Untitled+Second+Life+Image

=Image in Second Life=

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//I just cash in on the fact that I'm good looking, and I've got a nice figure and girls like me.// - Sid Vicious

The virtual values in Second Life are a distortion of real life values which have been transferred onto the grid by users. Users, when logging on, bring their prejudices, beliefs, and opinions with them. These don't precisely apply to the world of Second Life as the activity of social groups and distribution of property is not the same. This leads to a conception of image, both on the personal level of individual avatars and on the group level. The competition in real life to project a positive, successful image translates to a Second Life consumer culture that revolves around looking good and having cool stuff. Many Second Lifers are slaves to a nesting instinct similar to that of the narrator in Fight Club before he becomes Tyler Durden. A lot of activity on the grid is occupied in the relentless pursuit of cool.

Self


Self image in second life primarily refers to the image of the avatar projected from the user. For the more immersive users on Second Life, the avatar is literally an avatar of self - their doubts, concerns, inadequacies, hubris, confidence, and shame are all projected through their avatar. Similarly, their desired appearance is often imprinted upon their avatar. Straight-laced business men and women who's real life appearance may be conservative can 'let their inner freak' out on the grid. Thus furries, cyberpunks, goths and similar counterculture archetypes abound.

Body
Body image in real life is transferred to body image in Second Life, and may be considered a reflection of modern values. Most avatars, stripped of their clothing and outer textures down to their primitive form look very similar. They appear tall and thin - though their complexion varies. Why aren't there fat avatars on Second Life? The interface allows users to create bodies that look however they want. Isn't it possible that some people might choose to use a fat avatar on Second Life? The answer to that question appears to be a negative. The stigma of appearing overweight or obese has transferred to Second Life avatars in a world where body type and size is completely unrelated to the physical well-being of their users. On the grid, everyone can be as they want to be, and nobody wants to be fat.

Clothes
On top of the primitive form of body type are several layers of texture which fill out an avatar's appearance. Skins are one of these layers. For more information about this first layer, see Skins



Users may design or purchase clothing. Some users make more than enough L$ to support their accounts from designing and building digital clothing. Some users take the outfit they design for their avatar upon first logging onto the grid and keep that look for the rest of their Second Life experience. Most users, however, customize and change their avatars appearance over time, and one of the ways in which they do this is clothing. While a wide variety of clothing is available in Second Life and this variety can be displayed in public areas where people are independently moving throughout the grid, within groups there is a lot less diversity.



The lowest level of diversity is usually found in role-playing groups. Role-players generally have rules for how their avatars are supposed to appear, and anyone who is out-of-character is either kindly asked to leave the role-play area or forcibly teleported away. Media groups, political groups, and ad-hoc groups tend not to be too diverse, either, for these groups tend to have a more amorphous structure leading people to feel pressured to fit in. The more informal a group is (for example, the crowd at the Transgendered Resource Center), the more diverse they become.

Property
The importance of property in Second Life has already been discussed at length, for more information, see Property

House


Owning a house in Second Life is not just a convenient place to hang out, leave items, and take acquaintances met for companionship or sex on Second Life, they are also symbols of status. Why else would every Second Lifer endeavor to buy or build that McMansion they have been dreaming about? There are houses built on Second Life that dwarf the Biltmore Estate in their virtual vastness. These are domiciles built or bought for avatars that do not sleep and have no need for a place to call home. The desire for a big, beautiful house on an open parcel of the grid is a transferral of the American dream into Second Life. However, these avatars have no real jobs, and no real family to care for. They do not pay mortgage on their house (though a monthly payment for property ownership is required by Linden Labs). The house, then, exists solely to project a facade of wealth and success, both of which many users will never acquire in real life.

Car


Similarly, there is a growing preoccupation with vehicle ownership on the grid. Previous discussions have raised the point that cars and other vehicles are totally unnecessary for successfully navigating the grid. Therefore users are not buying or creating vehicles for their avatars as means of conveyance throughout Second Life, but as means of conveyance of an image to other avatars. In American life, cars are identified with cool. Entire careers revolve around cruising, racing, fixing, and crashing cars, just as many songs, movies, and stories in pop culture do the same.

