Description
As a newbie on Second Life, I accidentally chose to be a short female raccoon, thinking that it would be cute to be a rodent. I entered a popular space called “Best Skin, Clothes, Shape” and found that I was one of the most unattractive virtual beings. I walked up to a group of “fashionable” people sitting around a table smoking and tried joining the conversation but once they saw that I was a raccoon they stopped interacting with me. I then tried making my raccoon-self sexy by making my skirt tighter and exposing more fur but that only made the people around the table actually get up and move away from me. For the rest of the hour I sat alone, talking and gesturing to myself.
Second Life is a 3-D virtual game in which users interact with each other through motional avatars (digital representation of themselves), which they can choose and customize. It is one of the many virtual environments that increasingly allow users to alter their avatars dramatically and without much effort. According to the Proteus Effect, an individual’s behavior conforms to their avatar choice independent of how others perceive them. Or more precisely, they will conform to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have (ex. stereotypes). To study the effects of the Proteus Effect, Yee & Bailenson conducted a study in which they tested three hypotheses by focusing on the following measures.
1. Interpersonal distance- According to nonverbal expectancy violations theory, when attractive individuals move too close to someone, the positive valence that is created can be socially advantageous. Therefore, users with attractive avatars will walk closer to the counterpart than those with unattractive avatars.
Comment 1
Comm 245 Blue: 10. EarlMonroe in Second Life
Comm 245 Blue: #10: Too Fat for Friends
6 comments:
Lina,
I love the fact that you were a rodent. I think this lends to an extremely interesting analysis of Second Life in terms of the Yee & Bailenson study. Your comment about behavioral confirmation is intriguing, and I wonder if your findings have anything to do with compensating to your avatar choice because it wasn't a human. To clarify, we know what it's like to be a human, so an online representation of that won't necessarily lead to us behave much differently from how we would normally, but seeing as we don't know what it's like to be a rodent, it would be more possible to change our behavior since we have no previous precedent.
Interesting post, I never thought to be a rodent or anything else other than a human in Second Life. One question I have is did you really think that you were unable to become intimate because you were unattractive or because you were a rodent? I seem to think that even if you were a cute little rabbit or something that people still would not interact with you. I think that any different species would have a different experience. Well done.
Interesting post.
I'd like to point out that,while it's possible other players avoided you on the basis of the unattractiveness of your avatar alone, it's equally likely that you had a hard time conversing with others because they automatically assumed you were a furry. Furries have a relatively large presence on Second Life but get a lot of negative stereotyping via word-of-mouth and popular media, so it's possible the other players acted accordingly. You didn't mention running into players of other animal types, which makes me wonder if your experience would have been considerably different had you entered a "furry" area first.
I agree with Milan. When I read your post I thought of the same thing. Although it's a personal choice the whole "furry" thing is a little disconcerting and I might avoid a random raccoon with a super-tight skirt on, but that's just me :). Nice risk taking!
I found it interesting that you chose to be a rodent. As a newbie to second life, I also had to make that initial choice. I actually thought about it for a good 5 minutes, asking myself if it'd be the norm to choose a non-human character. Following my instincts, I dedcided to stick with what I assumed to be the norm--the girl next door. I am glad I did too, after reading your experience as an overexposed, furry racoon. I think I would have found it much harder to start up some conversations with random people if I weren't human, because I think that less human means less unattractive (although some humans can be pretty unattractive...).
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