Invisibility

A new version of the Emerald viewer was released today and with it not a little controversy over one of its new features.   At least since I joined SL in 2006 we’ve had the ability to uncheck the tick box next to people in our ‘Friend’s List.  (edit: more accurately known as the Contact List).  This would mean our friend would no longer see us showing as being online.  The new viewer now reveals to us which of our friends have used this feature and hidden themselves from us.   Generally residents seem divided between those who feel strongly that their privacy is being compromised to those that never use the feature and/or don’t see what all the fuss is all about.

I think the crux of this is that we often assume that because we all share that special space called Second Life that we have something more in common besides the ability to operate a computer and type (or voice).  Like many internet communities there seems to be a tendency to imagine a bond between the participants that often dissolves rapidly when faced with a potentially contentious issue.  In our global community we have such a diverse mix of gender, age, race, culture, class, financial status and physical, emotional and mental health, yet for some reason we have this ability ( and I’m not excluding myself here) to put all that to one side and assume that the person we’re chatting to at that moment has the same life experiences that we have.  So let me put a couple of hypothetical but not untypical scenarios to you:

1.  I work in Second Life.  I’m a builder and I’m often working to a tight schedule.  As much as I love chatting to my friends I need undisturbed time to complete my projects.  As a matter of course I uncheck the boxes in my friend’s list so I can work in peace.  When I’ve finished I set myself visible again and socialise.  It’s no big deal.  I don’t do drama.  My friend’s are grown ups and understand completely,  but I’m appalled that this privacy that I cherish is being removed.

then…

2.  I was really friendly with another girl in Second Life.  We used to go clubbing, shopping and well, everywhere, together – then she disappeared.  She just never logged on.  I began to worry about her.  I had no real life information for her so I could only guess what might have happened.  After a month I was even thinking maybe she’d had a horrible accident.  It was at the Hair Fair when I spotted her name on my radar – OMG she’d logged on and I’d missed her!  I pulled up my friend’s list and no…she was showing as offline.  I IMed her and she was cool and casual, ‘Oh yeah…I’ve been busy in real life and I just made myself invisible to come and get new hair’.   It never crossed my mind that she would just be avoiding me and I felt very hurt.   My view of our friendship had been completely different to hers.  I never use the ‘invisible’ feature myself and can only see more transparency as a good thing if it saves other people from getting hurt.

Both would seem to be valid viewpoints.  The ‘grown-up’ who surrounds herself with like-minded friends and the trusting friend who is treated with little consideration by the girl who may only be role playing her ‘friendship’.   The problem seems to be that people are using  ‘invisible’ for completely different reasons and I can imagine that if you’ve experienced the second scenario then you might be, at the very least, on your guard if you discover another friend is ‘invisible’ even if the reasons are more fitting with scenario one.

I’ve heard accusations today of how all this ‘drama’ is childish.  Are we still at primary school?  Are you really my friend?  Again this reaches to the heart of the issue.  Trust is a huge factor in any online relationship and we make ourselves vulnerable by allowing ourselves to trust a complete stranger.  As Second Life is such an unstructured environment with few guidelines we’re all coming to it from different angles.  The business person wholly concentrated on creating and/or making money.  The socialiser who wants to have a good time with friends, but doesn’t take it too seriously – real life definitely comes first.  The person who is open to a serious romantic relationship whether that is wholly conducted in Second Life or taken further and is prepared to devote many hours building that relationship.   The group of students having a good time sitting at their computer taking turns to ‘woo’ a girl who believes she’s being romanced by a guy who’s serious about her.   Right through to the avatar faking her own real life death to extricate herself from an SL relationship.  Perm any of those SL ‘types’ – mix in the culture, age and individual ideological differences, throw in the people who role play, not within RP environments but who see Second Life and its participants strictly as a game for their amusement and we’re still only scratching the surface of the complexities.  Is it any wonder we get ‘drama’?

I suppose my conclusion is that we’re all very different, although that’s often not so obvious in an online environment.  What might not hurt me, might hurt you, but that doesn’t make your pain any less valid.  I need to be aware that although my actions might seem perfectly logical and acceptable to me they might be interpreted in a completely different way by you.  Doesn’t make either of us wrong.  Just different.

We, as the new generation of virtual world inhabitants, have a lot to learn about how to conduct ourselves in this new environment.  The exciting part is that we are the pioneers and we’re writing the rules.

Day Four

Question of the day:

If there was someone you could trade places with for one day in Second Life, who would it be and why? Bonus points if you find this person and snap a picture with them!

