You must be a really great roleplayer to do this. I couldn't. Sometimes I am a pirate, or a medieaval princess or a fae, or a naughty cat, but I'll always act and talk like human me does. I share my human's moral and opinions. I *am* Zippora and Zippora is me.
The mentioned woman had to kill her "terrrorists" after a while, and was even sad about loosing them, even though they were very different from her human.
Sometimes I wonder how my life will end. I probably won't exist as long as human me (hopefully) will, but I can't imagine my human killing me. It would be suicide, I think I won't be able to pull the trigger and shoot myself.
Probably I'll just stay behind in our digital world, not used anymore, withering in a corner *wonders: isn't that even less human than committing suicide?*
I felt how much my human being and avie me were connected, when human me, for some silly reasons, made a second SL-account. The alt is just not me. Human has spend some hours in giving her a nice appearance, but after finishing never felt the urge to log in with her. She was killed last week, without any regrets: she's never been alive anyway.
On the other hand, now that I'm writing this, I suddenly realise that this exactly shows that my avatar *has* her own identity. If it was only human me, that was online, then it wouldn't matter which avatar she was using, or not? Apparently it does matter...
"Who am I?"
The question came back when I read a few blogposts about love in SecondLife. Kate Amdahl says it would be easy to check if you are in love with an avatar or the human behind it, by asking yourself if you would also love the same person with another avatar. My answer was clear: yes, it is the human behind I love, though I have to admit that a nice avatar helps. And it is my human being in love, because she feels the butterflies, her heart beat and her skin blush.
I thought it a perfect example of Atomic Me loves Atomic Him, as Vannesh put it earlier in her blog. But when I read the comments on that blogpost, and particularly Argent Bury's, I started doubting. She states that your identity is the result of a person behind a keyboard, an avatar and the sum of actions and words in-world. That sounds very reasonable...
And indeed, even if you love each other deeply in-world, when you would meet in real world, you would not be more than strangers sharing some common interests.
It's funny. When I started writing this entry, more than a week ago, I was still convinced that Zippora and human me were the same. But the more I thought of it, and the more I re-read the mentioned blogs, the more I changed my mind. Zippora is not just an image representing human me. She's not a doll *winks at Dandellion* She might think and talk like her, but she has her own ways to dress, she's doing other things than human me and has her own way to purr and growl at people around, which makes them like her or not.
It's an interesting subject, I'm certainly not finished with it yet ;-)
11 comments:
Sorry to make you doubt your original convictions. I seem to have that effect on people sometimes ;)
You mentioned creating an alt and having it not be "you". I'm curious, do you feel strange when you change your AVs appearance? I ask, because for me my appearance kind of "stuck" to me after the first week or so, and I feel really odd when I change it.
Thank you for a thoughtful and interesting post. Looking forward to more of the same.
--Argent
great post :)) With already 2 avatars , aka suburbia and provence, in an oilbarrel on the bottom of the SL sea , one might think i have no problems with killing an avatar. Infact the opposite is true . I sometimes get so mad and loose my temper that killing my avatar seems the only option at a time when the child inside me takes control of me. I always regret it afterwards.
I guess in SL you can absolutely be yourself and that is exactly what i do, with an emphasis on pathetic behaviour, i admit.
Furthermore , my new avatar is always an exact replica of the previous one, and i try to make them look as RL as possible , with off course some superhero looks and features. :))
@argent: Thanks for the nice comment. Yes, I do change my av's appearance quite often: skins, hair(colour), wings, ears, etc. But I always stay with my original shape and eyes. They are what make my avie "me". Only very occasionally I change them, when I use some kind of fantasy avatar (tiny fae, cat, chicken). It is fun for short, but to be honest I'm always glad when I'm back in my own body ;-)
@leroy: better commit suicide in SL than in FL, if that's an example of "being yourself" ;-)
LOL zipp , i have a happy spoiled kid inside me that would never think of something like that in RL.
Making an alt doesn't mean you made yourself an another avatar. It takes time and effort. And most important, it takes a bit of you. Avatar is an emanation of the superior being, that's why we-humans all feel our avatars as parts of ourselves, even if we don't claim 100% resemblance, even if there is "no resemblance at all".
There always is. Argent said that perfectly once (cannot find when and where, but quoted here)
[at] dandellion :you probably already heard of the website i mentioned in my last comment on zippora's previous post.
I found it very interesting, although the daedalus gateway project is too huge to read everything thoroughly, there are some very interesting investigations in there :))
That is a very interesting view of our "digital" self. I was always someone who would say "my avie is me", as I thought that I don't change my personality when I'm on SL. But I think you are right, as besides the (obvious) difference in looks between SL and RL, there are quite a couple more things that differ.
On SL, I feel much more open to other people and enjoy talking to them, while in RL I'm a rather quiet guy who prefers listening to talking most of the time. And looking back on the last months, I'm generally more outgoing on SL than in RL, which makes another big difference, especially in the way people see me. While "he" and I share the same background, the same views on life and the same emotions, the way we act or how other people see us can surely be different.
Of course, the difference isn't huge, but considering that my avie and my chat lines make up the image for others, the final view on Timothy/Tim may vary a lot.
/me quotes Timothy's second paragraph, replaces "he" by "she" and adds it to her post ;-)
When you say Second Life you isn't exactly the same as First Life you, well, would you say she's a different expression of your personality? You know how we might act differently around a lover or in a work setting or around children or around parents? Maybe for some of us, our Second Life selves are the same individual being a little different because of circumstances.
I know that probably isn't true of everyone, especially if someone is partly roleplaying or is purposely creating a new self, but I think that's what happens to me. Like you, in Second Life I act and think and believe mostly the same things I do in First Life. But I'm more playful and don't feel the same need to separate good things from bad things, I think because in most ways, Second Life is more safe. How does it feel for you?
^^^\ Kate /^^^
Kate, following that logic leads us to conclusion that even creating a completely new character is an expression of ourselves. I, dK, a SL avatar am a whole lot different than my human. That was the leading idea. But, as time passes I do understand how different we are, but at the same time I see all the deep impulses we have in common. After all we both come from the same source.
@ Kate and Dandellion: when I started in SL, Zippora was more or less an expression of human me - not particularly her physical appearance but her behaviour. The longer I'm in SL the more Zippora has her own way of living. The differences with first life are not big, but they are present. Like Timothy and Kate experienced too: Zippora is more free and outgoing, less shy, more sexy, more naughty than human-me. I think Zipp is resembling facets of my human self, I don't allow myself to show in first life (actually why?...)
Other question that comes up is, what my avatar's physical appearance does tell about my personality? Or more general, even if your avie is not a copy from FL, does it represent you? Enough to think about for a next posting ;-)
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