Virtual worlds
Perhaps I’m of the wrong generation, but virtual worlds confuse me. But even back on a BBS (before the Internet and shortly after it started leaking out of institutions of higher education) I saw signs of virtual life. Thirteen year-olds would declare themselves engaged or married, or rather their in-game characters would. It was all part of the game on the computer; couples could share things that single characters couldn’t. But then you’d discover that some of the virtual couples were dating.
So here’s the question; are people using their avatars to live a life they wouldn’t think of living in real life, or one they very much want to live in real life? Are those two choices different? Maybe they aren’t. That flirt, or that bitch, in a chat room might deny being that way face to face and claim to never even think of displaying those behaviors toward another person. “Oh, that’s just a role played online.” But where did that come from? Is the avatar an object resulting from creativity or simply a loss of inhibition?
And what of the person that plays their avatar just as they would real life, simply as an extension of their self? To them, the virtual world is a different neighborhood to explore. New things to do and people to meet. And here is where the problems begin. Real-person-avatar meets unreal-person-avatar. Neither can know who they are interacting with. And maybe after all, this IS a model of real life, because we never do know whether the people we’re talking to are being honest. Even with themselves.