Upon being given this assignment, I was excited to finally have the opportunity to explore one of the virtual worlds that I had heard so much about in class. I decided to make an account on Second Life, partly because it’s free and partly because I used to love playing The Sims so I thought I would like Second Life as well. I didn’t have as great a Second Life experience as I thought I would. For one thing, my computer didn’t seem to be able to handle rendering the 3D virtual environment. It froze several times and ran really slowly in general. I attempted to fix this by changing the graphics options, but my system still crashed several times. Most of the time I did get to play in Second Life was spent attempting to figure out how to use my avatar and how to navigate through the virtual world.
The avatar I picked looked like she was ready to go out to a club. Like almost all females in Second Life, she was thin and wearing a skin tight outfit. I didn’t really feel like looking “sexy” made me stand out at all. I don’t think the Proteus effect applied to the interactions I had with others. I wasn’t outgoing and friendly because my avatar was attractive, I behaved in this manner because I was trying to get a feel for the Second Life world and the people that inhabited it. Rather than conforming to individual identity cues, as is dictated by the Proteus effect, I found that group identity was much more salient to my interactions with people. I was very aware of the fact that I was a “newbie.” Contrary to what I had heard about entering Second Life as a newbie, it was my experience that most people just ignored me. In various articles I have read on the subject, it was made to seem that people were often nice to new players and went out of their way to show them around. While I did manage to find some resources for new players, I had to seek these out on the Internet because I was too inept at navigating through Second Life’s GUI to figure out where I should go.
Overall, I think my Second Life experience was unduly affected by technological problems and I didn’t get the opportunity to make an informed judgment about self-perception and its effect on one’s interactions with others. My interactions in Second Life were primarily based on two group identities – that of a newbie and that of a member of COMM 245 attempting to gather information for a blog. The fact that I looked like I should be dancing on top of a bar at a dance club had little impact on my behavior.
5 comments:
Sarah,
You make a very interesting point when you state that your outgoing behavior wasn't related to your attractiveness but rather to the fact that you were new and trying to get a feel for the game. I competley agree with this, but do you think that after an extended period of time, you would have acted the same way?
I also felt the same way in that I was confronted with many technological issues and didn't get to fully experience second life because of it.
Also, besides the fact that you were a newbie and looking for a way to find information, it is also hard to judge how self percetion affects behavior because the other avatars knew how you looked and probably acted towards you in a certain way becasue you were a hot club girl.
Hey Sarah. I really liked your post because I can definitely relate to your experience. I, too, am a former Sims player and was pretty excited about getting into Second Life since it seems to be creating so much hype. However, I also found it very difficult and frustrating to navigate, and it caused my computer to freeze numerous times as well. As a result, I found that I spent most of the time I was in Second Life just trying to orient myself with the environment rather than assessing my behaviors as an avatar.
I was also just an attractive looking female avatar (all the options seemed to be the same), and while I did notice the Proteus Effect slightly, I really had to stretch my imagination to do so. Perhaps if we were both able to spend more time getting used to Second Life so that we could focus on interactions rather than orientations, we might have had a better shot at experiencing what Yee and Bailenson discussed in their article, but since that wasn't the case, I agree that the task seemed flawed on that level.
I find it very interesting, though, that you discuss how your mentality was more group-oriented than individual-oriented. I guess I felt like a "newbie" too, but I didn't get a sense of any group mentality, I just felt like a confused loner who struggled with getting help from the other avatars. Overall, very interesting analysis of your experiences.
Hey Sarah,
As most people did, I chose Second life as well. My reason for choose it was different though, in that I wanted to be in a different type of virtual space. It was interesting how you mentioned that you didn't really feel that having a sexy appearance in the game made you stand out. I felt the same way since the avatars were by default fit and somewhat generically "sexy". It seemed as if we needed to purposely make the avatars look unattractive. It's interesting how your experience was the opposite of mine, I was able to clearly see the Proteus effect.
Hi Sarah. I really enjoyed reading your post. I too chose to explore the virtual world of Second Life. Like you, I made my avatar to be very attractive and alluring, in hopes that people would be more outgoing and friendly towards me. I really liked reading how different your experience on Second Life was from mine – I found that people sought me out to strike up a conversation and try and get to know me. It was surprising to hear that you experienced the newbie effect and were not made to feel welcomed in this space. It’s interesting that two people could have such different experiences in the same space.
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-friendless-in-second-life.html
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/11/dreamboat-of-world-of-warcraft.html
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