I am not a misanthrope but I play one in RL

Basically I am a loner. I am the type of person that likes long solo car rides, long solo bike rides, getting to the office early to savor that quiet time when I can actually get some work done. Part of this may emanate from control issues – when alone I can go at my own pace, listen to the music I want to listen to, stop, go, do what I please. Most of the experiences that I have had in virtual worlds supported this. Myst is the ideal loner game – wandering around in beautiful empty worlds where all that is there is the residue of a culture that once was. Quiet reflective solitude, and some really cool puzzles to solve. Obsidian and Rhem were built on the same frame. And to a large extent so are traditional video games – I still have my NES and occasionally Mario and I go off to save the Princes battling nothing but bots in strange labyrinthine lands. My experience with WOW had a similar feeling. Granted I only spent about 30 or so hours there – hardly anything compared to the years other have spent - but I found that I could be a loner, ignore requests to duel and to join groups, put my head down and simply execute the tasks set for me by the many bots that litter this land.

So – it was with a kind of arrogance that I set off to team teach a course on virtual worlds. I figured I know virtual worlds and I’m a scholar, all I need to do with Second Life is read about it, study it, spend some time there and I will have it figured out. And I did spend time there – many many hours – but alone on the university land practicing camera angles and learning how to build. Eventually, though, the isolation got to me and I bought a cat (which I named Glitch – I am now on Glitch IV because the first three had – well a glitch) to keep me company. Just like my cat in RL Glitch runs up to greet me when I arrive. And I must admit I look forward to this. I established a ritual of sorts – enter SL – pet Glitch a few times and head off. Return home at the end of the day, pet Glitch and log off. And I realize that this habitual action is part of the seductive quality of the medium.

I never looked for anything to greet me in Myst or WOW or Duck Hunt or Sim Earth. As completely virtual, digital spaces I entered those worlds knowing that when I shut them off they ceased to exist. SL is different. SL exists in real time (or slt) in which events and meetings (even casual meetings) happen within a specific time frame. Like RL SL is constantly changing and evolving. It has the squirrely, squishy, capricious quality of the real – but the real filtered though the virtual in which the virtual becomes naturalized to the point of invisibility. In the future when I want to discuss Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and simulacrum I will simply take my students to SL since here “it is no longer a question of imitation, nor or reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself.” It is here where the boundaries of RL and SL begin to blur that the performative aspects of this virtual world are magnified. SL has the quality of live performance in that anything might happen at any time.

It is this perpetual motion aspect that I discovered when I let Glitch wander freely and she would inevitably wander off of the parcel and then end up in my inventory. An email alert let me know she was back. But back from where? What had she seen? Who had she met? Why do I assume she has a will? And this is where all of those layers I see between user and avatars and user begin to collapse. The moment – not a conscious one mind you – I began to think of the virtual cat as having a name, a personality, a will, and looking forward to her hello was the moment that I was seduced by the medium. It is this anticipation that was easily transferred to my SL friends where a simple “Hi Deri” sparks the same feeling of acceptance that it does in RL.

Despite all of this I do keep reminding myself that SL is not real, that the virtual is a temporal and temporary medium and that most of what I am getting from the digital creatures I interact with is pure projection on my part. And then I get a TP invite to someone’s home. The routine that has been established with my “theory friend” is that when we happen to meet in world we will share whatever interesting places we have found. So – a quick greeting and a TP invite and we now “share” the same “space.” Except this last time it was not some fanciful imaginative land but “her” apartment. Instantly I left the casual, almost happenstance wandering of SL and was transported to a highly personalized space (aren’t all spaces in SL highly personalized?). Now I know that this is not a corporeal space but one whipped up by the Linden Lab servers, yet I could not get over the feeling that here I was in the apartment of an attractive young girl that I hardly know. I realize that this sharing was not meant as a suggestion of intimacy but of “hey – look what I got” – the way you might show a friend a new coat or hat or CD. But, just like with Glitch, I started to compress the layers between avatars and read the scene as something more than virtual.

Second Life is seductive in ways that other virtual worlds could never be. Since all of SL is user created – it is all intentional – all scripted – all planned – an yet has the improvisatory aspect of real life. Unlike other virtual spaces where the structure of the “game” controls the action, in SL it is the interaction between users – talking, dancing, fucking, bonding, making, buying, selling, greeting, role playing, etc that propels the action. Devoid of a fixed narrative or code SL is constantly evolving, constantly providing new experiences and new connections. It is this aspect of SL that initially drew me in. Yes I am a loner, but a loner that loves conversation. One of the few things I liked about living in a college dorm was that there was always someone – any time – day or night – to talk to. This is, for me, is the appeal of Second Life, that it is like one gigantic college dorm. Sure there are lots of interesting sexual escapades happening behind closed doors – but beyond that it is a community (a huge community) all in the same “space” continually interacting. Here it is easy to find that guy that lives on the second floor that you don’t really trust but visit every once in a while because he has great weed and studies philosophy. The gal two floors above with the killer record collection that will play you any tune you can imagine. Or the quiet and shy guy down the hall who hasn’t said a word all term until you both realize that you have read all the same books and then spend hours and hours talking about literature. Yes these conversations can happen in RL or via email, or FB, or on something called a telephone – but none of these mediums puts you in the same space with someone thousands of miles away curled up on the same sofa.

I am resistant to allow RL and SL to collapse, and yet I discover that I do have friends in here, I do have folks I look forward to talking with, dancing with, sharing spaces with. Perhaps everyone goes through this in SL – the seven stages of virtual habituation or some equivalent list. I don’t ever expect to get to the point where I push aside the virtual for RL connections with SL friends, but as Tamar pointed out on an earlier blog entry “Emotions on SL are real...the emotional attachment that you make with people you develop friendships with is startling. I know it doesn't happen to everyone...but don't be surprised if it happens to you.” As a teacher I like being proved wrong, it is humbling and reminds me how much I still have to learn.