Or people who are all for creating a new self but, “Hang on I didn't mean being weird and pretending to be a woman”.

To me that seems a bit like being granted three wishes for anything you desire and asking for a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. Of course it is up to anyone in SL to play it the way they wish. Just seems a bit of a waste of opportunity.

Which inspires JohnC to think about an odd user interface that's been part of Second Life from its inception, that seems to contradict its branding -- which, he argues, then distorts our expectations when it comes to avatar-based relationships: 

And why is there a real life section in the SL profile anyway? It simply encourages people to drag their RL into SL. Although most times the pictures are of someone else or pics of the RL self some 30 years previous.

Now I don't mind a bit about all the above, as long as those who choose to be themselves or stick to their RL gender understand that it is them who are missing the point and not using the opportunities they are offered. SL is not supposed to be a dating agency for real world relationships, although that is what it is used for constantly. If you meet someone in SL and fall in love then those feelings and emotions you experience are real, as real as they are in RL. So if you find out that the person you have fallen in love with is in fact the opposite gender to what you believed them to be, it should not alter in any way that love. It is not a deception, to be completely different from your RL self in SL, it is supposed to be the whole idea behind it.

The fact that the beautiful woman you fell in love with is a guy in RL should not matter, it is your RL programmed mind that is offended. I have felt all these emotions in my time, love, betrayal, surprise, shock, but the fact is, while in SL If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then you should treat it as a duck, because in this world you have entered it is a Duck, and whatever it might be in RL is not part of this world, this second life.

Image from "The Storytellers of Midan".

Comments

[montecore babcock]

Someone telling us what I should or shouldn't be in SL. Someone saying that SL isn't a dating agency. Who are you to say what someone does there? I've always said, it's your SL, do whatever you want with it. If it bring satisfaction and it's not hurting anyone, who really cares?. JohnC, it's ok for people to make their own decisions.

[Yoofaloof Pacer]

My avatar in every game I play is always a reflection of myself. I play and respect other players as I do IRL, I do not play as an opposite to my personality. I don't play as a different gender or anything I am not IRL too. In character creation, I create a likeness as close to possible as to how I look. It can still be an escape.

[sirhc desantis]

Always amusing to see someone state that SL offers an amazing opportunity for people to express themselves then go on to whinge when they don't do it in their 'correct' way. I class them as one of those 'who just don't get it at all'.

In fairness, johnc.resident does have a totally blank profile so at least it walks the walk. Or quacks or whatever. Not up to me to judge (within TOS haha)

[Lets be real here!]

People need to have the same look in both worlds otherwise its fraud.
any man dressing as a woman is catfishing creating crimes should go to jail period!_ Why? should anyone be forced to make believe these males are women trapped inside like being allowed to harass real women in the public toilets. it is nothing but hormone issues because the birth mother had the very common lesbian gene passing it on to her baby 'Gurl' that made them that way.

Everybody in SL should have to verify who they are through Facebook'. so with that just replace the viewer profile with a FB one instead. who you are in the real world matters. otherwise your a scam artist!

[Alecks Qinan]

SL is not a dating site, period. If people expect you to be honest and real about your RL once has to ask why is a dating site not their first choice? I am who I want to be regardless how boring I might be it's my choice. Yes, a lot of users do seems to tie in very restrictive gender models and realist hair colors but I blame for the most part the sex industry that is pervasive in clothing. I wanted to get some baggy pants for my female avatar, yeah that took a while.
Let's ask ourselves which fashion events and store owners prevail shall we? There is a reason we have 3 out of 10 events this month sex oriented, it sells.

Going back to the deception one must consider the type of sim they are in. Is this an RP sim ok so what does my real gender have to do with my fantasy role? Again I owe you nothing. People meet in SL and decide to take it to the RL very often and most often the horror stories prevails and I do blame both people involved.
You had no idea that guy was a woman? That person was married? That person was underage? Ok I get it but if your significant other keeps making excuses to not show or meet maybe you should oil a clog or two in there. They are shifty and not relationship material clearly. Move on!
Also in response to the gender has no bounds point my answer goes to a fair no... just no. I fall in love with your mind yes of course but the moment you start lying to me when we are openly exploring a RL commitment, trust issues become a valid point of concern. I don't care if you are a woman, if we are very much heading towards the RL patch and you don't advise me as we transition the entire trust aspect fails.

But again it's your SL!

[Pulsar]

Numerous people in SL are "furries", robots, tinies, anime, fantastic creatures, animals and anything you can imagine. Do they have to be those in Real life too? Do they have to specify what kind of partner they would be for you, when they don't even think about dating? Almost all of the humans avatars look like top models or have exaggerated curves, not to mention their age (when SL median user age is about 50 years old). Do you expect they are like that in real life too? If you look for a real world relationship, your first thought is to look for it in a virtual world full of furries? Taking a virtual world like this as reality and as a dating agency for real world relationships, and wanting that everyone does that as well and appears physically the same as their real world appearance, doesn't sound like to stick with reality, but to lose touch with it instead.
On the other hand, this doesn't mean that everything in SL is not real. Even in MMO games, friends can become real life friends, sometimes. But you don't go to play those expecting to make new real life friends, and even less for that purpose. Of course it *happens* to fall in love with someone anyway. As JohnC said, feelings and emotions you experience are real. That's what's real in Second Life, because, in fact, you are actually feeling those in real life: it's your real life heart that's is beating faster.

