An article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?" discusses a 53-year-old man's 'obsession' with Second Life, an online virtual world in which players create online personalities, 'avatars', characters who interact with each other doing everyday things such as shopping and getting married.The man described in the article met a female character in Second Life, and married her in-game. The man's wife in real-life is concerned about her husband's obsession with this game. He spends day and night interacting online with his Second World wife.
Digital deception plays a major role in the Second Life game. Users are able to control what their characters look like; as seen in the image to the right, the online physical characteristics of these real-world individuals do not really match. I would consider the online images of these two individuals to be false representations of their real-life images. This could be a reason why they enjoy spending so much time playing the game: the real personalities of these individuals can come through in their characters who might look different than the individuals do in real life. Assessment signals can be controlled by Second Life users by buying physical characteristics for their online characters, including 6-pack abs.
Relationships and interpersonal attraction play very large roles in the Second Life online world. The online relationship that the two individuals in this article share has been growing for some time. Intersection frequency has kept their online relationship going and thriving, while the man's real-life relationship with his wife is suffering. If he spends all of his free time online, he does not spend much time with his actual wife.
The hyperpersonal effect perhaps plays a role in this situation, beginning with their portrayal of physical characteristics in this game. While it is not written anywhere that your online character must resemble the physical attributes of the real-life individuals, online games like Second Life present users with a great opportunity to play off of each other and make themselves to be different than they are in real life.
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Interesting post, I was even inspired to do some light research (wikipedia) on this Second Life online space because I had never heard of it before and it seems simultaneously surprising and obvious to me. Though I don't really know the standards and norms involved in the naming and designing of avatars in this space, I would think that making an avatar that doesn't look like the real individual is more of a role playing thing than a form of digital deception. I feel your discussion of the hyperpersonal theory, however, is extremely relevant, especially in the context of avatars, which are essentially selective (and often exaggerated) self presentations of users. The use of avatars can also be related to McKenna’s relationship facilitation factor "removal of gating features," because users’ real world physical attractiveness and master status cues are presented at their individual discretions and are thus relatively unimportant. I would also think that an avatars’ appearance would not matter so much in Second Life, because I assume that most users are aware of the role playing aspect of the online spaces and thus don’t judge or place as much importance on avatars in the way that they might the individual in an FtF setting.
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