It’s my first day on Secondlife and everything is pretty confusing. I’m also very frustrated because I can figure out how to get my avatar to look how I want her to look. My avatar started off very plain looking but I got another user “Nylon Pinkney” sent me some pretty cool clothes. After getting my avatar to look for I want it I decided to search for a pretty cool place to hang out and talk to other avatars.
On Secondlife you can pull up these little maps that show you where there are a lot of other avatars, and most of the other avatars are on the “mature” locations, so since I had to write a journal about sexuality I decided to check out one of these “mature” locations. I teleported myself to the Sexy Islands to see if Secondlife is a scandalous as everyone says it is.
When I got to the Sexy Islands I notice there is a nude beach and a lot of the other avatars are hanging out around the beach. I also noticed that there are these little magenta and blue bubble or balls everywhere that have different things written on them, like cuddle, and kiss and sit down, and some of the have pretty explicit sexual poses. On the beach there was like a huge crowd gathered around two avatars and they were engaged in sexual acts on the beach. It was really weird to see that because I just cant possible see how people get any kind of sexual satisfaction from seeing virtual people having sex. Every different world or location I went to that night had some kind of sexually explicit thing, may it be some kind of dance mover, to a make out session you can engage in with another avatar, to different kama sutra-esque sexual position you can perform with an avatar. I think people get on Secondlife to fulfill their sexual fantasies.
Secondlife is so sexual almost everything on it revolves around sex. People make their avatars look as attractive as they can. I have not seen one over weight or ugly avatar. Secondlife is definitely a sexual outlet for most people that can’t engage in these fantasies in the real world.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Jameson Smithson, gamer extraordinaire
My first time on Second Life was very overwhelming. I had no clue where to go or what to do. I created an avatar, named Jameson Smithson, that is a male and had a “gamer” outfit. I guess it is what the people who created the game felt like people who play this game look like. However at first he was tall, skinny, shaved head, sunglasses, and a scarf. I remember when I was a “gamer,“ or loser as my girlfriend called it, during my first year of college that I put on weight, never wore sunglasses, and certainly never wore a scarf, seemingly the opposite of this avatar. Though he may not have been accurate to his nickname it did make for an interesting experience when I decided to travel around.
I coach basketball and love the sport so I figured the best place to go was a basketball court. I search and found a pretty neat place with 5 or so courts and decorated with the all kinds of basketball themed places. The first thing I did when I got to this area was head off to the courts to find people to chat with. Immediately I noticed I was way out of place. Everyone was dressed in urban attire, with fitted ball caps, diamond earrings, and basketball shoes. I looked nothing like the folks and they sure let me hear it. This was obviously the first time I confronted identity in the game. No one would talk to me, help me out with the game, or watch me play basketball, since you can’t play together, but everyone else that was playing was being watched. I was an immediate outcast. I guess in hindsight this isn’t very shocking but being that in reality I am so readily accepted in this culture, probably more so in real life than anyone playing this game, it came as a shocker that I was an outcast in my online life, though I did not purposefully mean to be.
My next move was to try to fit in without changing my appearance. I figured I would show them I know about this game from the college to the pro level and see if it gets me any “street cred.” I approached a group of people who were talking about whether a certain NBA player would comeback his oldself from an injury he had the past year. I figured I would chime in. After I spoke my short peace of “Na dog, na,” I was told to get lost, that I look like a “homo” and that I need to head off with the zit faces, yeah these SL “thugs” actually said zit faces, to play Warcraft.
For a first timer I feel like this baptism by fire on SL taught me a little about the game and gave me some pretty good ideas about how I am going to use identity in the final paper. I can’t wait to create my avatar so he fits in with this group of “ballers” and I also plan on making myself a cloud, or like a blank slate, to see how they respond to both. Honestly, I am still shocked that this world is all about one thing, appearance. I guess its all there is to go by, but it doesn’t seem anyone wants to get to know each other or read a profile.
I coach basketball and love the sport so I figured the best place to go was a basketball court. I search and found a pretty neat place with 5 or so courts and decorated with the all kinds of basketball themed places. The first thing I did when I got to this area was head off to the courts to find people to chat with. Immediately I noticed I was way out of place. Everyone was dressed in urban attire, with fitted ball caps, diamond earrings, and basketball shoes. I looked nothing like the folks and they sure let me hear it. This was obviously the first time I confronted identity in the game. No one would talk to me, help me out with the game, or watch me play basketball, since you can’t play together, but everyone else that was playing was being watched. I was an immediate outcast. I guess in hindsight this isn’t very shocking but being that in reality I am so readily accepted in this culture, probably more so in real life than anyone playing this game, it came as a shocker that I was an outcast in my online life, though I did not purposefully mean to be.
My next move was to try to fit in without changing my appearance. I figured I would show them I know about this game from the college to the pro level and see if it gets me any “street cred.” I approached a group of people who were talking about whether a certain NBA player would comeback his oldself from an injury he had the past year. I figured I would chime in. After I spoke my short peace of “Na dog, na,” I was told to get lost, that I look like a “homo” and that I need to head off with the zit faces, yeah these SL “thugs” actually said zit faces, to play Warcraft.
