My mix'n match assignment: Alts in Second Life - necessary evil, fun diversion or an easy way to be dishonest

As I have mentioned in some previous posts, a few weeks ago I joined the mix'n match event, where SL bloggers were mixing subjects, writers and hosting blogs. The event was great and a big success across the SL blogosphere, and I was able to read many interesting entries by a lot of skilled people. Unfortunately I had little luck and my own entry was never published by the intended blog. The owner was taking a break in those days so I guess she overlooked it (I hope that the reason was not that my contribution was judged too bad :) )
So, since a coupe of weeks have passed by now and since I think it is a pity to forget the entry and the subject, I am publishing it here, in a slightly reviewed form and with a more recent picture than the one originally intended.

The subject of my post was suggested by Joonie Jatho, whose blog unfortunately I can no longer point out because it appears to have been disabled

I hope you can enjoy reading it as I did writing it.


Alts in Second Life - necessary evil, fun diversion or an easy way to be dishonest ?

… or an easy way to inflate the number of active users ? :)

Think about it. How many among your friends or contacts do not have at least one alt ? And how often do they bring them online ? Alts are one of the options we have to explore different sides of ourself while we experience the different settings virtual world has to offer, and people are largely making use of this option. Sometimes an avie born as an alt is so successful in his/her/its experiences that develops as the principal identity, leaving the original one mostly neglected in some asset server. There is an army of alts out there and they surely inflate the official statistics. The numbers of unique users is probably much smaller than the published numbers.
But enough about official numbers.

The first time I met someone who identified himself as an alt he dropped from the sky outside my cottage. I had heard about alts but, until that moment, I had not given the concept much thought. I chatted with the guy for some minutes and then he gave it away. “It is because I have a girlfriend” he said. I have wondered many times what that sentence really meant: was he using an alternative identity in order to cheat on his girl ? Or was he just in need of time for himself ? That would make perfectly sense. I know that from time to time I am in the mood to get away from my main identity using an anonymous account without friends and contacts, so that I can explore and take picture without anybody interrupting me.

Despite the obvious easy opportunities for alts to be dishonest, they can't be considered evil. And they are not necessarily just fun. They are another option to enhance our experience and as such they can be used in many ways, including many legitimate ones. I am sure many SLebrities can't live and enjoy the world they have contributes to create without alts. How many times have you have checked the profile of some land owner or content creator and read “drop me a notecard. IMs are capped”. I often wonder how these people can enjoy their SL and work and create under the inevitable constant stream of incoming messages. An alt surely offers them the anonymity necessary to escape and enjoy to the beauties the world like any regular residents.

Alts can be and are used for testing features, like permissions of created content, or simply they can come handy when more than one avie is necessary and no friend is available.
Alts can be simply used to explore different sides of one's self: like having a steampunk life as the pilot of an airship and a fantasy one as a drum player in elfland. A friend of mine created a child avie because her therapist suggested it to get in touch to her inner child. Another with health problems comes online in her neko identity when she is in pain, because cats, she tells me, better tolerate pain.
And then, of course, there are the more questionable uses. I guess we all know stories of people with two different SL families (and maybe a RL family too), people asking for friends' help in one sim and investing money as someone else in another sim and people just having fun but playing with someone else's feelings. And that is the source of high drama that exceeds the borders of today's discussion.

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Do I have alts? I do. They try to be nice guys and I try to make them behave :) I use them for exploration, photo-safaris and to extend the number of groups I can subscribe to. Sometimes I call them to man my ships or as extras for photo shots (as in the image above). They are usually shy and stay away from people and interact minimally with others, even if they try to be friendly when addressed.
I even created a female alt. She is a kind of Barbie doll. I created her one day I was frustrated by the lack of contents for male, so I had fun to have her go freebie hunting. (Second)Life is so much easier for a female avie!. I am rather proud of the look I have been able to give her, but playing a different gender is not for me. I was always scared like hell that somebody could talk to her and I was not able to behave as a female would. The feeling has always been of complete detachment. It is like pulling the string of a puppet, with very little identification. No, definitely not for me :)

W

Mix'n Match : Life Lesson I learned through Second Life: Immersion Aversion

Today is the day the contributions for the Mix'n Match event appear on the pages of the participant bloggers. I am therefore very honored to host Rik Riel's contribution on Biggest life lessons (first or second life) learned in SL, a topic suggested by Joan Kremer

It's great getting an opportunity to post here on Wildstar Beaumont's blog. The assignment I was given as part of the "Mix-and-Match" game created by Arminax and Vint Falken was to write about a "life lesson" that Second Life has taught me. So here goes...

One thing that Second Life has helped me see about myself is how much I am both drawn to and flee from community.

Second Life offers an amazing array of possible sub-cultures, niche interest groups, role-playing guilds, churches and sects that all together create the diverse society of Second Life. These are loosely represented by the "groups" functionality in SL, which is one way of expressing how you choose to represent yourself to the larger digital world. I.e. anyone can right-click my avatar and see what groups I am a member of, which is a way of getting at who I am.

Many Second Life residents I run into are incredibly passionate and enmeshed in their particular community, whether its a neko sim, a Star Trek RPG, a fashion design guild or a machinima crew. Residents often ask me what I "do" in SL. I often have a hard time answering this question, since I have such a broad range of interests. Usually I say that I'm a Second Life blogger and activist, but that doesn't really capture it.