[Pulsar]

And what is Second Life? SL is just a platform: it's anything you want and everyone uses is as they prefer, for gaming, simulating anything, or other purposes (universities etc).
- Some people take their avatars as puppets or as game characters.
- Other ones would like to experience how it does feel to be and they put themselves in somebody-else's shoes (even stuff that would be dangerous and life threating in RL).
- Some people think their avatar represents themselves like forum avatars (those pictures next to your pseudonym), but they don't feel to be "inside" them.
- Other people represents themselves with their own avatar, they identify themselves with it, they immerse themselves in the virtual world, maybe even in first-person view.
Even the latter are not necessarily giving for granted that everyone is looking for a real world relationship, nor they are necessarily looking for dates and their profiles aren't necessarily an entry of a dating agency catalog.
Who believes they are, needs a reality check, and if they are so focused in real world dating and a dating website isn't their first choice, but a virtual world, they need to check their honesty too, look at reality as it is and stop to deceive themselves... and others too: some guys like these, who approach you pretending to be such great lovers, full of attentions, calling you lady, and bragging to not be like those "boys", but "real men" (with a real ego), if not mentors (their favorite victims are kind but insecure women), seeming your perfect lovers, so nice and honest, that are looking for a real relationship (in a virtual world...), they are just the classic manipulative and con artist sociopaths.

[Muhammad Hadith]

To JohnC God is great even in your 2nd lives never forget my words

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done (38:4447).
The Qur’an (4:16) demands unspecified punishment for men guilty of lewdness together unless they repent.

[Addie Bundren]

The real problem is that SL is full of lonely middle aged ninnies who seem to project their belief system on to everyone else because they are scared of getting their little hearts broken. Dating in SL is weird and it's always been weird that people use it as Tinder or Grindr. How about unplug sometimes and immerse yourself in RL and meet someone that way? Oh the horror!

[Jacques Mesrine]

@ Muhammad Hadith -> go, and get a life!

[JohnC]

Light blue touch paper and stand well clear

[Burper Tilling]

A lot of people have multiple presences in SL. Not just as shapeshifting or gender shifting avatars but through alts that vary similarly. That person behind a twee manga 'femboi' avatar one day might be a voluptuous deva woman the next, and be 'in character' with both in turn. And someone who plays their 40 year-old male RL self with an RL lookalike avatar one day might play an alt with a pretty young woman avatar when they feel like a change.

[JohnC]

I am grateful to LL and P R, for this free world. My first post was wrong in many ways. But not malicious. Simply written to fast without thought. SL, as pointed out by the posts here, is a free space to do as we please. And that means anything, full spectrum. In my mind I may imagine the most disgusting terrible things, or the most simple beautiful things. Any of these I can make real in the privacy of the mind space that is SL. I have done this many times, Beauty and horror in like measure. I hope SL remains this way, so that all free minds can express themselves in a world without judgement and fear of retribution. I thank all those who reply and make me think.

[Clara Seller]

And the real life warriors have brought JohnC to heel rather quickly.

Personally, I really loved his first vision of a world that embraces a foundation of illusion. It's likely to have more honesty in it's core than this world of what social media has become. Real life information is used as a weapon to categorize, manipulate, process, and blackmail people into submission and group-think. The ones who are most "needy" of order are often the ones most dependent on exploiting it.

Let's take a platform of imagination and turn it into game of peek-a-boo.

We seem to be living our real lives in a world of massive collective delusion and we're lucky to get a few small pockets of reality. There's no fast-track to real and honest personal relationships and truth. If that's what you really want, then you must put down your machines. It's absolutely insane to believe that the greatest fruits of being human will be found growing in the Borg collective. The fraud is in pretending this is real.

[Pappy Enoch]

Now let me tell ya'll sum'fin. I couldn't git me no good fake lovin' as a 300-pounds-o-heavenly-joy fake hillbilly man so I done shelled out a pile of real green money on one o' them-there hootchie-cootchie mesh fake gals and wore me that-there suit. You know, big up front, bigger still in the back 40.

Hoo-whee! The fellers was after me harder'n a Hick'ry axe handle, but I didn't want me no fellers. I wanted me one o' them-there Lebanese gals. So I pretended I were a fake Lebanese and Bingo Bingo Bongo! I gots me four of 'em inside one week.

Well sir, we done fixed to meet up IRL and guess what...five fat men in the food court of a mall outside Cleveland, a-starin' at each other and hopin' they needed new eyeglasses. Oh boo hoo poor me. I wonder if'n that fake store will take back my fake gal mesh body? I could get me a case o' Lite for what I done spent.

The Alphaville Herald am gone but not the spirit. Y'all be kind to me because I done up and spent $20 on trying to be a fake gal.

[Peter]

People faking it in SL ? OMG...tell me it ain't so ! I mean, why is it just fine for a 90 year old bald and obese RL man to go around SL as a 21 year old super hunk with biceps the size of the pyramids...oh no...THAT's not 'deceiving' anyone. And it is just fine to log in as a pink furry dragon with a 40 foot wingspan...despite not being one in RL. It's even OK to hop on a dance pose and pretend you can waltz and samba and so on...despite the fact that you cant even dance a basic two step in RL. No...THAT is not 'deceiving' anyone. Yet somehow if someone clicks the opposite gender button to their RL one...oh God, call the FBI and the NSA...some deception is going on !