The eternal question of…what to wear…
by Deirdre ~ November 14th, 2009. Filed under: Uncategorized.Back in September Nathan posed the question on his blog – Is Second Life Getting Any Better? I confess, after doing a professional experience project last year on the possibilities for a Resource Rooom on BCIT Island, I have only visited the virtual world a handful of times – but because I did some presentations on it at BCIT and my avatar was featured in a staff newsletter, I often get questions about it. The queries are often about how to get a good outfit. It seems there is so much potential for virtual worlds, but people end up spending a lot of time making sure their avatar is well-dressed. And many educational organizations, including universities and libraries, give away virtual T-shirts and hats. Why is how our avatar looks so important?
A great explanation is listed on page 7 of the Alliance Library Systems Report [pdf] on their first year of operation in Second Life. Kitty Pope calls it the Sousa effect – “The marching band enthusiast John Phillip Sousa achieved tremendous success organizing bands, not only because people have an innate desire to play a musical instrument and belong to an organized structured group but also because they get to have new band uniforms.”
This all came to mind this week because I came across What not to wear in virtual circles in the Tiimes Higher Education. It seemed humourous that avatar fashion was newsworthy in an academic pubication, but I found the solution proposed by one commentator very interesting: “My solution is to have two avatars: a boring one for institutional business, and one with a more adventurous character- and a much more extensive wardrobe-that I use for recreation.” It brought back the discussions around online identities, performance and the blurring of work and personal identities in the early weeks of this course. As for myself, my avatar Althea Snoodle wears a BCIT T-shirt and keeps it professional (see left sidebar).
November 15th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Deirdre,
Hilarious….the Sousa effect. btw, you are becoming quite the blogger. Will you continue after our class concludes?
Also, do you think we could use BCIT Island for our LIBR559M presentations?
Cheers
Dean
November 15th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Speaking of SL identity, when I signed up I remember it gave me an option to pick my name, but only my first name. I chose Chesterfield, and then it Auto-suggested a few last names from which I seem to remember I had to chose. So now my guy has a ridiculous name that I only half choose. If SL is a platform for self expression, to build Avatars that are representations of us, why do we have to use their randomly generated last names?
Yours Truly
Chesterfield Hellershanks
November 16th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
There are ways of getting around the name thing though… I recently signed up for second life, and scrolled through the list of names until I found something that was at least close – instead of Scott Marsden, I’m now Scottt Marshdevil. Other than the fact that my new name makes me sound like an extra from the Wind in the Willows, I can appreciate what SL is trying to do by not allowing you the freedom to pick your own name. If you were able to, SL would have the potential to become something like facebook, where your physical, reality-based identity is essentially transcribed into an online forum. By picking your name for you, SL is forcing you to adopt a new identity and a true ‘Second Life’ – one in which random searchers from your grade three class can’t necessarily find you.
While my computer’s way too slow right now to be able to pick a costume (all I got was static in the screens where the clothes should have been in the appearance menu), I’m looking forward to dressing myself as ridiculously as possible. I was surprised to find out that you can actually BUY (with SL lumens, which I’m assuming you pay for with real money) items of virtual clothing that other SL users have designed. I don’t know if I’ll go this far, but I’m certainly not averse to throwing off convention in my supposedly-free SL space… I’m sick of not being allowed to wear socks with my sandals.