[MD] Inorganic, organic, social, intellectual,.... virtual

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Petert]
I'm still very new to SL but I found that it's possible to change the avatars
body, skin and clothing in a few clicks which can be confusing for people who
you met previously with a different appearance...

[Arlo]
Same "IRL"? No? Imagine if you showed up for work each day with different
colored hair, differently styled, one day dressed like a sheik, the next in
lederhosen? "Identity continuity" is a strong factor in negotiating and
maintaining stable social relationships. 

[Peter]
so already I started to make an avatar that looks close to the RL me (minus
some wrinkles)...

[Arlo]
I notice you are tying your biological appearance to your "identity" here. I'd
argue that this is something engendered and encouraged by our culture, but is
not inherent. We see ourselves in the mirror so often we come to project a self
that is bound to our physical appearance. But, I'd argue that while this often
parallels the biological reality of our corporeal host, it by no means is so
simple. Consider the case of burn victim Jacqui Saburido, who although for
many, many years has existed in a severely altered body, has said that the
person she sees in the mirror is how she looked before the crash. As minute as
this example seems, ask why you associate a physical reality to your identity
with wrinkles and not one of youth as she does? Many overweight people, we have
found, project the identity "IVL" (in virtual life) of someone thin, as it
gives them the ability to socially navigate relationships without the
ostracizing that tags along with their "IRL" encounters. Just some thoughts.

[Peter]
... as I feel uneasy about pretending to be something I am not. 

[Arlo]
What are you? What are you not? This is the crux of the question. We "are" many
things, many selves, sometimes one role, sometimes another. This is not
dishonest or disingenuous. If in SL you were interacting with a beautiful
avatar and later found out here "IRL" body was disfigured by burns, would you
feel she was "dishonest" about who she was? Why is her burned body "who she
is"? Let me complicate it more, what if you were blind and your interactions
with her were carried out completely by a text/voice reader? You'd never have
seen her avatar. Would she be dishonest then? Would you think her desire to
have a social relationship devoid of the unavoidable social marking that comes
with bodily disfigurement is dishonest? My point is that you are reading a bit
too much dishonesty into the presentation of multiple selves. Although some
people, admittedly, intend to deliberately deceive others for malicious
reasons, this happens ,as you say, inIRL as well (the world is abound with
charlatans and con-men). But the fact that we, as social humans, present
different selves in different social roles (self, lover, worker, bar mate,
support group peer, hobbiest, spouse, grandparent, etc.) is not dishonest, but
underscores the plurality of the self.

[Peter]
SL is a moral world and you have to work in order to enjoy it.

[Arlo]
I'd say SL is a social world, and like all social worlds, you must negotiate
your place, follow certain social protocols to achieve certain ends, and deal
with those whose only intent is to disrupt.

There is a short, but interesting story, described here by Julian Dibbell as "A
Rape in Cyberspace", which looks at the odd case of Mr. Bungle.
(http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html). This recounts a true story in
a MOO, where one user "hacks" the system to take control of the avatars of
others and makes them perform various sexual acts against the will of "their
users". One avatar is made to stick a kitchen knife in her vagina (MOOs are all
textual. Does that change anything?) The end result of the Bungle Affair is
that the IRL people actually felt violated and went through the same emotional
(or proximal emotional) pains as if it "really happened". Did it "really
happen"? Did they suffer even a minimally similar emotional trauma? Why did
they feel as if they did? Again, just some thoughts.