I almost didn’t do today’s challenge.  I couldn’t think of any single person that I’d like to trade places with.  Is that bad?  I have wonderful friends, a lovely home, I love my job and I have the best customers in Second Life!  I couldn’t imagine how it could be any better.   Then I went off to a Help Island for a while and chatted to  brand new people arriving in SL.  You know that feeling when you’ve read an amazing book or watched a wonderful movie?  The one where you’re a little bit jealous of people who have all that pleasure to come and even if you experience it a second time its still never as good as the first time?  I had a twinge of that at Help Island – so there’s my choice, a brand new avatar for a day experiencing all the amazement and frustration of day one in Second Life.

Day Three

Question of the day:

You’ve been given a sim of your very own to use for free for one year. However, there are 3 rules. It cannot be residential, it cannot be commercial, and it has to be open to the public. What do you do with it?

Tricky one this.  My first thought was a beautiful scenic area, somewhere fabulous for a photoshoot.  Then an idea that has been on the back burner with me for a while took precedent.  In RL I’m an amateur genealogist and I’ve collected mountains of information about my ancestors.  Genealogical information is traditionally difficult to present.  There is always a printed family tree of course but once you get past a few generations they become unwieldy and difficult to view.  So what’s this got to do with a free sim on Second Life?   My idea is to present a 3D family tree, rooms maybe for each member or family subset with different generation on different levels.  Each room would contains photo and information about the person together with memorabilia of their life, maybe artifacts from their occupation or hobby.  One of my ancestors was transported to Tasmania in the 19th century, another was a journalist at the turn of the 20th century so plenty of scope for themed rooms. If I got really ambitious I would include movie and sound bites to represent that particular timeframe and links to a relational database that linked all family members together….  So all I need is a spare sim..and TIME..can I have some of that free too please?

my great, great grandfather

Day Two

Describe what your perfect Second Life day would be like?

I feel incredibly fortunate – most days in Second Life are fantastic!!  During the past three years I’ve mastered the ability to deflect some of the more unsavoury aspects of Second Life and I’m not talking Adult Content here but the petty jealousies and childishness that happen when a minority of immature individuals, ‘protected’ behind a computer monitor, feel an overwhelming urge to be rude/bitch/cause trouble.  So as I login in, serenely, to Second Life here are a few things that will make life even better:

• The inventory fairy has visited during the night!  Mine is now down to a manageable 15K, all sorted into easy to manage folders!  Wow..what a great start to the day!
• Group chat is working perfectly – no chat lag or error messages.   Thank you LL!
• I make a stunning outfit in record time and every single piece I upload is perfect the first time, no adjustments necessary!
• It’s Monday and my sim is PACKED!
• The day expands from 24 hours to 48 – I’m not feeling tired and all time zones around the world are synchronised.

Day One – The Bad Blogger Challenge

Okay I’m cheating a little cos I didn’t start really until tomorrow, if you know what I mean..but..but..but…Sunday is release day and…..okay enough of the excuses.  I’m here now.

I’m taking part in The Bad Blogger Challenge just for fun.  So without further ado, and because I’m playing catch up, here are the today’s questions.

How long have you been a blogger?

I just checked in the internet archives and my first RL blog post was in November 2003, although I think I had a free blogger.com blog before I bought my first domain so may have been a year or so before .  I also ran a web ring (remember those?) for UK women bloggers for a number of years. I’ve been blogging at dollyrock.co.uk since I started the business in October 2006.

How has it enriched your life?

I don’t think that any of my blogs have enriched my life.  They have given me venting space and the opportunity to warm up the old writing muscle. Other people’s blogs though have been an inspiration.  In the early days it was like watching a flight of butterflies stretching their collective wings as we all emerged into the bright light of self publishing.  I use that term in it’s broadest sense but there was a heady thrill as we began to realise that we could write (almost) whatever we wanted and expose our thoughts to the world without depending on a traditional publisher.  Then came the photoblogs.  Altogether a rich collection of words and pictures offered up by ‘ordinary’ people in a way that had never been possible before.  A truly empowering period, albeit only for those of us lucky enough to live in societies where computers and internet connection are readily available.  Critics of blogging will argue that the banal thoughts of every angst ridden teenager and self proclaimed political commentator have polluted the blogosphere with wordy garbage but in amongst the alleged dross there are gems to be discovered from the moving to the controversial, to the addictive and that’s without even touching on SL blogs.

