How separate is your avatar?

[claude.d...@gmail.com]

I've plunged myself into an interesting conundrum. When I first got
involved in SL, I became part of a community that....

1) Had several members who had very strong feelings about privacy
2) Generated lots of email traffic

So, following community norms, I set up a separate email account and
twitter feed for my avatar. This hasn't been a problem until now.
CCK08SL has sort of thrown everything for a loop. Some people from
CCK08 follow my avatar twitter feed but others follow my RL twitter
feed. Here in CCK08SL, all my postings are under my avatar name, but
my CCK08 blog is under my real name. There may be nothing to do but
explicitly link my FL/SL identities. Any suggestions as to how to
unmuddle things?

[Fleep]

Hi Claude,

I think of all the various issues that participation in virtual worlds brings up, struggling with one's identity is one of the trickiest.

I wrote a short essay about this topic when the University of Cincinnati Second Life Learning Community first began.. 

The Many Faces of Fleep

What does your avatar say about you?

When you inhabit virtual spaces and social networks, identity becomes an Issue. How do you represent yourself? From icons to avatars, screen names to email addresses, at some point you have to make a choice about what iconography you will use, what identity you will take up.

For many years, the "Fleep" name has been a personal identity. It was only when my involvement in the virtual world of Second Life changed from personal to professional that I realized how separately I had kept my work and personal "net life". Not that I made any particular effort to keep my real identity secret, I've always assumed that anonymity is mostly impossible in this day and age, but that the people who knew me as Fleep and the people who knew me as Chris often weren't the same people. And after 13+ years of involvement with net communities, goodness knows what I might have written in my early 20s under the Fleep moniker that I'd perhaps not want my boss to see.

Having come to the crossroad, I've taken the plunge and this is my first attempt to tie together my various identities.

How has this decision affected my choices about how I present my digital self? Not very much. As you will see, my avatar/icon choices either say something about my desire to represent my digital self very much like my real self, or it shows a stunning lack of imagination.

Here, then, are the many faces of Fleep.(pix at http://homepages.uc.edu/secondlife/index.php/Main/WhatDoesYourAvatarSayAboutYou).

- - - -

That was written back in March of 2007 and more than a year later I can say that I've had few regrets about finally merging my online and offline selves.  Many of the things I feared - professional people thinking the name "Fleep" was silly, a loss of privacy, loss of freedom to do as I pleased when off the clock, either haven't materialized or were less problematic than I thought (many people now call me Fleep in real life, including professionals I deeply respect!).

The biggest downside to this merging of identities, as far as I can tell, is that the lines between my "work" time and my "personal" time have blurred beyond all recognition.  If I log into a web service at 2AM and a professor at my university sees me online and has a question, they ask.  My global colleagues operate in their own time zones, and contact "Fleep" night and day.  I think the merging of my identities has caused me to abandon the conventions of my local time zone and I frequently find myself living on "internet time" or "Second Life Time" in order to accomplish my goals - personal and professional.  I feel on call 24/7. 

I don't want to downplay the significance of this change, it has been a difficult transition at times, and especially early on I felt a lot of trepidation about explicitely linking my "real" self to my "virtual" self - but over time, the benefits have been tremendous in that I no longer see a distinction at all.  I am Fleep and Fleep is me.  I am Chris and Chris is me.  I am me no matter what mode, service, site, place, or location I am in, and it's freeing to no longer have to worry about keeping things separate.

The biggest obstacle I face now is that many of the web/virtual world based tools that I use fail in a _technical_ sense to give me the options I want to manage the flow of contacts, information, and contexts in which people may find information about me.  For example, in Second Life, the "busy" setting will automatically IM people to tell them I am busy, but it also turns off functionality I may need, like seeing messages as they are sent, the ability to receive items, etc.  In practical terms, the "busy" function is useless to me, but I really wish there were a way to flag my status as "at work - friends don't bug me unless it's urgent" or "just hanging out - IM at will!".  By merging my identities, I appear available to everyone all the time if I am logged in, and that is often difficult to negotiate.  The downside of being _too_ connected?  =)

In almost all other respects, though, merging my identities has been a very positive experience for me.  Anyone else faced this question?


- Chris/Fleep

[Blanche Maynard]

Bonjour Claude and Fleep,

I am relatively new to virtual worlds and social networks in general,
but already feel the impact on my identity, which is multi-faceted
from the start (I am a historian and an education professional, but
also a mom, a daughter, a friend, a Québécoise...).

