So, what happened to the story? The fairy tale, the “maerchen”? When did narrative become so “un-cool” then?

I think it happened in the aftermath of the second world war, after humanity came too close to the edge of the abyss and saw the “Shadow”. The Dadaists still had it, the narrative, as did the early Surrealists. A narrative that originated from the subconscious mind, that sprang into being in the collages of Max Ernst and the poetry of Paul Eluard. But there inside the subconscious, right next to the fairy tale and the beautiful poetry and the mesmerizing collages also resides the “Shadow”, present in each and everyone of us. No one is exempt. And, when humanity faced its own “Shadow” at the end of the war it turned away in a schock of recognition. It was simply too hard to acknowledge, too unspeakably cruel to deal with – so we hid behind the impersonal, the non-narrative. Art became non-narrative. It was easier that way. Space became impersonal, a shrine to minimalism. Beautiful in its generic nudity, functional – and resolutely silent, non-narrative. The cold cold climate of political correctness, the safe boundaries with which we try so hard and so desperately (and with such futility) to circumscribe the abyss and the “Shadow” – there inside all of us. The death of humor. The endless loops of flickering video art of the “now”, stubbornly refusing to tell stories. Because the “story”, the “maerchen” comes from a place that is just too close to home, too close to the abyss and to the “Shadow” waiting therein. Stories lead to imagination and imagination leads to the abyss.

No coincidence then, that it became unpopular to tell Grimm’s fairy tales to your child. A bookshelf full of literature in a friends house on the correct way to raise children – grounded in educational toys and realizm. No violent toys, no guns… Little picture books where little rabbit goes out and sees a little butterfly and then… Nothing… “Hello Butterfly!”… “B is for Butterfly”… And then it gets to be night and little rabbit goes home to sleep. No stories… please no stories… Much too dangerous. The roots of narrative reside in the abyss.

Second Life has given me back my childhood. But children are cruel. They stand too close to the abyss with their imaginative little minds turning broom handles into magic swords to… kill! And yet here we are, a horde of children, testing out the waters of narrative, once again. And cruelty is already here, already implied, in the neko merchandise. In the blood soaked wings. The neko crime scene kit. The bloody bandage outfits. The countless spike collars and braces and leg wraps. The troublemaker belt with its paw handcuff. I buy them. I look at them. The fish grate necklace – obviously I must have eaten the fish at some point and now its remnants hang from my neck like the scalp of an amazon warrior. The teddybear hat. Except that the bear is holding two sticks of dynamite in its round little paw. Narrative is cruel. It resides in the land of the “Shadow”. And the “Shadow” is the price paid for imagination. I embrace the teddybear – dynamite and all. 

… Is so not a virtue!

A few evenings ago, a wise old man came to me at Syncretia and told me many things. I had kept the chat file and re-read it just now – and felt so bloody ashamed of my flippancy, my turning all that he said into these thoroughly silly jokes.

It is sheer nervousness of course, that makes me do things like this and I think it has made me lose out in the past. I should really know when to shut up and listen, without having to interject my own two cents worth of school girl humor into everything. I should not be so afraid of acknowledging my vulnerability in the face of things that I do not fully understand. I should accept that some things are beyond my comprehension and not be scared of them and then cloak my fear inside silly assed behavior.

Really Alpha… Is this how you show me the way?

The Syncretia Scweinchen (piglet) is no more. It’s poor brain gave out to the pressure of the code and it started acting strangely. All of  a sudden that totally nerve wrenching whistle wasn’t there anymore and those swift turns in mid air with which it would chase me around also did not seem quite as masterful as before.

What really brought home the ailment to me however was when one evening I jumped into the water right in front of its nose and it did not want to follow me in. I immediately let Hack know, since, as its owner he was the only one in a position to intervene. But then again, given his expertise in metaverse medicine I would have called him in anyway I guess. All of this happened on the eve of my human journey to Egypt where I had very meager internet access and could not go in-world. When I returned a week or so later the poor thing was seriously ill. It just lay motionless at the foot of the power plant to where it may have crawled in a last ditch effort at trying to gain some benefit from the healing waters – but obviously too little too late. Hack told me that it was brain dead.

Now, amazingly enough, I had become rather attached to the beast and wanted to give it a decent burial – nice little grave, nice little headstone, becoming little service, eulogy, maybe some third church hymns – I am sure you know the sort of thing I had in mind… In fact, wolfie and I discussed all this at some length and he remembered that a friend of his called Fuzzy Janus was a Second Life undertaker who could be prevailed upon to take care of all the arrangements and that, in any case, he (wolfie) would definitely be there, with all the material and emotional support that I might need in this dark hour. He also suggested that we should have a funeral meal which Hack, apparently a kick-ass chef, could cook. (Little wonder that the man can cook btw, given that he seems to think about food 7/24. Cordon Bleu stuff too: I have been severely reprimanded on numerous occasions concerning my somewhat pedestrian proclivity for cokes and burgers. Although there was that one rare little moment when he did break down and acknowledged that Burger King totally rockzzz!!! ;-). Anyway… And if a funeral banquet, why not a wake as well? So, all plans in place, everything was set to all systems go!