Twits and pecking order

So there I was quietly dipping a toe back in the Twitter stream, and yes, yes I was spurred on by the Ross/Fry chat where they briefly mentioned social networking on mainstream TV.  Since Christmas I’ve been rationing my participation in such activities as I found with the onset of serious Open University work and SL designing my time was being sucked away by blogs and Plurks faster than a speeding Dyson.  I’d never really ‘got’ Twitter though, signed up for it and sat there, bereft of followers and in the words of the song thought…is that all there is?

This time I did the research; I read Kevin Rose’s article and downloaded Tweetdeck. I ‘followed’ all the celebs first but realising that I might need to brush up on my wit and repartee to illicit a response from Mr Fry (followers: 60K 80K 100K!) I took the advice and looked for people with common interests.  I put a search in for the words Second Life and sure enough this caught every single tweet that mentioned my virtual environment of choice and filtered them into a neat little column.  The tweets piled in; people were posting about events being held inworld, many in connection with the Education Faire being held this week (there are over 500 universities participating in SL) and there was generally a positive buzz. Then a post caught my eye that baldly stated

‘If you’re trying out “Second Life”, then you either have way too much time on your hands or your “First Life” pretty much sucks.’

And there it was, the reason I try and stay away from social networking – a sweeping statement based on little or no knowledge that offends me personally – how could I resist?  Thus began a slightly frustrating exchange as the guy in question didn’t seem to realise that I wasn’t defending Second Life or those that use it but rather objecting to his indiscriminate use of blanket assumptions.  He suggested that he could help me out if I needed ‘real imagination’ (um, what?), questioned why I felt the need to defend ‘my hobby’ and then went off on a tangent about my ‘cloaked’ life attempting to invalidate my statements because presumably I don’t post my Google Earth co-ordinates on my blog (or do I?)

I eventually went for breakfast and to do some ‘real life’ stuff and discovered on my return that 5 minutes later he’d posted the single word – ‘crickets’.  I’m guessing this was a reference to my silence, and four minutes later, a little more bravely, suggested that if I’m going to ‘jump in’ I should have the ‘cajones’ to back it up.  Hmmm, more confusion.  What was I meant to be backing up?  My life?  Did he really need my name, address and blurry photo to establish that I have the right to respond to his public tweet?

The delicious irony of course is that while my fellow twitterer was waiting for a response I was carrying on the business of the day, in my ‘first life’, you know..the one that sucks?

Nothing we write on the internet is private even if we appear to be in a cosy world surrounded by our friends.  That’s what interests me.  When we don’t see the person we’re talking to, we often assume they are just the same as us, with similar values and experiences.  I’ve noticed this in Second Life groups, a bunch of people chatting (typing) and one will say “Yeah, she’s probably a stay-at-home mum in real life and her husband weighs 300lbs”.  Most join in the laughter but there has to be at least three or four people reading that group chat who this describes perfectly and who no longer feel quite so welcome, maybe even hurt. I’m sure the person making the comment is not motivated by malice but feels comfortable in a group where she assumes everyone is the same as herself.

When we make statements on the internet about a particular section of society we can be pretty sure that someone in that community will be reading and we should be prepared for our views to be challenged.    I’m not advocating that we become so careful that we’re stifled but is there any need to be casually scornful? I wouldn’t go as far as Paul Carr but that cliche about keeping schtum if you can’t be nice has never been so true.

The pecking order of all this social media is fascinating.  Does Twitter have a higher social standing than Second Life?  Where does Facebook fit in?  Plurk?  I see some Twitterers mocking Second Lifers just as they are mocked in turn by the people who don’t ‘get’ Twitter. Within Second Life itself groups of fashionistas mock the noobie girls in their bling, and so on ad infinitum.  We somehow need to find someone ‘inferior’ to make us feel better and now I’ve moved back to an earlier post.  Maybe I need to remove this bombus terrestris from my hat!

..and talking of Shakespeare

I went to a production of 12th Night at the Globe Theatre yesterday.  What fun!  I know I struggle twirling myself round for a few seconds of machinima so I can’t imagine the problems these guys had to overcome.  I didn’t get to see it all as I had some technical difficulties of my own, and this was the last showing but bravo.. great to see Second Life being used for this type of production.

Hold the front page – Second Life in the news!

This is written in response to the media coverage of Second Life this weekend and in particular this article in the Sunday Times online.  The 300 character limit imposed on responses is really not enough

Yes, the first sentence said it;  it’s easy to make fun of things we don’t really understand.  Good to see too that we haven’t lost the ability to gather in the corner of the virtual school playground to ridicule others with the justification of cheering ourselves up.  That makes it okay, of course.

I’ve written before about how ‘real’ our interactions with people online can be so I won’t repeat myself; just to say…geez, we’re in the 21st century isn’t it about time we got over defining ‘real’ in such narrow terms.

