Did Fragile Male Egos of Real Life Men Cause Second Life's Giant Crisis?

The trend toward incredibly tall avatars continues hurting the SL economy (bigger avatars need more virtual land, more virtual land costs more money per month), but why are avatars so huge in the first place? (For instance, pictured at right: Male Second Life avatar in the typical 7-8 foot range, next to a female avatar who is actually 5'7", i.e., on the taller side for women IRL.). But what keeps driving up avatar height? Reader "Pulsar" points out it could be a common culprit -- the fragile male ego:

In the last years I'm seeing more realistic sized avatars, especially at shopping events. Perhaps you should count more on women with this. I suspect the issue touches guys more, as they (usually, I don't mean everyone) don't like to appear shorter that other men, so they raise their height and so on. Of course there are also individuals affected by giantism in real life, but the whole population 8 feet tall is a tad odd. Women instead (again, in general) could feel not so comfortable in towering above everyone else, including their boyfriend.

This sounds right. I vividly remember creating my first avatar, setting the height to 6 feet tall, teleporting to an event... and feeling like Kevin Hart at an NBA party. Studies consistently confirm people form an empathetic relationship with the avatar that they control, so it's easy to see how real life height standards (which tend to affect men more than women) would carry over into the virtual world, nudging many or most male users into a tallness competition. And many or most female users would then feel nudged to follow suit, so the height disparity wasn't so vast. And as average avatar height increases, monthly land costs grow, until they're unsustainable for many, and the land ownership attrition increases too.

Or to put it another way: Linden Lab the company keeps losing revenue due to toxic masculinity.

Comments

[Luther Weymann]

What would cause people to equate real life with Second Life other than money and emotions of humans? When I hear the phrase “realistic sized avatars” when applied to a cartoon avatar of allegedly a female with hooved feet, large breasts, cat ears, possibly a fuzzy tail behind “it” and wearing a thong out in public, dressed in belted army surplus gear, my first thought is this is a cartoon based virtual world that has nothing to do with “realistically sized avatars”. The only possible reason that anyone could even bring up the subject of any large avatar is they have conflagrated their “second life” and put it into their real life. The use of the complete nonsense term of “toxic masculinity” is never used by anyone other than those with “toxic femininity” of which my former SL dominatrix sex partner, with her 8-meter tall green lizard avatar controlled by a real-life 30 something woman, certainly had a lot of. Fragile male egos hahaha, who dreams up this stuff except fragile females?

[AnotherEvilStraitWhiteMale]

Strait male here in real life, one who only wears female avatars in SL, not a sissy boy or insecure or does gender play a role in my ego.
Funny how those who scream intolerance are the ones who are the most intolerant!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35AxkSgQUTI

[weekend ruiner]

Strange but true : In second life, fragile male egos over-compensate in EVERY department apart from head size.

I'm a man, my avatar is 6 foot tall with the head being in proportion ( remember that ? ) to the rest of the body.

And yet I still see 5 foot wide torso'd, 8 foot tall, musclebound ( what is it with sl/mesh bodies and 6 packs ? ), impossibly proportioned steroid abuse from birth ( how else would you explain it ? ) male avatars with very small heads.

Still, it's their choice, I guess. But don't complain when you have to ask for a teleport to get through a doorway...

[Kenz]

Bu ll s hit, most of the avatar homeless in SL. Even has a house, they dont really living inside. Small house for human proportion avatar even no different on comfortable. For camera need that might be 3m at least. I dont think that called giant (less that 15 feet) does hurt sl economic at all. Most of them just dont contribute nor hurt. Most of them are standing in open space day and night. This giant topic is only "noise".

[Susan]

How exactly do bigger avatars need more virtual land? I mean, maybe if we were talking 30' avatars but the amount of land an 8' avatar requires compared to a 6' avatar is negligible at best. What is a realistic sized avatar is very much relative to the avatars around you. What the numbers on the sliders say doesn't mean much to most people. Houses and furniture are all made to suit the average height of an SL avatar.

