Reinvention
Hope you had a Happy Halloween!
I’m a huge fan of cosplay and, slowly but surely, am developing a deep appreciation for fashion. People express themselves through their appearance. It’s a bit of a radical artform to use your entire body as an expression of an idea. In the virtual world this has extended itself into avatar creation, and people make the fashion statement not just with clothes but with body shape, size, and skin tone.
When most people “switch avatars”, they mean logging out and logging back in under a different account. The idea is that people get used to seeing you a certain way and, if they saw your name floating above another avatar’s head, they would have a hard time accepting it. I’ve known people to have several alts (alternate logins/accounts) for use in different roles: one for work, one for play, one for sex, etc…
I switch back and forth in Second Life between the avatar above and one I call “Mr. Generic”, but I don’t bother switching accounts. They’re BOTH Onder Skall, but one I use for fun and the other I use to avoid completely freaking out the newbie business professionals I often have to help get oriented to the virtual world.
This cavalier approach to my appearance at any given moment is hardly a widely-accepted practice.
Others would find this a horrible thing to do. They would be loathe to represent their avatar in any way other than what their particular iconography dictates. Immersionists, especially, see their avatar as a unique identity. To toggle between appearances as casually as I tend to could be considered bizarre behavior at best, and morally reprehensible at worst. Just who am I? Why can’t I present a true representation of who Onder Skall really is? What in the world does Onder Skall’s typist have to do with his identity? How can I miss the point so severely?
Well it’s not all that severe of course, but you get the idea. The truth is that there are very few who do what I do (Torley Linden being the one exception that comes to mind), and most settle on a single avatar for which they purchase a few outfits. That’s the convention. It’s what people are comfortable with.
To me, though, it’s a horrific idea to be locked into one look, or even one personality. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been a big supporter of this whole Interoperability project and the push for OpenID. For me, personally, it’s a complete waste of resources to help me avoid re-creating myself in each world. I actually want to re-create myself. Daily, if possible. It’s how I grow.
The point remains moot as long as we’re all allowed to do things whichever way we see fit. It only becomes a problem if, in the future, mainstream culture demands a single look, a single name, and a single identity. Enforcing that kind of thing would carry an unwritten message: “we know you this way. Do not change.” The thing is, if people become that concerned over whether or not you can change your appearance, you start to get drawn into the follow-up thought: people don’t want you to change your behavior either.
The day that happens, none of us will feel like we’re allowed to change who we are inside. We won’t be able to let go of our signature bad habits, our quirky slang, or even become interested in things we’d had no interest in before. There will be this ever-present notion that, if anybody know knows us is around, we have to fulfill their expectations of us (high or low).
Redemption moves further out of reach than it already is.
November 1st, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Yes, Caleb, I totally agree. I have lots of alts and looks. I change Prokofy quite a bit, and people get upset. They don’t like that Prokofy has a different gender, either, that REALLY bothers them. Too bad. It’s my identity, it’s who I am. “I am large, I contain sim-multitides” to paraphrase Walt Whitman.
And yes, it’s about redemption, if you want to put it in Christian terms, or perhaps you could call it reincarnation, if put in Buddist terms, or perhaps morphing or shape-shifting, like some Russian or Celtic pagan concept. Think of the song Tam Lin: “and they will turn you in my arms/to a newt or a snake/but hold me tight and fear not/I am your baby’s father”.
That’s why I’ve tried to conceive of this “interop” discussion more practically here:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/10/walking-between.html
People who don’t want redemption or reincarnation or shape-shifting — what do they want?
They want control, uniformity, monitoring. They invoke griefing as a reason to do this. So they hate our freedom? That’s never a reason to morph our world to prevent morphing of ourselves.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:05 am
Yeah, me too. I’m not so sure it’s as uncommon as you think to switch avies under the same account, though.
To each his own, of course, but for me it’s a joy to be many incarnations in this shared make-believe 3D chat room world. Yes, shape-shifting is a vague threat to many. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” is how Emerson said it.
I gotta be me. But it doesn’t mean that I change my values when I change my look, or how I essentially treat people.
Can’t say I’m aghast at the idea of being able to walk between worlds with a single resident name and avatar, though, if that’s what some people prefer. It probably makes the conventional types comfortable, so it’s inevitably going to happen. As long as it isn’t made mandatory, I’m seeing the downside of making this project just another option for people.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:07 am
Edit: *not* seeing the downside, I meant to say
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I cannot bother with alts and multiple accounts. I keep the same name and the same account for all the avatars. Though I do stick with one at the time, changes can make some confusion for the people around. And if some people get angry… that is really not my problem.
I don’t think immersionism should have a problem with having different avatars. That is the natire of this world, one can change. If one wants to be immersed there is nothing wrong (on contrary) in living the opportunitioes of the environment. I am an avatar, avatars can change their look. Get used to that.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Hmmm, I’ve tried both and have to say that one Av with may ‘looks’ seems easiest to me. I have one other Av who I created specifically for playing in role play sims (was looking at Midian but ended up in Wastelands and now in the CSI:NY thing) but I never, ever feel he is me in the same way I totally, always feel HeadBurro Antfarm is me.
I swap HBA around a lot - gazelle, robot, abstract moving shapes, comedy or horror stuff from Gendel’s - but I have almost never changed gender. It seems this is my one constant, mainly because it never occurs to me to be anything other than a fella I think.
I grow as a person though my life as HBA just as much as I as as me, regardless of whether HBA is a gazelle, robot or abstract, but I’m not sure that being any of those things has anything to do with my growth. I think my relationships speak louder to me than my looks.
HBA
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