For a first timer I feel like this baptism by fire on SL taught me a little about the game and gave me some pretty good ideas about how I am going to use identity in the final paper. I can’t wait to create my avatar so he fits in with this group of “ballers” and I also plan on making myself a cloud, or like a blank slate, to see how they respond to both. Honestly, I am still shocked that this world is all about one thing, appearance. I guess its all there is to go by, but it doesn’t seem anyone wants to get to know each other or read a profile.
Creating a Gender Identity
As I wrote in my proposal, I was a little wary and a little intrigued of becoming an online gamer, especially in a virtual world. I’d heard all the creepy stories and, to be honest, was excited to see what I would find in this taboo world. I chose Habbo Hotel because it seemed fairly easy to operate for a newcomer and it still had a lot of variety. At this point I have spent quite a few hours in Habbo Hotel since I first started my excursion into this virtual world.
My first step in becoming a member of Habbo was creating my avatar and since I figured this will probably be the one and only time in my life I can become a boy, I decided to take a spin from the male perspective of virtual reality. I created my first avatar to reflect the dominant, white hegemonic male because I wanted to see if my avatar would exist in Habbo Hotel, the same way he does in our society.
The only thing I suppose that isn’t “mainstream” about his appearance was that he does have longer hair than an average or stereotypical white male. I really didn’t mean for his hair to be any statement in particular, I just liked the hairstyle. However, when I was roaming the hotel I went into two different kissing booths and the first things the girl I went and sat down across from was that they were looking for a boy. I then had to clarify that I was a boy. Both girls were rather cold to me, one of them actually got up and walked away and told me she didn’t want to kiss a “tranny.” I told my friend about this and she said she thought my hair looked kind of girlish because I had no idea why she thought I was a girl! I felt really taken aback when I got those comments. I personally have never fell victim to mistaken gender or sex. So even though it wasn’t personally me being mistaken for my sex, it is still a bit troubling and to be honest the names and rude brush off hurt, so I can’t imagine how people who have to deal with that kind of discrimination and prejudice must feel when they face that in their day to day lives.
After using my male avatar for a while I decided to mix it up and become a female, just to see if and or how I might be treated differently and how people would respond to me as a female.
After experiencing some “people” mistaking my first avatar’s gender, I made sure that my girl avatar was especially feminine; I even dressed her in pink. While I didn’t use this avatar as much as I used my boy one, I found that guys approached me more often, especially when I went to the party rooms. I noticed throughout my time in Habbo that girls seemed to do a lot of the sitting/standing around and guys did a lot of the walking around. It was interesting to me how the gender in which has been socially constructed makes females stand around and wait to be approached by men, while men go around and approach the women. While there were plenty of exceptions to this, it seemed the same situations occurred in Habbo which are supposed to happen in public, when the pretty girl is sitting with a friend or alone, the man comes up to her and initiates interaction.
All in all, I found that gender in Habbo Hotel seems to be similar, if not an almost exact replica of the real world we interact in everyday. People can be very critical if a person does not fit the gender norm and social roles seem to play out the same ways our society does.
My first step in becoming a member of Habbo was creating my avatar and since I figured this will probably be the one and only time in my life I can become a boy, I decided to take a spin from the male perspective of virtual reality. I created my first avatar to reflect the dominant, white hegemonic male because I wanted to see if my avatar would exist in Habbo Hotel, the same way he does in our society.
The only thing I suppose that isn’t “mainstream” about his appearance was that he does have longer hair than an average or stereotypical white male. I really didn’t mean for his hair to be any statement in particular, I just liked the hairstyle. However, when I was roaming the hotel I went into two different kissing booths and the first things the girl I went and sat down across from was that they were looking for a boy. I then had to clarify that I was a boy. Both girls were rather cold to me, one of them actually got up and walked away and told me she didn’t want to kiss a “tranny.” I told my friend about this and she said she thought my hair looked kind of girlish because I had no idea why she thought I was a girl! I felt really taken aback when I got those comments. I personally have never fell victim to mistaken gender or sex. So even though it wasn’t personally me being mistaken for my sex, it is still a bit troubling and to be honest the names and rude brush off hurt, so I can’t imagine how people who have to deal with that kind of discrimination and prejudice must feel when they face that in their day to day lives.
After using my male avatar for a while I decided to mix it up and become a female, just to see if and or how I might be treated differently and how people would respond to me as a female.
After experiencing some “people” mistaking my first avatar’s gender, I made sure that my girl avatar was especially feminine; I even dressed her in pink. While I didn’t use this avatar as much as I used my boy one, I found that guys approached me more often, especially when I went to the party rooms. I noticed throughout my time in Habbo that girls seemed to do a lot of the sitting/standing around and guys did a lot of the walking around. It was interesting to me how the gender in which has been socially constructed makes females stand around and wait to be approached by men, while men go around and approach the women. While there were plenty of exceptions to this, it seemed the same situations occurred in Habbo which are supposed to happen in public, when the pretty girl is sitting with a friend or alone, the man comes up to her and initiates interaction.
All in all, I found that gender in Habbo Hotel seems to be similar, if not an almost exact replica of the real world we interact in everyday. People can be very critical if a person does not fit the gender norm and social roles seem to play out the same ways our society does.
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