Resistance and Difference
-role play in a fantasy world
“he doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like a rando without a social life”
“I think this is a substitute for real like. I don’t think its healthy very much at all.”
It is interesting that K identified this process as something only people without a social life would engage in. She also commented that she believed most people to be rather uneducated in SL. Of course, these are assumptions that don’t hold much water next to a larger study on who the users of SL are, largely a diverse middle and upper class crew- a group of people who tend to have more education than K herself. K comes from a working class white family and is completing her bachelors degree part time. She works as a dog groomer. She dropped out of high school at 15, got her GED at 25, and started college part time at 27. Its an especially interesting comment that “he (he being the third particpant, Sam/Xolo who is from Vercruz, Mexico) doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like a rando without a social life.” The implication that identities so deeply tied to our sense of being in RL- things like being Mexican, being white, or being as related to race or ethnicity- can become irrelevant in SL is somewhat challenging. While K still knows that S is Mexican, he doesn’t seem that way in his virtual representation, though she can walk into the next room and hear him speaking Spanish and see him “being Mexican.”
The idea that our differences can become seemingly new, our seeming-ness associated with the fixed qualities of being given to us but society in RL indicates an emergent potentiality for role play and understanding different ways of being. I do not mean here that through role play in SL we are able to understand the way in which certain groups of people with certain stereotypes fixed qualities about themselves inhabit the world, or feel or express relations of power. Instead, this seems to suggest that SL reveals a new way of being that exists neither in the RL nor completely in SL.
Being or existing in a way such that one is not tied to physical identifiers introduces new potential for learning about difference. Because through learning about difference in daily physical life is deeply related to physical appearance, when interaction that involves learning about difference in SL arises it does so through initiation of the topic by one of the parties in SL as opposed to deep assumptions about others related to physical identifiers.
It is also relevant that in SL, because physical identifiers are fluid and we are aware that someone has chosen them, that judging takes on a new form. In order to understand some of the choices, one must initiate conversation. This is relevant to learning because in real life discussion about difference is often avoided at all costs, especially when that difference is physically visable. The two people who participated with me in this research had a discussion at one point with some avatars in a French party sim about ethnic identity. The conversation was brief, and was spawned by the difficulty in communication that was occurring between the French party-goers and K and S, who do not speak French. While K disengaged after a few minutes, S was very attentive and engaged in translating words from English and Spanish to French via an online translator so he could communicate.
Additionally, S communicated with me asking how to say certain things in English so he could feed them into the translator and communicate in French in SL. This, in turn, drew me into the process. While K became very frustrated, both myself and S engaged with the French party-goers about the kinds of alcohol popular in Mexico and Mexican and American tradition and culture.
This instance suggests that through introducing into the feedback loop technological reality created through the computer by the presence of other avatars, our learning another language and about another culture very different from our own was stimulated. We felt a sense of urgency when we discovered the other avatars did not speak English to communicate. Our co-presence in real life fed into this, our excitement and confusion shared in real life directed us to an online translator. This intermingling of real and virtual worlds and conversation led to further conversation later that evening after we had disconnected from SecondLife about cultural and linguistic differences. This suggests that SL might serve as a jumping off point for those trying to stimulate interest in global issues.
Even so, K became very frustrated, though she was in a similar setting both in her physical world and in the virtual world. In order for virtual worlds and places of encounter to spur learning and interest in difference, there needs to be a fluid understanding and high ability of the user to navigate the system and to receive information. K had some difficulty navigating the system, which reflected the general frustration she experiences when using a computer. Clearly, learning through the integration of technology into the feedback loop of understanding- in this way recollecting back to Katherine Hayles’ work on perceiving the world thorugh the virtual, thus making new ideas and encounters possible for the first time.
Different Bodies, Different Experiences
“its like inventing reality, like trying to be whatever you feel like at the moment- things the rich people in RL can do in seconds because they have money- its like in SL you get to be a celebrity with access to body shifting surger to fulfill your whims.
