Jacek Antonelli asks, “Personally, do you consider your avatar an extension of yourself, or a character you control?”
From the answers people are offering so far, there seem to be (at least) two questions here. One is, “Do you role-play a character in SL that is different from your RL personality, or do is your SL personality basically the same as your RL one?” The second is, “To what extent do you identify with your on-screen avatar?”
For my own part, I haven’t crafted a separate SL personality. Kieres Tzara in SL is basically me. Usually listening more than talking, occasionally coming up with odd bits of trivial knowledge (and seldom anything important). Yeah. Sounds about right.
If you’d asked me a few months ago whether I identified with my avatar, I would have said “no” — it’s just an avatar, nothing more. But that answer would be betrayed by the appearance of my avatar, which looks as much like me as I can accomplish using the built-in generic body parts and textures. I find myself hesitating to change my avatar’s appearance to something with which I can’t personally identify. I had trouble hair shopping because I couldn’t find anything that I would wear on my own (RL) head. This might not be such an issue if I chose an appearance more different from the basic human appearance, but I can only guess. At least I’m not alone – Erbo not only fashioned his avatar to make it look similar to himself, but he finds himself dressing like his avatar, too.
So, to answer Jacek, I guess I treat my avatar as an extension of myself in both senses. I have a quirky side that doesn’t come through very easily in SL, mainly because it’s hard to express in text (even with the help of animated gestures). But I guess Kieres is me, at least to the extent the technology permits.
“…but he finds himself dressing like his avatar, too.” Even though my avator doesn’t look particularly like me (more like a brother, maybe), something bleeds through: I’ve had two different SL friends tell me “you shouldn’t be wearing that, this-and-such would suit you better.” And guess what: I’m being directed to the same clothing I wear in real life, or have worn in the past. Uncanny. Unfortunately, the direction is inevitably away from mildy outré, to rather staid… so perhaps it’s not that uncanny after all!
Kieres say: “I have a quirky side that doesn’t come through very easily in SL, mainly because it’s hard to express in text”. One gets tired of writing lol and the like… I need an emoticon that means: “slight wry twitch of the corner of the mouth”. Then I can just use that one 99% of the time.
Comment by Coyote — March 8, 2007 @ 8:27 am
Thanks for posting a not-a-meme response, Kieres
Nice to learn more about you.
Comment by Dolmere — March 14, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
[...] more things one can buy for female avatars. Do the changes represent a change away from my post a few weeks ago when I observed that my avatar vaguely resembled me? Maybe. I’ve made a few more steps away [...]
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