Alas, none of this was to be: Hack explained to me that although the brain was dead it was still somehow active except that now its brain activity had turned into garbled spam and it was spamming its owner, i.e., Hack non-stop. (Which is poetic justice if ever there was any I must say… hhh). So, horror of all horrors, it could not be buried, it had to be deleted! This was shocking news indeed. Now, I had just returned from Karnak and the Valley of the Kings and my imagination was rife with mummies – so I immediately offered a solution: Could we maybe embalm it? If we deleted the script, would that not effectively be the same as lifting the brain off of a dead body? But, no. Apparently that wouldn’t work either, the poor thing was a no modify object and had to be left intact. Deeply upset I logged off… 

Logged back in the next day to find that it was gone. Obviously Hack must have come at some point and put the beast out of its misery. After the initial schock of bereavement was over I gathered my self together. If nothing else, I am adaptable. So, I would have a little memorial service. There would only be me in attendance but I would still do it in style, with dignity. A memorial plaque would be put where the pig had fallen and I would dress in an appropriate manner too – which did of course, necessitate a little shopping expedition: Although vast, my wardrobe has not really been assembled with sombre occasions such as funerals and memorial services in mind. But just say the word shopping and I am off like a rocket – and extremely resourceful at it too, I might add.

So, half a day in the shopping haunts of the metaverse and I had a glorious black lace outfit in place, the plaque was ready and the north shore of Syncretia was scene to a touching solo memorial service.

It always rains there and this too added to the overall feeling of gloom as I sunk the plaque into the ground, said my little eulogy, meditated on the vagaries of the metaverse that would have brought such a young life to such an untimely end, prayed for good futures, made some resolutions and then… went on my merry way!!!

More images, as well as an account of the early days of the Syncretia Schweinchen can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alpha_auer/sets/72157604675318894/

OK, enough of all the melodrama such as the unexpected alchemical side effects of unrequited love, the merits of middle age versus youth – and all the rest of that malarkey! Time to talk about some really important stuff – such as friends and friendship, which brings me to a currently absent friend, wolfgeng Hienrichs. (Incidentally, I think that I am probably the only one around who has the bloody cheek to call wolfgeng “wolfie” or sometimes even “wolfiekiens”; but to his credit, he does seem to tolerate this with high good nature. Everyone else calls him wolfgeng or wolf – as would indeed be quite appropriate!)

wolfie’s human is off in Greece somewhere fixing a leaky roof at the moment. I do wish the blasted thing would fix itself and wolfie would hurry up and come back home where he belongs. The metaverse isn’t quite the same without his little black snout in evidence.

It took me some time to befriend wolfie. Truth is I was intimidated by him. (Those horrible boyzz will not believe me when I say this, but I am actually quite shy). So, I would watch his tall dark figure from a distance, thinking to myself that there was something quite regal and sort of military about his demeanor. At some point wolfie asked me to come along while he was talking to a potential tenant for some Klein land. Quite needless to say I was highly flattered by the fact that he seemed to value my opinion on the matter and rushed over, falling over my own boots as I went, so to speak. From that point onward we were friends.

wolfie is the creator, owner and director of the Search and Rescue operations of Second Life, headquartered at Klein, our home sim. I will be writing separately and at length about S+R, for now suffice it to say that the regal and military bearing has a lot to do with this important mission/position in life, to which wolfie rises with aplomb and dignity.

wolfie is very funny, in fact he is quite pricelessly so. There are so many incidents where wolfie had me in stitches that it would be impossible to remember them all. The one that sticks in my mind right now, since it is quite recent, is the little conversation we had about his car: During the early days of Syncretia I stumbled upon what I thought was as a terrible accident: A car had fallen down a flight of stairs into the whale basin! These being indeed the early days of Syncretia I immediately cleared what I thought was the sad remainder of that evil day. However, as time went by I really began to cherish all the debris that the crashes and accidents caused, as well as all the parked vehicles and even (or indeed especially all the bombs and land mines) at Syncretia. So, I have been making a point of keeping them right where they are (the only exception being a spaceship I returned to Hack just last week – he had left it in the middle of the sky and the bloody thing had a couple of hundred prims to it. So, obviously no parking or accident – just a forgetful avatar, getting off a spaceship midflight and promptly forgetting all about it)… Anyway, back to wolfie’s car: So, the car was the only accident debris that I had ever deleted and the other day I asked wolfie if he could please do a simulation of it and put it back there. 

