Virtual Friendship, Ugly Avatars
"Real life is for people with ugly avatars."
So spoke my friend SC, from an island floating miles above a neon-lit nighttime metropolis. Aside from the humor value, it reflects another interesting issue: the fact that our avatars are, if done well, idealizations of ourselves. And if my avvie is an idealization of me, does that mean that the friendships that she enters into are somehow idealized? If so, does that make virtual friendships inauthentic, at least somewhat?
It certainly doesn't feel that way. I have developed friendships with a number of SLers, SC most notably, but there are others. And even if they see a sexy form of me--sexy in both the superficial sense of my avvie's looks but also in the deeper sense that my avvie probably has a more interesting personality than I do (anyway, she makes friends a LOT easier than I do)--I don't think I'm flattering myself when I say that after the first 15 minutes, it is ME that they like, not merely my sexy projection.
Still, it is interesting that the idealized projection of me opens doors that I don't think I could ever open in RL. When I first visited Perilous Pleasures for the submissives and slaves retreat, I put myself in a situation unlike anything--anything!--I have ever been in my comparatively vanilla RL. But this situation, whose starting point was that we were all going to share our psychosexual experiences, fetishes, and fantasies (embodied in our avvies), created an instant intimacy simply impossible in RL. Well, simply impossible for me in RL. So, perhaps our idealized forms are fictions, constructions; but perhaps they also open doors of friendship that otherwise would remain closed. If a part of me yearns for those sorts of friendships, a part of me that is genuine, private, and largely unacknowledged, I don't see how it can be inauthentic.
SC: Your avatar is beautiful! I hope to see her time and again in SL!
So spoke my friend SC, from an island floating miles above a neon-lit nighttime metropolis. Aside from the humor value, it reflects another interesting issue: the fact that our avatars are, if done well, idealizations of ourselves. And if my avvie is an idealization of me, does that mean that the friendships that she enters into are somehow idealized? If so, does that make virtual friendships inauthentic, at least somewhat?
It certainly doesn't feel that way. I have developed friendships with a number of SLers, SC most notably, but there are others. And even if they see a sexy form of me--sexy in both the superficial sense of my avvie's looks but also in the deeper sense that my avvie probably has a more interesting personality than I do (anyway, she makes friends a LOT easier than I do)--I don't think I'm flattering myself when I say that after the first 15 minutes, it is ME that they like, not merely my sexy projection.
Still, it is interesting that the idealized projection of me opens doors that I don't think I could ever open in RL. When I first visited Perilous Pleasures for the submissives and slaves retreat, I put myself in a situation unlike anything--anything!--I have ever been in my comparatively vanilla RL. But this situation, whose starting point was that we were all going to share our psychosexual experiences, fetishes, and fantasies (embodied in our avvies), created an instant intimacy simply impossible in RL. Well, simply impossible for me in RL. So, perhaps our idealized forms are fictions, constructions; but perhaps they also open doors of friendship that otherwise would remain closed. If a part of me yearns for those sorts of friendships, a part of me that is genuine, private, and largely unacknowledged, I don't see how it can be inauthentic.
SC: Your avatar is beautiful! I hope to see her time and again in SL!
posted by Allecto Brissot at 5:34 PM
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