I wonder if early adopters of the telephone were treated with equal scorn and derision.  I’m sure scare stories abounded of this new form of communication where the ‘geeks’ were able to talk to each other from the comfort of their own home.  Maybe people were appalled that people they knew spoke to invisible ‘pretend people’. Or maybe we were more open minded then and journalists properly researched their articles before attempting to draw their readers into the ‘normal’ us and ‘freaky’ them type of self comfort article.

I’m guessing the couple you ridiculed are not smokers as I’m sure this would have been included with obesity and ginger hair to form the holy trinity of acceptable demonisation embraced by the current mainstream media.  As to the criticism of everyone looking like gods and goddesses?  The irony is wailing like a banshee on Halloween!  When society, specifically the media, puts such a high status on appearance and mocks those of us who don’t comform to this image of perfection, why would we choose to replicate that in Second Life?   (Some people do, I know.. and that’s a whole other blog post

Like most articles about Second Life this one was written with the assumption that everyone has the dubious option of being able to ‘waddle down to the pub’.   I’m not even going to tackle the idea that the pub culture is the epitomy of human interaction but if you’re able-bodied try to imagine for a moment that in your ‘real life’ you’re defined by a disability before people even know you.  Imagine then, the feeling of empowerment experienced in an environment where that no longer becomes a factor, and you can also participate equally in activities that are not accessible to you in your ‘real life’ and be judged for who you are.

And yes, of course, some people may use it as a form of escape, very much in the same way that some people spend their evenings passively watching TV (do we need to drag them down to the pub too?)  Second Life is entertainment, but with an interactive, socialising, creative element.

Yesterday in Second Life – a virtual environment for over 18s, not a game – there was a huge influx of new registrations.  I’m sure most were disappointed that they were not greeted with a hot bed of writhing lust implied by recent media articles.   Of course sex exists in Second Life, it’s an adult environment and just like our lives outside of SL, for some, sex plays a part, but not the ONLY part.   Most of these newcomers will feel misled and won’t return.  Some though will stay, to experience the creativity, the excitement and fun.  Some will learn how to build or design clothes, start a business and make real money.  Some will watch a Shakespeare production or enjoy one of the dozens of live music events.  Some will join a writer’s group or learn a new language.  Some will increase awareness of their favourite charity.  Some will gain understanding of other cultures as they make friends with people all over the world.  Some will become fashionistas and start a blog.  Some will become Second Life mentors and give up their free time to help new residents negotiate this strange new world.   Don’t expect this to be reported in depth any time soon though.  It’s not news.

What is real?

I know that’s a little philosophical for first thing on a Wednesday morning, but I’ve been thinking about the use of the word real a lot lately.  To be more explicit, the ‘real’ versus the ‘virtual’.  Those thoughts were solidified by Yxes’ post about social media and this brought to my attention the almost apologetic manner in which we discuss our participation in our ‘virtual’ worlds.  Perfectly understandable given the criticism, implied and explicit, levelled against those of us who choose to spend our time at the keyboard, whether that be contributing to social network sites or exploring virtual worlds such as Second Life.  How many times have we heard words to the effect of “Why don’t you get a real life?”   So that’s my question.  What is reality exactly?

I was reminded of the superb YouTube drama The Guild, where the character of Cyd Sherman (played by Felicia Day), ‘addicted’ to a World of Warcraft type online game is accused by her therapist of being immersed in an imaginary social environment and questions her relationship with other players,

“Have you met them? Face to face?”

Cyd replies,

“I hear them…it’s good enough for the blind!”

It appears flippant yet this statement provokes the question.  Is a blind person’s experience of life regarded in any way as not being ‘real’ because she can’t see the person she’s interacting with?  Does social interaction need body language to define it as real?

In our working lives we regularly correspond, email and phone people that we will never meet face to face.  Does that somehow undermine our relationship with our colleagues?  In my experience I’ve never heard criticism of a business because they don’t supply a completely face to face working environment.  In our society, at this point in time it is perfectly acceptable and yet similarly ‘distant’ but social interactions are often not as acceptable.