Bling
Bling, in the parlance of our times, refers to a set of clothing accessories designed solely for the purpose of flaunting wealth. Diamond grills (the kind that go in your mouth, not the kind that cook your burgers), rings, pendants, earrings, hats, canes, fur coats, and boots made from exotic skin are items that could be considered bling in real life. Each of these objects has a digital counterpart in Second Life, however, cars and houses can also be considered bling. Because of the skewed economy and easy navigation of the digital world users have access to a lot more bling in Second Life than they do in real life, and more items can be considered bling because more of them are sufficiently without any external use or purpose. Second Life's commercial areas may be considered a giant bling flea market selling things that project an image concept imported from real-life but fail to serve any useful purpose.

Business


If Second Life businesses are nothing more than stalls and kiosks in a giant digital bling flea-mall, then how do they convince users to want more bling for their avatars?

The answer lies in the question. Businesses direct themselves towards promoting status and image which technically has no //a priori// meaning. In doing so these businesses acquire that status for themselves - thus sex shops project an air of excitement, upscale clothing shops one of dominance and success, and car shops have an air of sophistication and class. When given a blank slate to create a whole new world of thought and possibility Second Life users instead chose to create a hollow facsimile of the real world where many of the important constraints (death, poverty, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, weather, power) do not apply.



Relationships
Second Life relationships come in two different types. Some users, like many of the students in Political Science 545, know each other before entering the grid and therefore gravitate towards one another's avatars and form friendships while in-world. A second specie of relationships, those between people who meet on Second Life, is more interesting to investigate. These relationships often contain fragile, shallow bonds that do not translate to their real-life equivalents. There are many reasons why these relationships fail to succeed. One is language barriers - the grid is a diverse multilingual area. The size of the grid versus the density of its active avatar population also makes it difficult to form relationships.

Personality
The avatar-personality issue is one roadblock to the formation of healthy, strong relationships on Second Life. Since some people project their personality into their avatar while others choose to stay entrenched behind the fourth wall, it is difficult to determine which avatars are genuine. How can you know someone through their avatar on the grid? Furthermore, it is difficult to meet people as a new user on Second Life. Throughout the internet there has always been a stigma of being a 'noob' (slang for new user, derived from 'newbie') - and SL is no different. As a new user or a new visitor to a particular parcel it is difficult to get to know the avatars in who frequent the area, not to mention the users behind them.

There is no sure way to determine the gender of the user behind a particular avatar, Linden Labs makes no rules forbidding male users from playing female avatars and vice-versa. This makes an online romantic relationship difficult to formulate as it is difficult to tell if the user controlling an avatar is of the sex and orientation a seeking user is interested in.

Friendship
Friendships are difficult to form on Second Life because it is difficult to trust the avatar of a user you cannot see, just as it is difficult to trust someone who lives behind a mask. Trust is a necessary foundation for friendship. Without it one cannot allow another the freedom to be a friend, nor can one afford to let their guard down enough to open up to another. Friendship as it exists in relationships formed on the grid is typically temporary and at arms length. It would be more appropriate to deem Second Life 'friends' as acquaintances.

Group


These issues of trust which create difficulty in relationship formation also retard the growth of organized groups on Second Life. Other researchers from this class have been struck by the lack of governing organizations within parcels and areas. Outside of the rules of Linden Labs and the combat rules and regulations of some role-playing areas, the lack of governance has made the formation of groups unnecessary for the most part. Most groups come together in an almost spontaneous manner with no real leader - everyone involved is an independent actor and his-or-her own leader. This challenges the traditional structure of most real-life groups around a figurehead, often in the form of a chairperson. The trust issue rears it's ugly head once again - if no one can truly trust anyone else, then no one is willing to allow someone else to assume a position of power. The successful groups in Second Life are those that are formed in real life and then later immerse themselves in the grid.

Links
Avatar Commerce Skins Garbage's Section Untitled Misfits Research Project The Untitled Misfits