“I think its interesting…. To think about the different kinds of lives people live because of their skin color- except the realities are not even real in SL. In RL, perceived difference has real consequences. In SL, perceived difference is only perceived because you don’t know who it really is… and we don’t punish for role play”
“gender/sex/size/stereotypes madly reinforces as you see so many avatars that are just completely impossible to be real- why do we pusue these Barbie standards? On the other hand, who am I to tell a woman what is beautiful, and who am I to say what she wants to be is or is not valid? Yet also, why does our longing flow in that direction? Where’s the spout?”
“he doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like a rando without a social life”
These comments on physical difference like the way an avatar dresses, skin color, and gender stood out to me from within the diary entries about physical difference. These responses were made after we I took the other two avatars to buy new clothing, to a skin shop to get new skin, and to select new body types.
Again here we see the possibility of being able to understand experience of difference through the dawning of a new avatar. Yet, that experience is unembodied, and this seems to be what S and K are pointing to, suggesting in some ways it is “real” experience yet in many ways it creates few parallels to “real” life. Instead of re-inventing “real” life, SL has the power to instead to spark and support imagination.
In sparking imagination in this virtual world, we may be more able to create empathy and a willineness to listen in real life for our young people. SecondLife then could serve as a space to imagine, to invent, to test and try out ideas and movements in a safe place without the peer pressures affecting young people. Going through this process in “safe groups-“ groups of young people who have established some kind of support structure (as in deep friendship) and guided by an adult, SL exploration of themes related to visual difference like racism, sexism, and body issues might be hinted at and opened up. When these kinds of themes are opened up in a dual space- one that is real and safe as a result of team building and careful teacher facilitation and one that is virtual (ie. SL) and connects youth together in cross cultural scenarios could be a space for “growing” empathy and care that then moves young people to action.
This kind of discussion should facilitated by an adult who is able to monitor experiences both in and out of SL, assuring that young people are questioning the consequences- both in SL and in RL of real and perceived difference. Real and perceived difference seem to become most apparent through the consequences that are attached to them.
How to Deal with the Integration of SL/RL in Educational Settings
“Its surreal that yu can exist in a place like this, and play your music or DJ. It seems like a great way to disseminate music because so many people are there. Creative outlets- it kind of reminds me of interactive way of existing like when I am composing music on my laptop. I get isolated from the world in order to compose, and I sort of float in that world of musical notes. I don’t come out often, and sometimes people’s words- like when Chelsey says something to me when my head phones are on- become part of the music I produce. Not literally, but they find themselves their in notes and tones and syncopations. SL is kind of like that, except that in that world it is not just me and my notes, there are a breadth of other people hanging out- and dancing! Dancing! I would like to be able to show my music here. Even compose here, and compose from the rythym of the people walking around… Like I am making right now a symphony of NYC- it would be a symphony of SL. With Chelsey’s voice in it, and the kittens at my feet. Its when you get into the mode…”
I was sitting at my kitchen table, and my roomie was in her bedroom. My boyfriend was not home, but he teleported “home” via SL from his recording studio. It was a strange mix of being in more than one place at once- in two worlds at once with one person, together in digital points and physically separated by a door. Knowing exactly where the other digital-point-being was hanging out, what he was wearing and doing and where he was sitting twenty blocks away in a reccording studio. I could smell him in my apartment. And he had a different name in SL.
Whether we are in a virtual world or working on some focused activity, outside sounds and events effect our focus, even if we do not notice this effect. We see here S’s recognition of this outside force effecting his musical work. The same thing happens in SL, our setting effecting who we talk to and the way we perceive. It is for this reason I have suggested that using SL in the educational setting we do so in “safe” groups in physical spaces. The facilitator can structure the safe group andphysical space in order to build out the most of interaction with difference in SL.
Sam, being a avid traveler, searched for Paris. We ended up in a french bar. Thats when Sam got a tequila, telling everyone he is Mexica and then began using his desktop translator to translate Spanish words into French in order to communicate in the french cafe….
all that the virtual technology can do, thorugh the internet, to meet people, to make friends
strange mostly because he did not want to really spend time in there getting clothes like I do. He was not into it, preferring to stay in the same old avatar clothes. Interesting, bc in RL he does not care too much about clothes, though I felt the need to tell him he “needed” to change in order to be “cool.” Pressuring him via RL voice about digital existence in SL. Whoa. So he changed, leaving on the avatar shoes and choosing all black. He paid a little more attention to appearance once he figured out how to use it.
