Who are we, in Second Life?

New world, new continents. I thought that was over after they discovered the South Pole, visited the moon and deciphered the human genome.

Well no, it was not, and is probably nevert over, although the notion of new world changes over time.
The Greeks could start new colonies in the Mediterranean, just around (their) corner. Later on the Dutch had to sail all the way to Indonesia.
The moon was different altogether, needing a bit of technology to be visited. It never became easy.
Second Life is for everyone. A new continent?

New? Well sometimes it is "outer space", sometimes it is rather the same as our world. Maybe even a bit to much the same.
Nonetheless it shapes my experience, even of the normal world. And it is about this re-programming of my mind I want to share a few experiences.

Contrechoc walks around in Second Life as Five March.

Five March is absolutely no copy of me and on the other hand how could we avoid being our self?

If you change clothes, are you the same? Working cloths, leisure clothes, it all changes more or less how we feel at the moment and also how we are perceived. Ok, but we are not simply how we are perceived. No, or ...yes: we perceive ourselves also. Putting on dancing clothes is not to go to work. We have a goal most of the time, and behave like it.

This about clothing influencing personality. Later more!

Enough about clothes, let’s talk about something more acute: gender!

Gender? But you just copy yourself in Second Life? SO your gender is sort of...th same as you are? Why actually? Second Life avatars are just shapes! So we can experiment.
In the real world we cannot change gender all too easily. In Second Life you can. Just turn a switch. It is made that simple!

What else is changed? Well quite something. The behaviour of other people for instance. As a woman (avatar) you can talk to practically everyone, as a man….not! Women are sort of suspicious, shy. In normal life we are used to this kind of behaviour, being the same all the time, we don’t even notice it anymore. By switching you can feel, what it's like in the skin of the other. This experience, even schematic and primitive as it is in Second Life influences even our perception and behaviour in Real Life. And of course, we react on the change of behaviour of the world around us. So we are indeed changed. How far we are changed depends on our selves.

But some questions are popping up: Are we deceiving when we change gender? But who are we deceiving about what? Who am I in Second Life. Myself? Who do I want to be? Anyway there is to my knowledge no law dictating me to be the same. Deceiving depends on what you expect of the other, in person or in avatar form. If you expect to meet the person behind the avatar in real life, and you are expecting a man, but actually meeting a woman, then you are probably deceived. But in the game itself? Only if you are willing to play the man-woman stuff. But even then? I don’t know! If you suppose everything in Second Life must be a copy of Real Life, why bother to play a game?

We could go one step further. Being able to choose between man or woman in Second Life is being attached to the past, to real life. We could say the man-woman stuff serves no practical purpose anymore. It should be possible to choose another shape for this game. And this is developing. Some people are experimenting with abstract shapes or Disney-like animals. It takes a bit of working around the avatar which is based on the human body, but it is possible. Maybe here we see a bit of the future, where our (old-fashioned) body will be lost?


All the pictures in the blog are "Five March". The last one too!!! The text rotating around it says: "peace", which is indeed what we need!

Five March can be found in Second Life, always busy at Contrechoc