This article discusses MUVEs, Multi-User Virtual Environments, and how players design their avatars. Each player chooses the details of an avatar and no one has a say in it, a user imagines the height, body proportions, hair, skin, and eye color. I found the six reasons teenagers made their avatars the way the are not surprising. Teenagers make their avatars with characteristics they wish they had, they like, or just to look different. In second life, you can be who you want to be so a teenager would use it as a place to be someone they are not in real life.
This article made me think about the song “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The song talks about creating a world that is your own and no one can change it for you. Second life is a lot like that I think because as a player you are the world’s creator.
It is completely crazy to me to think about this second life website. It boggles my mind that you can be anyone you want to be on here. You can live a whole new life through this website. What scares me though is that people could become obsessed with who they are in second life and think that they are NOW this person in real life. I can definitely see how teenagers would create avatars with characteristics that they wish they had. I think when I was younger I would have made an avatar that looked similar to me but I would have made a few adjustments.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Country Girl on her comment! I first heard about Second Life on a documentary I saw on TV and was immediately weirded out by the whole concept. Some might find it fun, but it can easily go overboard if one becomes obsessed with the identity and virtual life that they create via Second Life. It seems like in our society, we are so obsessed with defining ourselves and adhering to the Western standards of beauty that we will go to extensive lengths to do so. Even if an avatar is simply a virtual representation of one's own self... some people sometimes create a whole new identity, and more often than not, some people create an "enhanced" version of themselves.
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