identity in Second Life

I've been doing activities for a while now in Second Life as part of Dr. Nahl's 677 class, but they've all been library or HCI-related.

(PLUG: If you're interested, the 677 class is going to have an online career fair May 8 talking about jobs both in and out of Second Life. It would be a great time to see if you're interested in the platform. Feel free to add my regular SL avatar - Melanie Twine.)

So, as part of my studies of identity for my project in this class, I decided to start a new avatar that was going to only be vaguely related to the real me. (To pretend to be someone who's completely not me, and has no interests anywhere near me, would probably take a dissertation's worth of research and care.) I had originally said I was going to do social networking, but I'm fickle, and will probably do both.

Given that I decided to move away from my "first life" persona, I decided to start with gender, and made this new avatar male. His name is Binnea.

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Here is my definition of online identity for Second Life:

An identity defined by a physical avatar (male, female, or nonhuman), sometimes voice, social interactions and group affiliations (through friends made and groups joined), that can but do not have to have anything to do with one's real life appearance or activities.

This is different from Twitter as explained in Honeycutt, which is very much a text-based identity (perhaps with a picture or two) and one where one may have "followers" that are not necessarily friends (Huberman). Also, from my personal experience, Twitterers tend to be associated with a real life person just like with social networks such as Facebook and Myspace, while many Second Life practicioners try to stay away from revealing a lot of personal details.

Also, different from the goths Hodkinson studied, Second Life is very much a free-for-all community type meeting space rather than one-to-many meeting space like a blog. People in Second Life tend to chat in communities (although IM is available), different from the goth blogs where:
1) one person would express their day-to-day life as in a diary
2) goths would use the contacts gained through their blogs to enhance their real life musical meet-ups, and vice-versa.

Second Life is somewhat standalone on the Internet; there are no blog meetups or "tweet-ups" as is popular in Twitter, although there are conventions. It is generally not intertwined with real life unless one is involved in professional activities. Ploderer's study of BodySpace was also heavily intertwined with real life, as the bodybuilders would post real pictures, stories, and fitness facts about themselves and in at least one case a bodybuilder found a real life friend through the site. Donath's study, involving Facebook and Myspace, was as well deeply rooted in the real world. Avatars in Second Life can get away with "risky" behavior that teens on MySpace cannot because they are not tied to a real person.

Truly, much of "Second Life" is about the ability to start a second life where one's appearance, thoughts, feelings, and behavior can be completely different from the way one is in real life. Speaking of the three theories about Internet and community as stated in Wellman et al's article, I feel like Second Life could end up supplanting community. But, for the artist in this New York Times article, Second Life ended up transforming his community by giving him new opportunities to sell art both online and offline.

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Here are my informal use scenarios:

1) Getting clothes.

People in Second Life are always in need of clothing. Since I was in the beginning of my journey, I wanted to find free clothes. Being a librarian, I clicked on the "search" button at the bottom of the page, then the "places" tab (since places tend to have clothing) and typed in "free clothes". There were many, many results. Here I decide which place I want to go to, and click "teleport".



An additional option would be going to a typical gathering place in Second Life and asking where there is a good place to get free clothes (an interpersonal interaction).

I ended up going to Sarah Nerd's Freebie Paradise, a place with free men's and women's hair and clothes. There, I found some new hair and some new clothes. You can customize just about everything, including eye shape and skin, but I will work with that in the future.

Then there's putting on the clothing, which is a whole other box of worms that I won't get into. In the end, I had some clothes that didn't look too bad - at least I didn't look quite like a noob anymore.

2) Going places.

Since my Second Life experience so far had been mediated through a librarian's perspective, I realized that I needed interaction - but how? First I had to decide what this new persona liked, because that's how you find things to do in Second Life and I decided on adventure, science fiction and fantasy. I'm a reader of fantasy so this wasn't so far off from my real self.

Here I started to have problems. I searched for science fiction and fantasy groups, but there were so many I didn't know where to start. Then I decided to click on "Showcase", Linden Lab's pick of popular and/or interesting sites. I figured that since they were featured, there were likely to be a lot of people there and so I could meet some people. The real me might have been interested in checking out IEEE Island, but no! I picked Neemrana spring, "a place where you could find hidden treasure".



Then, you hit "teleport" and Second Life transports you to where you need to go.

Neemrana was a beautiful, Asia-inspired place that was fun to fly around and look at. I talked with a couple of avatars as well.

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I discussed a little of this previously, but to thoroughly answer the question "How are online identities shaped and expressed through online interactions in this community?", here is an overview of identity in SL:

1) Groups

Groups are how like-minded people communicate with one another in Second Life and show their affiliations. If you join a particular group, and it is a large and active group, there will be "group notices" that give you notices and teleport locations to particular meetings. Depending on the group, these meetings could be to talk, to dance, or to listen to a particular person speak.

I joined a group called "Science Fiction and Fantasy".



2) Appearance

Clothing and appearance is an INCREDIBLY important part of your self-representation in Second Life. There are many freebie clothes available, but if you own clothes that are only available with a purchase by Linden (the currency in Second Life), you have more social capital due to your perceived investment in the entire Second Life environment.

You can control how tall or thin you are, your skin, hair, and eye color, and of course what you are wearing.



3) Hangouts

Hangouts tend to be related to what group a specific avatar is in, but not always. Different hangouts give you different people who tend to be interested in a topic. (There are even a group of people who like to hang around the big virtual reference desk in Second Life who are not librarians themselves.)

I am a fan of the show Gossip Girl, and decided my character was too (hey, all things are possible - there's actually a SL group for guy fans of Gossip Girl). The Gossip Girl section of SL is enormous, with its own quick start guide for new users (indicating that it pulls many new users in). I talked to some other new users there and helped one with some clothing issues. What a stereotypical librarian I am.




Will Binnea get some better clothes? Please stay tuned.