Two Wives, Two Marriages, & No Broken Laws - 5

Ric Hoogestraat lives in Arizona and has two wives - and its all legal. He has been married to his real wife, Sue Hoogestraat for seven months and then preceded to get married to “Tenaj Jackalope” on Second Life, a digital fantasy land. In real life, Ric has had many different jobs from being an elementary school teacher, ski instructor, and on-the-road salesman. Right now, he works as a call-center operator and makes $14.00 an hour. He has a bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University and took graduate courses at the University of Wyoming and the University of Arizona. Physically, he is heavy, has a long gray ponytail, and a mustache.

In contrast, Ric (rather Dutch Hoorenbeek) is a successful entrepreneur in Second Life. He has a networth of around $1.5 million and owns a mall, a private beach club, a dance club, and a strip club. He also employees 25 other avatars and designs bikinis and lingerie that he sells in his Red Headed Lovers chain store. Dutch is a muscular, 6’9 man with a dark ponytail, who rides motorcycles. His avatar wife, Taneaj, is a young red-headed woman with green eyes, full lips, and racy clothing. The two of them own a house, pay a mortgage, have a dog, and spend hours together online shopping and riding motorcycles.

While, Ric “assure[s] his wife that it’s only a game,” he spends six hours a night and fourteen hours on weekends as Dutch Hoorenbeek. Meanwhile, his real wife joined an online support group for spouses of obsessive online gamers and says that “she worries it will be years before her husband realizes that he’s traded his real life for a pixilated fantasy existence, one that doesn’t include her.” Although, she refuses to live him because she believes that his avatar is “him at 25 … He’s a good person. He’s just fallen down this rabbit hole.”

Taneaj and Dutch have never met or talked in real life and have no plans to do so, but both insist that there is a “huge trust between [them]” and they “tell each other everything.” Their intimacy is based on what’s posted on their online user profiles and the exorbitant amount of time they spend together - going to the beach, walking the dogs, and motorcycle riding in this fantasy world. And while her husband spends 10 hours straight in Second Life without leaving the computer room, Sue Hooggestraat is stuck facing reality on her own.

Digital Deception is the intentional control of information in a technologically mediated message to create a false belief in the receiver of the message. Of the two kinds of deception, I think this scenario is a good example of identity-based deception rather than message-based deception. Identity-based deception is the false manipulation of display of a person’s or organization’s identity. In this case, Dutch’s avatar is an ideal physical representation of himself – the avatar is much younger than he is, is more fit, slim, and muscular and has dark hair. Taneaj is also a younger version of herself - in person, she is older and has short red hair, while her avatar is very young, has long red streaked hair and a more attractive face. This is an example of selective self-presentation from the Hyperpersonal Model. Neither Dutch nor Taneaj have seen each other face-to-face, so both do not know what each other’s true physical traits and what are manipulated (although after this article came out, I supposed they both saw each other since each of their pictures were displayed in the article). Message-based deception is when the information between two people is manipulated or controlled deception. All of the parties are well aware of what is going on – Sue know that her husband is married in Second Life, and Taneaj knows that Dutch has a wife in real wife. The article did not really discuss their conversations, so I guess I do not definitely know if there was message based deception, but it seems to be more of a case of identity-based deception.

I think that three relationship factors play a large role in Dutch and Taneaj’s marriage – physical attractiveness, proximity, and common ground. In relation to physical attractiveness, while normally CMC one first gets to know a person and then finds them attractive, in this case, the relationship was based on the avatar’s physical appearance. Both are young and physically attractive and because it is a fantasy-land, one can “see” what the person looks like before interacting with them. Proximity is a significant aspect of the online relationship. Familiarity breeds attraction and online, familiarity is a result of intersection frequency. The article talks about Dutch and Taneaj spending a lot of time together – shopping and walking around malls, going to the beach, riding Dutch’s motorcycle, going dancing, walking their two dogs, and hanging out around their house. They interact daily and besides when Dutch is off “working” in Second Life, they spend the majority of their time together. Finally, the Dutch and Taneaj talk to each other all of the time and say they tell each other “everything.” It seems that they share a common ground, mutually shared beliefs, assumptions, and presumptions.