More correctly, I dabble in all sorts of communities. I attend random live music acts, flit around from art museum to gallery, zip over to a fashion show, or hang out with some furries or mermaids who come across my path. But I don't commit to any particular one over an extend period of time.

In my real life, I find that the same pattern in my associations. I attend a local church but don't get involved in any of the committees or volunteer opportunities. I am vaguely civilly engaged, but don't commit serious to any particular political group or cause. I love my extended family very much, but choose to live on the other side of the country from them.




There's something in me that fears group commitments. I worry about losing my freedom. I get stressed having to negotiate the things that I want amidst the various interests of a group of other people. I see the complications before I see the benefits.

What makes Second Life interesting is that you have to explicitly choose to "join" a group, which subjects you to whatever group notices, group votes, and group chat exchanged among the members. You can't half-way join or provisionally join. You just have to say "yes" or "no" to an invite request.

Not only that, you are limited to only 25 groups that you can join. So you have to be judicious about what groups you choose, because that eliminates one potential slot that another group could occupy. Usually I'm maxed out on my groups, so every time I'm invited to a new one, I have to decide which one I want to leave. Often it's a painful choice.




I've found that I'm good at observing and reporting on the diverse happenings in Second Life, enough so that I worked for New World Notes as an event blogger and often get linked to and quoted on other sites because of my reportage on some event or subculture. I'm able to connect a particular group with the larger implications and connections that group has to the larger world. I.e. I'm good at looking from the outside in.

But I've learned that it's not enough to just be the passive, external observer. At some point, you've got to get in the game.

Second Life has taught me the importance of committing to some endeavor with other people, even if you aren't 100% sure if you want to be involved over the long haul. It's about letting go of some of your freedom and letting other people's interests and orientations interact with your own. It's letting other people in, warts and all.

My first go at this is being involved in the Nonprofit Commons, organized by Techsoup. They have regular meetings every Friday, that I try and attend. I blog on the nonprofitcommons.org site, and participate in the email list. I try and attend social events and help other groups in the Commons that need assistance when I can. I've met several Nonprofit Commons folks in the flesh at SLCC and other conferences, and count several of them as friends.

I started working at Global Kids earlier this year, which engages in all sorts of educational and civic activities on both the Main Grid and Teen Grid. Suddenly, I'm no longer just on the sidelines observing what's happening in SL, I'm in the thick of things -- organizing events and builds for Global Kids, working with a range of builders, machinimators, educators, volunteers and teens, building relationships with people.

It feels good to be a part of something, and to have longer term connections with people in Second Life. I believe it's helping me to be a more well-rounded, richer person, in whatever world I am inhabiting at the moment.


My thanks to Rik for his great contribution and I invite all to visit his very interesting blog : The Click Heard Round the World. Rik is also on the Teen Grid as part of his educational activities, so we can find a perspective in his pages that is new to many of us.

My own contribution (Alts in Second Live - A necessary evil, a fun diversion or an easy way to be dishonest , suggested by Joonie Jatho) is due to appear on Meara Deschanel's One Girl | Two Worlds blog.

The topic I suggested, Drama and neighbor wars in mainland, will be discussed by Joan Kremer on Ann O'Toole's Unique Needs blog

news of the day

I did not wake up badly this morning. Today I have to turn in my blog assignment for the Mix'n Match initiative, and, despite not being a masterpiece, I think it may meet some minimum requirements not to shame myself. A couple of final readings and I'll be ready.

My blog got its fifth follower this morning (thank you, Rhett :) ). Not many, I know, but that is why every one counts. By the way, Rhett is following other pretty interesting blogs that I did not know and I will add them in my aggregator. And I found out that my technoraty authority is in double digits ! Silly, I know, but it still a measure that someone likes to read here :)

Not a bad morning it was ... then ... I read news like this (found on Vintfalkens.com) and I am suddenly sad again.

Shall I forget my boats and get a snorkling equipment ?

*sigh*

W

mix'n match - update

the Mix'n Match assignments are out !
I get to write about Alts in Second Life - necessary evil, fun diversion or an easy way to be dishonest ?

Sounds cool enough, does it not ? Not as bad as some other subjects I could have picked and about which I would have had nothing to say.

The entry is going to be published on Meara Deschanel's One Girl | Two Worlds blog.

In turn I am going to host a piece by Rik Riel, about Biggest life lessons (first or second life) learned in SL.

At the moments I am excited about the assignments. :)
Wish good luck to me and to all the fellow bloggers involved in this cool initiative. I think some good stuff will come out of it

W

Mix'n Match

Following that professional lobbyist answering to the name of Princess Ivory (she would do great at Capitol Hill, but being of royal blood she hates everything related to the republic) I joined the Second Life Bloggers Mix'n Match initiative. See here and here (the blogs of Vint Falken and ArminasX Saiman, the promoters of the initiative) for the details.

I immediately started to regret it. I am scared like hell that I will make fun of myself and I probably got a topic I have absolutely nothing to say about. But well ... now I am on the dancefloor so I better dance (that is Italian, do you say that in English ? :) )

Wish me good luck! :D

W