The Lab is not losing revenue because of this but they might if they tried to force everyone to have a smaller avatar. You need a new bandwagon, Wagner.

[Clara Seller]

Sometimes the "fragile male ego" world is an oasis and in need of such simple solutions when one is weary from the bottomless pit of dissatisfaction and the scorched-earth solutions that women can impose on those around them.

Just stop, already. If you succeed in prosecuting those accused of the crime of being too tall, you aren't going to have much of a world left.

I am a shining beacon for diversity, as long as you look, act, and think just like me. We're on a road trip to Crazy Town.

[sirhc deSantis]

You missed CIS-Patriarchy dammit else I would have got a full bingo.
Oh wait . Pic is Penny (Hi Penny!) so must be a slow news month. What was that SLU quote - 'ignored by SL since 2007' or something.
Also 'mooooooo'

[Bixyl Shuftan]

So what does it say about a guy's ego if his usual avatar is 5' 1"?

And no, it's not a slow news week for me as I've been covering the collapse of InWorldz, and have a few smaller stories to write about. But avatar height wasn't among my plans.

[irihapeti]

contrary to the tenor of this article

SL avatars, both male and female, today are on average shorter than they were in the early years. The downward shift began when LL added inches and centimeters to the height slider

Prior to this the slider height was only measured on the scale: 0...100. So most guys not suprisingly set it to 100. Unsuprising as there was no useful indication as to what 100 meant. Inworld there was a feedback loop. Avatars are set to 100 > furniture is set for 100. More avatars > more furniture > most avatars > most furniture

it was women in the main, who broke this feedback loop. When they saw that the slider now said 7ft plus they started to reduce. Their men began to follow them down. People went even lower when TPVs changed the height slider to measure from sole to top of head. The LL viewer still measures from sole to eye level

when I played in the early years I was 185cm by prim measure in bare feet. I was squiddy as, compared to pretty much everyone else adult human avatar then. I am still 185. Yet now when at shopping events I am slightly above average in height for a female avatar

[Valkyrie Ice]

I specifically have a 4'11 tall avatar because I got so sick and tired of being an amazon. Now I occasionally have to deal with a 9 foot gay guy with more muscles than five hulks put together, and a codpiece bigger than my AV. It's crazy....

But it's also normal SL. Always has been.

[FireFox Bancroft]

Okay so let me remove your personal freedom of choice and make it so all Avatars can be no taller or shorter than 5' 11 how about that? Now you're all equal.

Have fun having no choices.

[Blaise Glendevon]

Well, this comments section is an object lesson in the expression, "A hit dog will holler."

[Han Held]

Indeed it is, Blaise. See also "the lady doth protest too much"

[weekend ruiner]

Scale is where SL creators fail terribly.
For instance, the housebrick. You've seen a housebrick? No ? they vary worldwide from 19 - 25cm long x 9 - 12cm high. In SL that is roughly ( if you go for an average ) 0.22m x 0.1m. Now, bearing in mind the average avatar stands something like 7+ foot tall or so, the bricks to an accurate scale would look anything from slightly too small to not bad looking, maybe even passable. Now go look at brick textured builds throughout the grid. You'll see they are stupidly large. Huge. Like someone made a wall from paving slabs in some instances.
Look at vinyl records. These are defined by their size - it's not rocket science. A 7" single will always be a 7" single. A 12" album will always be 12" in size. ( yes, I'm fully aware that in rare instances you can get LPs and records in different sizes before anyone mentions it) A CD / DVD will always be 120 mm, or in SL terms, 0.12m. Creators have totally missed that point where you now have dozens of finely made mesh objects, textured with care that are far too big. Worse still is that some are no-mod. Still, you could always use that oversized CD player you got as a Lazerdisc player.
The list of stupidly oversized items goes on and on, cars, boats, weapons, doors, genitals (you know who you are), furniture and so on.

Size, for once, is important.