One thing that has changed my way of looking at myself and presenting
myself to others is the fact that I am now known under two different
names. This feels (still) a little strange especially since in Quebec,
where I was born and grew up, women don't take their husband's name
when they get married: they keep their own. Until recently, I had only
been known as Louise Côté. My 'real' name was a big part of my
personal identity.

But it's changing, or rather evolving. My 'virtual' name is also
becoming part of my personal and social identity. When someone calls
me Blanche in SL or Twitter, it now feels natural because Blanche is
me in the eyes of many people who don't know me otherwise. And so it's
also becoming me in my own eyes.

Blanche isn't separate from me but she isn't the entire me either. I
made the analogy, during our latest SL discussion, between avatar
names and screen names. Both are used in a specific social and public
context, but not necessarily in a private one. For example, I am not
Blanche to my kids and family. And that's why Blanche is me but not
entirely me: the more personal, private part of my identity is not
reflected in Blanche. Blanche doesn't have kids in SL; she doesn't
have a partner. Or cats.

But she is French-speaking, as everyone can tell by the clumsy way she
writes (see, I'm still referring to her using the 3rd person... The
identity transfer isn't yet complete). Keeping my identity as a
francophone was very important, and this is why I chose a virtual name
that sounded somewhat French. I don't know if I would have to same
feeling of closeness with my avatar and my virtual identity in general
if I had selected an English-sounding name. Unconsciously, I think
that I wanted her to be me from the beginning.

Am I making any sense?

Louise/Blanche

[Yvonne Anthony]

Hi everyone,

When I first signed on to second life, I got an avatar without even considering that she was going to be 'me' in SL.  By the time I realised that this was not a game, that it was a real me in sl, it was too late to change my avatar to look more like me in RL. People recognised Yvonne as me.   

When I became engaged in education in sl, I realised the distance between my real look and my avatar.  And yes, this did concern me - only because of peoples' perceptions of the reasons I would look like a Barbie doll.  But I am as attached to her personality as I am to her look (which reflects that personality) - because the "me" I have become lost all of her characteristics as I became a mother, had to be serious about a job, a reputation, responsibilities and all the boring stuff surrounding my life.

 

Yvonne on the other hand is the "me" that is, that could have been, that actually became me and transformed my attitude to real life.  I rediscovered a gaiety, a "blondeness" (successfully covered up for years as beeing too flip to be respected) and a whole range of other attributes in myself.  How much of a change?  Well, I am interested in looking at the personalities of avatars and the people behind them because I think the MBTI they demonstrate in real life is not necessarily the MBTI they demonstrate in sl, and I wonder who the real person is.  For example, being flip and disorganised (not paying attention to the details because my head was flying - I am a NF) forced me to change my habits at a very early age because of the trouble I had in my early years at school with teachers!  To all intents and purposes, I appear to be an SJ.  Far from the truth.

 

And why would we want to be shackled by our real life attributes and ecological constraints anyway when in sl?  I think this is by far the most exciting part of sl, otherwise education is probably more efficient and directed in a regular online environment.  I think a second way of looking at things is required too.  Why do we continue to recreate our traditional rl structures in sl?  Shouldn't we be concentrating on building what patently is not possible in rl?  For instance, I built my first house and then made sure it was firmly anchored on the ground!!!! How boring in retrospect!!!!!  I think in this regard, my eyes were opened up at the SL 5th Birthday display, where the extraordinary prevailed!

 

Enough rambling! But thank you for raising the question!!

 

xxxxx with kisses and hugs from Yvonne .......and......

regards from Wendy

[claude.d...@gmail.com]

Merci, Blanche,

Quand j'ai découvert SL, J'ai voulu l'utiliser pour enseigner, surtout
les langues vivantes. Je suis un ancien prof de français. Donc,
malgré que je sois anglophone des E-U, j'ai choisi un nom de SL
"français". Comme vous, j'ai un avatar célibataire, mais je suis marié
avec deux enfants.Cependant, je ne me conduis pas dans une manière
differente quand je suis dans SL. Claude, est-il different, puisqu'il
se conduit exactement comment je me conduis? Je crois que non. Il est
moi. Pour avoir une vraie difference, je dois jouer Claude comme un
rôle dans une pièce.

Jason/Claude