How's the creation of your online identity going? What sort of interesting choices did you come across in the construction of your avatar? Any questions you had to ask yourself as you perfected your avatar's appearance? Beginning pictures you'd like to share?
"Alter ego? Not even in my Second Life!"
ReplyDeleteCreating and constructing my avatar is not quite as easy as I had hoped it to be. Second Life is very overwhelming and advanced, and with deadlines there is no time to "warm up" in other easier virtual worlds. I selected Second Life because of the research I found on not being so accepting of other races and cultures. I am still questioning, if I want to keep my avatar with a consistent look and personality? Or if I want to switch it up and compare and contrast the different reactions that I am getting. Right now as stands my avatar is an attractive, african american woman, I am debating on her lingo and personality, almost want to do some more observing before I really start to speak up. I don't have all the rules and regs of virtual world down well enough, so am not sure how to even approach the others, let alone what to say or how to say it! Clothing, will be changed often, once I figure out how to do it!
My questions are
1. Which look/ personality will get the most reactions?
2. What types of reactions am I looking for?
3. Do I want to switch how she looks/ speaks/ and acts through out the project to gage different reactions?
I have realized how hard it will be to act as having an alter ego, that is my major road block, I don't have some dominant alter ego living within, so how to act is the question? I don't really know how to act other than myself! No pictures to share yet, not advanced enough to figure out how to do so!
Onward and off to Second Life I go!
I think you're on to the right approach by standing back and observing first. Plus it helps if you have gotten the hang of some basic SL skills before trying to interact with others . . .
ReplyDeleteMy creation of my avitar on Barbie Girls is really easy. You cannot really completely change the look of it. Only like the hair color and clothes I can change. In this virtual world I cannot be completely individual. All the Barbie's pretty much look the same. At first I wanted to make my avitar different from the way I look just to test to see if people would react to it differently, but as i was making her I decided to just make it look like me since there wasn't really a choice. It was a pick between like ten blonde hairstyles or like two brown and one red that I did not think were very pretty... and for the eye color I could only pick either blue (which is what I have) or all black dots.
ReplyDeleteI see so far in this virtual world that it is very biased to the female gender anf that you can only do certain activities and they all have to do with girlie girl activities.
My online creation process is going well so far. I have decided to go with virtual Barbie, but i have still chosen to participate in other virtual worlds like Meez and Second life to see what they are like and how they differ from BarbieGirls. What i have noticed so far is that, Meez and SecondLife if very free, open to anything and everything, and also more adult-like; whereas, Barbiegirls has a set body type and nose type. This to me is already biased because not everyone is the same, and the participants dont even have the option to select something that resembles them. I found it very amusing the way the barbiegirls stand. They somewhat look like thier innocent, but still flirty and cute because theyre standing knock-kneed and pigeon toed. So just from my first day on this, I knew Barbiegirls was going to be a very interesting virtual world to dive into.
ReplyDeleteThe creation of my online identity is going really well! I have chosen to explore the virtual world, Habbo Hotel, which is very different from the virtual world SecondLife, which I had to participate in for Professor Jennings Communication and Technology class. There are so many differences between the two and I definitely like Habbo Hotel a lot more because of this.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in SecondLife you could truly change your avatar into a million different possibilities. In Habbo Hotel you have pre-designed faces, eyes, body types, clothes, etc. There are definitely not as many options, which I would have liked to have had because it really makes it fun and provides a more individual feeling towards your avatar. However, at the same time, I feel like it's a cool challenge because it forces you to form an individual character based more on what you choose to DO with that character rather than leaving it up to "superficial" or "materialistic" means.
There were definitely many choices as to what the identiy of my avatar was going to be. I chose the name Harlow for my avatar and I had to decide whether I wanted her to be pretty and cool--to "fit in" or if I wanted to do more of a virtual social experiment...I chose the latter. And I'm glad I did! I chose to make Harlow a hippie/hobo character, which is definitely reflected in her clothes--a hippie necklace, baggy pants, a hobo cap: all in neutral colors, except for her fire-engine red hair. I definitely played around with the ensemble for awhile until I settled on what I thought would be perfect to start our journey out in and for the time being.
I also decided that I wanted to make her overly nice, to the point of being annoying, always in search of friends and finding out everything she could about an individual. Some people have responded really well..others have not. It's been pretty interesting getting people's reactions to her/me.
I am still finding my way around Habbo Hotel and can't wait to see where Harlow goes throughout the next couple of weeks and what I will learn.
