Budding Sexuality in Habbo Hotel

In exploring the realm of Habbo Hotel, I met many different types of avatars that were controlled by individuals that were predominantly adolescents. This was important in terms of sexuality because of the relative age of the contributors to the site, many avatars showed dominant heterosexual societal characteristics. The character that I created I tried to pattern after my own characteristics as a white, heterosexual male. In exploring sexuality on the virtual world I specifically considered to view the patterns that avatars used in trying to court another mate. I feel that after viewing many occurrences in dialogue between avatars, I believe that virtual worlds such as Habbo Hotel allow adolescents to explore and practice courting rituals that they would be able to use in real life situations. Many of the sexuality practices that I viewed began with a conversation starter such as, “Hey, does anyone want to be my bf/gf?” and would expound from there. It’s not much different than going to bar or nightclub in real life and asking a person if he/she was single. There’s a parallel in the two situations that the former helps the latter in adjusting to real world situations and give the individual a knowledge base to help them predict the responses in future situations.
In my studies I attempted to be more of an observer than an actual participant in exploring sexuality because I was more interested in the development of the adolescent dating experience. I tried to understand how they made sense and what strategies they used in attempting to find a virtual mate. I joined a room on the virtual world that’s description was, “to find a mate or date”, which was created by another avatar. When I entered the room there was many avatars in a confined space and grouped together, as if they were actually speaking one on one and needed to be face to face for the interaction. I carefully monitored the dialogue boxes of the virtual interactions to see what kind of discussion was being encoded and decoded. I could only monitor public discussion as once a connection was made; there is a way to only talk to that individual. What I found was that most adolescents use Habbo Hotel as a practice ground for real life encounters. They are free to bounce ideas or say things that in real life would be to afraid or embarrassed to say. The virtual world allows them to try out their budding sexuality and to see what works and what may not.