Below is my contribution to Strawberry Singh’s “First & Recent Challenge”: two photos of my first Second Life avatar, wearing similar tops and standing in front of blooming trees in my (virtual) backyards on the SL mainland, separated by almost a decade. I’ve been in a few discussions about representing age in virtual worlds recently and this…
I’ve been chewing on the material for a blog post about technology and racism, finally realizing that the topic is far too large and I need to tackle it bite by bite. A recent post on the Second Life community forums brought this back to the forefront for me. What is racism like in a…
You might have noticed that the Second Life avatar I’m using for photos has changed. With my SL partner Jakob offline and in the hospital, it’s uncomfortable to use the avatars that feel like “me” — my 9 year old alt and my 4 year old main Kay avatar. They feel too vulnerable. It’s unbearably sad to spend time in…
If you read a magazine that showed the coolest human avatars in a game or virtual world, then went online to create your own, would your appearance choices be influenced by the ones that were featured? According to recent research, if you identify yourself as black offline, you might be less likely to create a…
Motherboard published this 20 minute documentary in March, but I just stumbled across it today (thanks GoodShit – NSFW). I’ve met a lot of people with PTSD or mental illness who use virtual worlds as part of their coping strategies, as well as some in formal virtual reality treatment programs. It’s incredibly powerful to be in…
Over at Motherboard is a short piece about a virtual gender stereotype experiment conducted at Stanford University. Basic concept: users competed against bots to complete math problems. Regardless of physical world gender, when users were assigned male avatars to compete against female bots, they were most successful. The avatar representations were simply cartoon faces (dark eyes and hair, pale…
Especially since the Look Up video made the rounds earlier this year, I’ve been aware of denigrating remarks about gamers and people who do other things virtually. Ironically, a lot of these have shown up on Facebook. A few have taken the form of, “Why would I do X online, when I can go out and really do…
The photo below is of one of my new projects, which I’ll tell more about soon. I’ve spent some time this week building and working with land in Second Life, which has hammered home the point that I can’t always multitask. When I’m building or moving in Second Life, I have to focus. I can’t multitask…
This morning after watching Nico Rosberg zoom to the podium in Monaco, I checked out the recent Designing Worlds discussion about attracting and retaining new Second Life residents. It’s almost an hour long and has some good ideas, but nothing surprising if you read a bunch of SL blogs like I do. Of course the SL bikini…
This will be a somewhat personal post, so if you’re looking for cool robots or my scolding of presumptuous researchers, come back soon. Canary Beck has written a series of thoughtful posts about loneliness in Second Life this week. They’re excellent and are the jumping off point for the rest of this post, so take a few…