Posted by: Kayleigh Smith
Kayleigh, I like your differentiation between "appearing different' and "doing different". You make a good point when you argue that confines in appearance selection makes you try harder to express personality and individuality as opposed to creating a whacked out character. Neat idea.
ReplyDeleteKali, What is Barbie Girl teaching young girls about "what it means to be a girl" and "how to be a girl"? Amber, i never thought about the Barbie girls' stance before. That's funny!
ReplyDeleteFor the construction of my avatar, at meez.com, was very difficult I changed my mind several times and finally settled to make her more edgy than I ever would think about being. I also made her pregnant, to see how individuals would react to her. There were so many choices on facial features, the size of her nose, cheek bone structure, lips, shape of their eyes, and color of her eyes. There were also a number of hairstyles, colors, clothing, shoes, and different styles of makeup that she could wear. There were also several slections on skin color, which allows the avatars to have diversity. Also they had three different weights plus the pregnant option that allowed the creators of the avatar to chose from. Allowing women who were creating an avatar look more like themselves or look more like what they wish to look like.
ReplyDeleteI had to take the time to think about whether or not to make her look like myself. I chose not to do so, because I wanted to see how people would react to such a person in the virtual world.
Why pregnant?! How has your avatar's pregnancy affected interactions with other participants? Have you run into any other pregnant avatars? Can "boy" avatars be pregnant too?
ReplyDeleteI chose pregnant to do something different. It just seemed interesting that they gave you the option so why not?! Also because of the show 16 and Pregnant has gained a lot of attention, that many young teenagers are becoming pregnant. The show is trying to show how difficult it is having a child at that age, but it seems as if it has encouraged young pregnancies.
ReplyDeleteThe individuals that I try to interact with really don't want anything to do with me. They may see it as attention or that I am really pregnant and may be put off by it (or that I have no friends yet could also be a problem).
I did run into another one but she was just running around telling everyone "I'm pregnant" so when I approached her I said I am too, and I asked what she is having and she just began running around the room again.
I don't know if the "boy" avatars can be, but that would be interesting.
Oh my gosh! That show on MTV is heartbreaking. It makes perfect sense that teen pregnancy would leak into virtual worlds . . .
ReplyDeleteI created my avatar at meez.com. however i also created one at habbo hotel but i rarely get on because i found meez to be more interesting and entertaining. i designed my avatar to resemble myself. she has dark skin, a cruvy figure, and long dark hair. when designing "kristen912" the idea of being creative never hit me. after having been to several "hoods" i wish i would have taken more time and got my creative juices flowing. i love how my avatar stands and the way she kinda bats her eyelashes...that's something i don't do. i also chose the option of making her do a sexy dance (something i wouldn't do). i guess all in all i'm intrigued by her sex appeal.
ReplyDeleteI would have to say that the best part about becoming a member of Meez was the fact that I could create my own avatar. It was actually kind of fun to make another version of myself. My avatar has light skin, freckles, long brown hair, large lips and her outfit is very very cute. It's definitely something I'd wear in real life. I liked that Meez had so many different options to choose from when creating an avatar. You can make your avatar male/female, large or small, and with any hair color that you could even imagine. Being new to a virtual world I wasn't sure if I should make my avatar "regular" or if I should've gone outside of the box and created her differently. I've noticed that in the different rooms my avatar is usually the most casually dressed. I found that to be interesting. --------Tiera Allen
ReplyDeleteDayahn Thomas
ReplyDeletei have previously been on my virtal world and I decided to not use the same advatar I had created before but to change her. Before she had light skin, long hair and green eyse. now my advatar looks similar to me, she has darker skin, brown eyes and shorter black hair. I even dress my advatar similar to what im actually wearing in real life. The other day my advatar had on a purple top, skinny jeans and purple boots, which was my exact outfit on saturday. i noticed that sometimes I am not as glamorous as some of the other members outfits but I feel like that might have to deal with our age differences. These girls are getting out of the Barbie phase where they like to play dress up and Im 22 and in the I just want to wear whatever is comfortable because my feet hurt form being at work all day. Also I really wish you could change the body type of your advatar or even some facial features. I am even debating switching my advatar between races and skin tones to see if my perception on the site is more or less. I was thinking about being white for a few days then being black for a few days and see if there is a spike in people talking to me or requesting to be my friend or if everythind stays about the same. Before i did a lot of observation in this virtual world, now i want to do more interaction in the site for this paper.
I’ll be honest; at first I was very skeptical about making an avatar in general. I didn’t understand how people can spend that much time online playing with these virtual people. Yeah, I played Sims when I was younger, but you didn’t actually interact with others online when I did it. I am slowly understanding the whole process better but still not getting the greatness of it. I am hoping by the end I can come to a better understanding of the entire thing.
