For those of you that have never heard of Second Life, it basically = (Sims + Grand Theft Auto + World of Warcraft + EBay + Facebook) ^ Sketchy + (Craigslist Personals * Porn). You design a virtual avatar and navigate a three dimensional online world where you can chat with millions of other users worldwide, change your appearance into a kangaroo with dragon wings, go to dance parties, buy real estate and get kinky all in one messed up universe.
What is interesting about Second Life and this article in particular were two people who found Second Life to be a richer form of media than Ftf. In fact, they met each other from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean in a virtual world and eventually got married Ftf. "We'd both been in chat rooms before, but there was so much extra depth in Second Life, It lets you explore other people's creativity, and that was something that really attracted us to each other.” Second Life takes online dating and social networking to the next level. Because users have almost infinite control over the appearance of their virtual identity, or avatar, they can express themselves much more freely than one could by altering their assessment signals in a different medium. Physical attractiveness, a very important feature in Wallace’s attraction rules, becomes somewhat of a non issue when any user, with enough time and effort, can look like Jessica Alba. Imagine how our Ftf society would change if every person could choose to look like a supermodel at will. Though some users design their avatars in their own true image, deception through their visual presentation is almost the norm. It would be extremely interesting to experiment on how an avatar’s physical attractiveness affects hyperpersonal reactions from other users or identifiability and their own self disclosure. Gating features such as gender, race, and physical attractiveness are all thrown out the window. In Second Life people also can create their own content (clothes, plants, body parts) as well as write their own scripts for avatar movements. In class talked about the ability for one to express “the real me”; what if you were best expressed by an avatar of Prince and all you wanted to do was dance? This alone makes Second Life a much richer medium than many other CMCs in that users have much greater interactional control through use of their action scripts and in world accomplishments instead of through words. Also, getting the goods is usually not an option as users in Second Life are given completely new identities with few links to the real world.
While there is no main objective in Second Life other than to live and learn as you would in Real Life, users do not have a common ground principle as they might in other online games like World of Warcraft where players are sometimes achieving a common goal. In this article, the two users did connect because of a similar interest in designing objects within Second Life. However unlike a dating site, users may or may not anticipate future Ftf interaction. The two users in this article seemed honest enough and began dating in Second Life on a virtual resort. However, the liberating idea of Second Life is for users to explore identities that they may not be able to portray in Real Life. This creates a divide between users that only want short term online only relationships and users that are using Second Life to further their Ftf socializations.
How do we evaluate a medium in which there is a mix of users with/without anticipated future interaction, deception is encouraged, and users are not grounded at all to a real life identity?
The CNet Article can be found here: http://news.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/0,39029682,49252232,00.htm
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