Day in the life 3

Day 3
Today, I finally met other avatars…from my class.

My initial thought, after seeing everyone, was that my avatar was lacking originality in appearance. I saw tails, blue and purple skin, a crazy assortment of outrageous garments, including a low-rise thong with pubs hanging out of the front.

I take a right-click moment and start messing around with my appearance. I don’ t know how to do any of the fancy stuff with tails and crazy skin tones. In fact, I find it challenging enough to even fix my p.o.v. Or maneuver my avatar correctly.

In the end, I go for crossing the gender of my avatar’s body type. Because body build selections are based off of male female, I took my female foundation and beefed it up with a more muscular male build, while still keeping my red lipstick and pigtails.


Moving beyond my obvious issues with my SL identity and back to meeting in class on SL, I have to say that I was completely uncomfortable. There is this awkward sense of both knowing and not knowing my SL classmates. I knew that in RL, we have a class together and I had seen everyone. However, since we are keeping our true identities secret, there is this confusing feeling of conformability and cautiousness.

When I think about it, though, I guess that is how I feel about all the avatars I have come in contact with, after the class meeting. There is this mixed sense of release from the anonymity of speaking to people one does not already know, but at the same time, there is a slight discomfort in existing in a space meant for anonymous and vast social networking and feeling a responsibility to be less restricted in social behavior. If a stranger ask you to be teleported with them to their private beach house for a drink, why not? But on the same hand, there is something of me that exist in my avatar and for that reason I want to protect it.

I have been attending school in NYC for a little over a year and the first someone has ever tried to pick me up in the village, it was in second life.

A couple of days ago, I was still in the business of trying to teleport myself to a place where I thought I could fine more than just the one or two stragglers, walking the same deserted streets of New York Island and a few other places. Desperate and tired, I eventually found myself in a gay male bathhouse and eventually the back ally of some business in the East Village.

The next thing I know, some guy is circling me and asking me if I am as sexy in RL as I am in SL. Both amused and a little disturbed by his question, we start talking, only for him to suggest that we find a room. I tell him that I am queer in both RL and SL and he responds by contacting his lesbian SL friend, whose home we all eventually land at…you’ll have to ask me how the rest of that story goes, as it is too long and weird to get into, but it very much turned into a scene out of some old porn film.

I wonder what it is about second life that makes people so sexually aggressive. I understand the idea behind cyber sex, but that usually involves some sort of interaction btw. two people, whether it be through typing or photos/videos….In SL, there are actually preprogrammed functions for sex. There are buttons to get in various positions and to form various acts, taking out much of the work of the avatar operator in terms of interaction.

What puzzles me even more is that there are entire clubs dedicated to sex and sex acts. However, I rarely see people so much as chat, before anything starts off between SL characters.

I would definitely like to talk more to some people about what the appeal is.