ReplyDeleteDue to my original feelings about avatars, creating mine was a process. I was not feeling the whole go crazy and be somebody you aren’t in real life scenario. I choose to make mine conservative and I guess I can say, like me. When it came to skin tone I went with a light skin tone, but one I thought was tan. That was because I’m happiest when I have some color to my skin (aka summer)! Then for facial features I went pretty basic and makeup was natural. I myself am not a huge makeup kind of girl; I wear more natural colors and not a lot of anything else. For the hair I made it medium length and wavy. Her hair is basically like the color of mine and she has bangs that swoop across her face to one side. I choose that hair style because I like it and wish I could do that to mine. I’ve always wanted wavy hair that I could just let go. I’d say that’s a start on me taking advantage of the virtual world. It’s a small step but getting me somewhere.
For clothing I wasn’t feeling the super revealing outfits. Even though there really isn’t much to show in virtual world, I still just don’t like it. I dressed my girl in straight leg jeans with cute black pumps. Then she had on a long white button down that reaches a little lower than her butt and it has a belt around her real waist as an accessory. That was just my main outfit for her.
The more I play around on the website and get used to the entire idea of everything I know I will start to branch out. It seems dumb that I am so conservative and sheltered over this but I am. I have always been weird about certain things on the internet. I’m not one to want to attract creepers. With that being said though, I have thought about trying to take this and doing a 180. This would mean dressing her how I don’t like and seeing how many creepers I could attract. It is one of those things where I either have to get myself to commit to that 100% of I wouldn’t be able to do it.
Each time I get on the website I do interact a little more and I feel eventually I will be comfortable with the whole process and be able to just completely change it up! We shall see.
Second life is so confusing and overwhelming so it was pretty hard to construct my avatar's appearance. At first I was trying to make her look me, white, red hair, normal body, etc. The skin and body were actaully easy to change and make the way I wanted, but the hair and clothes were so hard to change and I still can't really figure that out. She would have bald spots and then a huge ponytail, but her hair would be down. It looked out of control. Her clothes were so meeded up, I tried to make my own which didn't end up working out and made her look even worse. I went out and talked to people anyway and got made fun of a little! One guy said to me "you turned a nice dress into a slutty outfit" and I really didn't mean for it to look that way. After that I made friends with a girl who sent me purple hair, and a bunch of skimpy clothes. So now my avatar doesn't look like me at all!
ReplyDeleteCreating my avatar was pretty easy in YoVille, but I have gone back and forth whether I should be a male or something other than what I am to receive different responses. I may do that throughout the course of this assignment, just to see what kinds of responses I get from people at the events that I attend because the people at some of these events can be pretty crazy. When I started playing, I didn't know about the events. Now that I have visited some of them, I now know how serious people are about living a second life on the internet. A lot of the people I have interacted with are very interesting.
ReplyDeleteWhen creating my avatar, I had more options to choose from that I thought there was going to be. I had gender options, clothing options, inhuman attachment options (horns etc.), color options, and normal and not normal accessory options. I wanted to create an avatar that was not part of the dominate hegemonic crowd, but I did not want to make him so out there that no one would communicate with him. I decided to keep him with human characteristics but a minority in the Habbo crowd.
ReplyDeleteDuring the construction of my avatars I had a pretty had time with deciding how I wanted my avatar to look. In Barbie Girls it was pretty simple because they all had the basic, same look and the changes you could make were very settle, I thought. On Meez, there were so many things to choose from during the creation process from body features to clothing. I had a pretty hard time deciding what I wanted my avatars to wear. One I made more punk-like and another I made preppy. In Barbie Girls there weren’t a whole lot of different clothing to choose from, especially since I wasn’t a VIP member, which allowed you to have so many more options of clothing and styles to choose from! In Meez there were tons of different styles and clothes to choose from. I couldn’t decide if I wanted my avatar to just be in jeans and a shirt, or a cute summer dress or a formal. I was shocked that they gave the options to wear formal dresses. I put my avatar in one for a short amount of time because I figured since it is offered why not wear it! I thought some of the clothing options were pretty funny!
ReplyDeleteI tried to keep my avatars' looks simple. I wanted them to appear as average guys who were approachable. Fresh and Big Johnson have on jeans and a t-shirt. The selection on Yoville was alright, but not as big as I had hoped. And if you wanted more accents you had to pay for them with coins and I was not interested in playing games or what not to get those coins. I didn't need fancy accents to serve my avatars purpose of chatting it up with the ladies.
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