November 29, 2008

“I don’t expect this challenge to be a popular one, because I know a lot of people are nervous about showing the ‘real’ them”

I’m a relative newcomer to Second Life, so every new revelation still seems really fresh.

One thing I’ve learned in my short four months in Second Life is, deliberately making your avatar look like a human being is nothing short of revolutionary. It’s like some kind of civil or social rebellion, like having hairy armpits.

Recently, as a one-time blogging experiment, a blogger challenged other Second Life citizens (via) to create and post avatars representative of their own real-life selves. “I don’t expect this challenge to be a popular one, because I know a lot of people are nervous about showing the ‘real’ them,” she writes, “but that’s why it’s a challenge!”

I recently mentioned to my friend MJ that I’d started spending a lot of time in Second Life. I emailed her a screencap of my avatar, who was wearing a t-shirt and glasses. “Wow,” she said. “That does look a lot like you.” A mutual tech journalist friend had thought the likeness was straight-up uncanny.

Of course, in my first life, I am fatter. But, as I explained to MJ, “I’m really proud to have an avatar who totally looks like a person.”

My avatar is a real-world 5’4” (that’s 1.6 meters). I was relieved when I read the recent post, What Size Is Your Avatar, and Why? because the average height in Second Life is, almost certainly, between 7 and 8 feet tall (that is, up to 2.4 meters). I mentioned this to my friend MJ. “Ugh, why are you even there?” she asked me.

Here’s something I read a couple months ago that really affected me.

I didn’t want to be a hunk, though; I took the other route. Some fooling around with the avatar preferences, and presto!—I was your friendly construction worker from the bar that sells cheap beer. […] First observation: I was the only ugly guy in the whole virtual world. That got me noticed! But other people were kind of nonplussed, and whenever I talked to someone there was this unspoken question hovering in the air: “That’s what you look like in real life, right?”

—Frank Freelunch, Second Life: The Official Guide, pp 197-198.