I’ve heard comments about relationships with online friends that include, “… but you can’t really know them.”  Of course, that’s true.  I may not know the colour of my friend’s eyes or even their gender, but I may know about a childhood trauma that they’ve never shared with their closest ‘real life’ friends or family and I may be able to predict, with some certainty, how they will react to any given set of circumstances.  How many times have we seen the news reporter interviewing the shocked next door neighbour of the newly apprehended serial killer and she’s saying, “I can’t believe it, he seemed such a nice/kind/ordinary/good to his mother/ kind of guy”.  How well do you know your neighbour?  In truth our ‘real’ lives encompass many, many superficial relationships and yet we don’t judge them to be fake.  Just part of life’s rich tapestry.  In some ways online relationships, because they can be more anonymous, allow us to be freer and maybe it is our ‘real’ personality that is able to blossom?  Maybe our ‘real’ life is the fake one in terms of how open and what we choose to share with others?  Now there’s a thought!

Reading books, movies and watching TV.   All of these activities could be regarding as not being ‘real’ (immersing ourselves in an imaginary environment?), however they are amongst the most common activities in the developed world.  Yet these are passive activities with no interaction or creativity as can be experienced in even the most basic of online environments.  Four hours every evening sitting in front of the TV or four hours interacting with real people all over the world in an online environment – get your reality monitor out, which is the most ‘real’?

It’s my belief that the people who criticise those of us that enjoy virtual environments and relationships are inexperienced, lack imagination or both.  In years to come, this kind of discussion is likely to be laughable and none of us will feel the need to defend our involvement as the perceived crossover from real to virtual will become much more blurry for most people.  In the meantime, in everyday conversation, I’m doing my best to avoid the terms real and virtual.  There are no robots involved in my life.  Its all reality, just different flavours.

Tags: reality, second life, sl, virtual

Fashion Victims?

When I first discovered Second Life two years ago I was excited. I naively thought this was a mini Eutopia giving us the freedom to express ourselves but without the pre-concieved prejudices that exist in the ‘real world’. After all, we arrive with a noob avatar into this Second Life and to all intents and purposes we all have the same blank slate to work with, to write our new life from scratch. I had thought there would be no gender, race, religion or age issues because who knew what was behind the avatar, we are all equal in the eyes of the great god Linden. Okay, okay…I admit, I was naive.

I think during my time in Second Life I’ve discovered a very rough life cycle that occurs if you arrive into Second Life alone. First of all the first couple of weeks are totally confusing and the thought occurs to you that this is such a complete waste of time. At some point during this period I’m guessing more than 50% of people log off never to return. The ones of us that persist have a blinding revelation at some point saying…this is so COOL! and with the heady realisation that OMG I can do whatever I like. Within reason. There are so many things to discover. We are alone. No friends or family approving or disapproving of our actions and maybe, for the first time in our lives, we have no peer pressure to influence our decisions.

For many women, and in my experience especially older women, the mix of anonymity and the tangible sense of freedom that comes from not having to fear physical attack can form a potent cocktail and lead to women expressing their sexuality in provocative and what may be judged, extreme ways. So you see the ‘free sex’ areas full of newish looking avatars playing with all sorts of sex toys and experimenting with things they may never imagined in their ‘real lives’ and many noobs take jobs as dancers in clubs or become escorts just for fun and well…because we can.

Then we make friends. This often changes the way we act in Second Life as peer pressure creeps in and we concur with our friends about which forms of behaviour and appearance are acceptable. I guess it’s human nature to find comfort within groups of like minded individuals; this sometimes moves on a step and we find common enemies in order to make ourselves feel safe and and superior. This permeates all aspects of Second Life and I have to say I find it depressing that we need to drag our prejudices into a virtual world and even more disappointing when elitism and snobbery rear their ugly joint heads.

As a clothing designer I’ve experienced this first hand from the ‘anti-Barbie’ brigade. These are the residents that rail against the idea of ‘perfect’ blonde avatar, who wears revealing and/or pink clothes. It always seems rather perverse to me that with all the extremes in Second Life that this particular genre of fashion/lifestyle is singled out for attack.

The conclusion I have come to is that one of our most common ways to assert our importance in the real world – money – is not quite so relevant in Second Life; after all for a couple of dollars we can all drive round in a virtual Porsche. So style and in particular, wearable fashion has become extremely important for a section of SL society who feel the need to push themselves to the top of the virtual heap. Attacking virtual ‘barbies’ is a way of bolstering the collective self esteem with a feeling of self satisfied superiority.

Personally, I’m proud to be supplying fun and sexy clothes to the SL community. I see only good in women experimenting with their sexuality in a safe environment. The idea of attacking this or any lifestyle in Second Life could be considered even more ludicrous given that another common component of the SL life cycle is the realisation that maybe it was sometimes more fun to ‘play’ Second Life minus the peer pressure.   Along comes the secret sexy alt and the excuses – “I’ve been busy in RL” and hypocrisy is alive and well and living in a Second Life near you.