Field Trips

It has been a while since I was on a class field trip. A number of people you are familiar with – some more than others – jostled together into an educationally rich space. The normal questions arise – did everyone make it from the last place to the new one? Are there certain areas we are allowed to go and other not? What the hell does this trip have to do with this class anyway? What surprises me is that I feel I am learning a great deal more about Second Life, and virtual worlds in general, by traveling in a pack then I did traveling solo. In almost every place we have visited someone outside of our group has commented on what a strange group of people we are. After the presentation of the avatars all of them make perfect sense to me – and I must admit I am used to seeing them – so to comment means that somehow we look different from other avatars that these folks encounter. Which I find odd. Why – given the choice – would you not dress as a hotdog, giant robot, pig, flame twirler, super villain, or ball of light? While I do see unique clothing, hair, and movements in the places I visit solo, I do not often run into dramatically unusual avatars. Is it just us, or does everyone go through the funky avatar stage before they settle down into a nice “human” looking avatar?

I must admit that I consider the “avatar” an evolutionary work in progress – never done. When I first entered the world I felt out of place because I was walking around in the free cloths, hair and skin. I felt that to join this world I needed to experience that part of it. And this is where we started the class – “here is some money now go and create an avatar.” Would the results have been different with no money? Could we have asked you to adapt the freebie stuff to your own look? Would we get different reactions traveling as a group? “My how – um – young you all are”? Is this how SL is set up – conformity in one way – buying stuff – but another kind of non-conformity – strange avatars? Is it part of this consumer-based SL culture that I feel the need to buy stuff just to fit in? Is this whole world really just a process of domestication and gentrification? Why do I keep longing for a virtual house as a place to put my stuff? Why, as Bob pointed out, do most places in SL look like suburbia?

But I digress. We have collectively visited 6 locations – a peaceful space resort where you can do Thai Chi, a zombie killing hut dangled above the ocean, Rivendell – sans Elrond, a dance club, a theatre complex and the NMC campus. While we did encounter the “you look strange” element in a few of these places we were only kicked out of one – the dance club. Why? I have no idea. An IM to the banner yielded no reply. But it did cause me to wonder about unspoken rules here in SL. Were there too many of us? Were we acting inappropriately? Did our host (who set up a blanket invitation on the events page by the way) not like how we were dressed? Until he replies we will never know. But it does tell me that I will occasionally transgress an unspoken pack and the result will be that I am locked out of certain areas of SL.

I have had other encounters at dance clubs that reinforced unspoken rules. The universal “Hello Derridada” when I enter a place with folks who all have their tip jars out. I was also told that I was “blocking my frame of reference” – which I suppose is a polite digital way of saying – “you are dancing too close to me you noob.” But dancing in general is an odd thing in SL. I am not sure that I can explain why I find it fun, but I do. I guess it is because it is a social event that I rarely partake of in the real world. In SL – I could care less what my Avi looks like. Plus he knows WAYYYYYY more dances then I do. There is also the banter. Folks tend to talk and riff on each other while dancing. Kind of like a free play zone. It’s hard to get this kind of activity going in RL with strangers. Plus, and this is where it is starting to feel odd – there is a certain “realness” to these encounters. Returning to a dance club I had been a week ago I was recognized and welcomed – not as a potential tipper – which I was – but perhaps a friend – or at the very least – someone to kill some time with. I need to investigate this more.