So I've been thinking a lot lately about how the SL-online experience is different from other online experiences, particularly the LJ-based fandom-esque online experience I've been a part of for most of the decade. A big part of SL is the... creating of identities other than your own. You can dress up as anything you want and play a role, in a way. And some people think of it as just that--a big RP playground. But not everyone thinks of it that way, so there's a lot of potential for crossed wires and hurt feelings.
For my part, I chose a gender-neutral name on purpose in case I should ever get the urge to try on a male shape. I'm too lazy to make a whole alt for that. I haven't done it yet (okay, once, so I could set a poseball, but I didn't change my clothes/skin/hair and I looked like the Elephant Man dressed up as Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show), but I could.
And here's where I'm getting a bit stuck on the differences between my fannish/LJ online life and SL. In fandom (at least my little corner of it), there's a sort of semi-unwritten code of behavior. It's a huge breach of etiquette to 'out' another fan's RL identity, but at the same time you aren't supposed to lie (too much, at least!) about who you ARE. Especially in a journal-based environment, where people post about personal things as much or more than they do about fannish things. So you maintain your level of privacy and respect others privacy wishes, but you don't create an identity out of whole cloth and present it as YOU.
As an example, here's a scenario I was personally affected by: several years ago, I RPed for a while in an LJ-based game. There was a lot of OOC chat via IMs and I got to be friends with several of my fellow players, including a male player (which is unusual in the area of fandom I usually play in). After I left the game, I kept up chatting with my friends on a pretty much daily basis. The male player and I turned out to have very similar musical tastes, and we mostly chatted about that and traded tunes. After a time, we started talking about our personal lives and growing up (we were--supposedly--around the same age) and got to a point where--I thought--we were good friends.
Well, you can probably guess the rest: fast-forward a couple years and it comes out that this man was in fact a woman who had made up three or four LJ-indentities around the time the RP game started. None of the life history and anecdotes this man had told were true. The woman claimed to suffer from some sort of identity disorder. There was grumbling and anger and wank. For the most part, I just felt kind of sad that this person I thought I knew never even existed. And sadder still that the person behind my friend never trusted me enough to tell me. It was all a game. A separate compartment.
ANYWAY.
In SL, you kind of come in with the expectation that everyone you meet isn't exactly what they appear to be. It's dressup, it's costumes, it's theater! To a degree, at least. That big burly dude with the tats and the piercings might have an alt that's a blonde, double-D Gorean love-slave. Or the burly dude might be the love-slave's alt!
So I had to shift my perspective a bit when I joined SL. You really do have a better time if you just accept each AV as it appears. Don't waste time wondering who the AV 'really' is. Don't worry about gender.
Of course, that's easy enough to say. But SL isn't JUST playacting. People make real friends and connect on personal levels beyond the AV they present to the world. There's a kind of murky line that can grow between RL and SL once you start talking about RL things. What was a silly game, a distraction, can snowball into something larger than anyone ever expected.
For my part, I chose a gender-neutral name on purpose in case I should ever get the urge to try on a male shape. I'm too lazy to make a whole alt for that. I haven't done it yet (okay, once, so I could set a poseball, but I didn't change my clothes/skin/hair and I looked like the Elephant Man dressed up as Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show), but I could.
And here's where I'm getting a bit stuck on the differences between my fannish/LJ online life and SL. In fandom (at least my little corner of it), there's a sort of semi-unwritten code of behavior. It's a huge breach of etiquette to 'out' another fan's RL identity, but at the same time you aren't supposed to lie (too much, at least!) about who you ARE. Especially in a journal-based environment, where people post about personal things as much or more than they do about fannish things. So you maintain your level of privacy and respect others privacy wishes, but you don't create an identity out of whole cloth and present it as YOU.
As an example, here's a scenario I was personally affected by: several years ago, I RPed for a while in an LJ-based game. There was a lot of OOC chat via IMs and I got to be friends with several of my fellow players, including a male player (which is unusual in the area of fandom I usually play in). After I left the game, I kept up chatting with my friends on a pretty much daily basis. The male player and I turned out to have very similar musical tastes, and we mostly chatted about that and traded tunes. After a time, we started talking about our personal lives and growing up (we were--supposedly--around the same age) and got to a point where--I thought--we were good friends.
Well, you can probably guess the rest: fast-forward a couple years and it comes out that this man was in fact a woman who had made up three or four LJ-indentities around the time the RP game started. None of the life history and anecdotes this man had told were true. The woman claimed to suffer from some sort of identity disorder. There was grumbling and anger and wank. For the most part, I just felt kind of sad that this person I thought I knew never even existed. And sadder still that the person behind my friend never trusted me enough to tell me. It was all a game. A separate compartment.
ANYWAY.
In SL, you kind of come in with the expectation that everyone you meet isn't exactly what they appear to be. It's dressup, it's costumes, it's theater! To a degree, at least. That big burly dude with the tats and the piercings might have an alt that's a blonde, double-D Gorean love-slave. Or the burly dude might be the love-slave's alt!
So I had to shift my perspective a bit when I joined SL. You really do have a better time if you just accept each AV as it appears. Don't waste time wondering who the AV 'really' is. Don't worry about gender.
Of course, that's easy enough to say. But SL isn't JUST playacting. People make real friends and connect on personal levels beyond the AV they present to the world. There's a kind of murky line that can grow between RL and SL once you start talking about RL things. What was a silly game, a distraction, can snowball into something larger than anyone ever expected.
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