10: Avatars vs. The Self

This week, I entered Second Life as Snn7 Nestler – and I had no idea what I was doing. First, I created an account, and immediately got stuck on the name – in the instructions it said it was important because you couldn’t go back and change it, but I didn’t know what the “norm” was for avatar names. Does one use his/her real name, is it more like a screenname, is it initials? I went with my netid and then chose a last name that was closest to my own. Then I had to choose an avatar and again, I did not know what to do. There were not that many options and none of them really fit my physical attributes. So I went with the young girl with brown hair and some fashion sense.

I began Second Life on Orientation Island with other new users. There was so much going on and I did not know where to begin. I was looking at the instructions and back at the keyboard, totally ignoring the chat window that opened. It was difficult trying to read the instructions, follow them, and pay attention to what other people were doing at the same time. Once I started talking with them, I stopped “playing” and when I was “playing” I had trouble keeping up with their conversation.

I passed the four different stations and received my transport key to Second Life. This time, I was in a world where there were people there specifically to help me and answer my questions. I spent the rest of my hour in this world.

From the beginning, I saw that my avatar choice and other peoples’ avatars affected my behavior. Starting in the orientation world, I was frustrated with my physical appearance because my avatar did not look anything like me and I did not like the idea of people looking at my avatar and connecting it back to me. I was making judgments based on other people’s avatars – I stayed away from the scary looking older man and did not really respond when he started talking to me, but moved myself next to the younger, cute boy and started talking to him – and I didn’t want people make judgments of this avatar who really did not represent who I was. Because I saw myself immediately making these judgments, it made me even more motivated to change my avatar to look like me. I learned how to change my appearance right away and was focused on getting my avatar to resemble me.

The Yee & Bailenson (2007) article was also focused on how avatars and self-representation, questioning how peoples’ avatars change their behavior online. I think for the most part, my avatar choice did not affect the way I behaved in Second Life. According to Yee & Bailenson (2007), “in online environments, the avatar is not simply a uniform that is worn, the avatar is our entire self-representation.” But for me, the avatar was more of the “uniform that is worn” rather than a true self-representation. In the Orientation World, there were three other people with the same avatar because it was just a model you chose to sign up to play. I was uncomfortable with my avatar because I did not like the idea that people were going to interact with me based on what I looked like, yet I looked like so many others in the room.

However, in some ways, I do think that my avatar choice affected my behavior – but not in the ways discussed by Yee and Bailenson. While this study focused on whether one had an attractive or unattractive avatar and how height affected behavior, I was more affected by the fact that my avatar looked nothing like me and a lot like other people in my room. That made me feel uncomfortable, and thus made me more shy and less friendly with the other avatars. The whole time, I was thinking “this isn’t me” and I think it made me less willingly to talk with the other avatars – I didn’t have a sense of self. While I eventually figured out how to change my avatar’s physical appearance, it took me a while to do so and that whole time, I did not have a positive outlook on the situation.

My first experience with the virtual game world online was interesting. I was glad that I finally got to see and experience what I had heard so much about, but at the same time, I did not really enjoy my time in Second Life. I was frustrated that I didn’t know how to play, and learning took time and effort and the avatar’s physical appearance in the beginning. While I can see how people can get very involved in the world and their avatar, for me, I’m more comfortable with FTF interactions and people seeing the real me.