Well!!! O Boy o boy o boy!!! Did he flip out or what???!!! Was I completely mental? I had done whatttttt???? I had deleted the car? That had not been an accident for pete’s sakes!!! Did I not have eyes in my head? He had PARKED the car!!!! Could I not tell an accident from a parked car? That was a brand new car too!!!!… and meanwhile me piping in – “yes yes, but surely we can somehow sort this out wolfiekiens, come to some kind of amicable solution?”… “sort it??? sort it??? Amicable solution???? Go, speak to my insurance guy Alpha! But I can tell you right now it will be gross!!!“

Oh, and of course: How funny is wolfie? He is this funny:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgeng/2442449025/

wolfie is not only an officer, he is also a gentleman: For instance, there was this one little episode where I traumatized the living daylights out of him with my black ocelot skin:

A lesser man would have thrown up into his flight helmet right then and there. Not our wolfie – “oh, very cool Alpha” he said, meanwhile heroicallly managing to hold in his stomach contents no doubt… And of course another evidence of gentlemanly behavior would be his wonderful piano playing, in full tuxedo:

Not only is wolfie an officer and a gentleman, he is also a true friend: He calls me “alph” sometimes, which I totally totally love. Reminds me of Alf. But… it is the diminutive address that just about chokes me up with gratitude: I think wolfie is the only person that has ever addressed me in the diminutive and it gives me a good feeling that is almost pathetic in its intensity.

So wolfie baby… Time to come back home I think! Klein is quite deserted without you; not to mention the fact that Hack is in a god awful mood these days (he really is acting up something terrible you know) and I am pretty sure that at least some of it is due to the absence of your steadying influence!

A friend who read the entry below wrote me an email. I wish she had left a comment, but she didn’t: She is wondering whether it isn’t all about encroaching middle age and the loss of youth, rather than the alignment of “self” and “persona”, as I put it.

Hmmmm… 

Here’s the thing: I had a bit of a nasty shock a few years ago when I was made to listen to a tape recording of myself at the age of 20 or so. As much a friend today as then, Neshet Ruacan, secretly tape recorded a lengthy conversation between myself, his sister (and my beloved friend) Nukhet and a close girl friend of ours, Silva. Apparently the inanity of our chatter got on his poor nerves to such an extent that he decided to record it and play it back to us at some later date. The tape got lost only to resurface almost 30 years later, which is when we finally heard it. The vapidity of what it was that I actually said, coupled with the obnoxiously opinionated, self-important and humorless delivery had me really gobsmacked. And then of course, there was that “world weary”, nasal tone very much in evidence as well? – hhhh. I was taped candidly in more recent years also, and I am thankful to be able to say that these days the way I sound seems to be more or less acceptable.

So, I can say in all honesty that I am actually quite thankful to have outgrown youth and have become middle aged. The young me had a lot of pretensions (intellectual, political and what have you). I was a very wild girl but always with a mission behind my wildness. I always had to make a point somehow. In short, looking back, I must have been hair raisingly boring. (And incidentally, the middle aged me is in grave danger of becoming hair raisingly boring too, unless she stops all of this self-indulgent “me-me-me” crap ASAP!!!!)

But… but… but… I most certainly do not want to look middle aged in the sense that I did a year ago. The defeatism of saggy jowls. The tired step of a heavy body. But conversely, I would love to have crows feet!!!! Crows feet add laughter to your face. Alas, I do not have them. What I have instead is a marked potential for droopy mouth corners, which make me look negative, pessimistic, ill humored, tired, un-enthusiastic – just totally obnoxious really. So, I get them filled out every once in a while. Yup! So kill me. I will do it anyway – hhhh.

Well well well, here I am quoting Crowley again! I guess the old magick has stuck to me more than I thought (but promise, it is only quotes – no real skills at casting circles and such… ;-) 

I am thinking that in order to understand Alpha I really need to talk about what brought me to her…

So, there I was, a woman sitting in a hotel room in Montreal. I was on a research update for my PhD program and there had been a parting of the ways with a tutor whom I was actually extremely fond of earlier in the day. Furthermore, I had left my best friend dying in Istanbul (she did in fact die a few days after I was back)… I put my laptop on the toilet table in front of the mirror (that was the only place in the room where I had juice), turned it on and went into Second Life. Alpha was still a noob but she was already looking decent enough for me to be able to make a truly horrifying comparison the minute that I was logged in: Looking at me from the mirror was a fat, desolate woman, with bad hair, downturned mouth and saggy jowls. Nothing of any interest whatsoever would ever happen to her again. Her life was over. She would never be loved again, desired again, no one would want to embark upon adventures with her or dance with her or even want to laugh with her – a sour faced academic who was very good at giving conference papers, a feared and dreaded instructor who was a world apart from her students. Isolated, ensconced in whatever solitary horrors awaited her in the lonely miserable years to come, shared, of course, by her army of animals.

Looking back at me from the screen however, was the face that was concealed inside this woman under the layers and layers of fat that she had so successfully hidden behind for over 10 years: Mischievous, playful, and adventurous, wanting to laugh and laugh and laugh. No one knew, no one cared – but this was who I was inside. I wanted to live, go on strange journeys, play, do crazy things, maybe even dangerous things that might hurt me – again! 

So, how had I ended up here? What had turned the one who had a future lined up, that she was running towards everyday of her life into this sad old cow? Love happened. I know it sounds maudlin and melodramatic but a devastating love affair in my late 30’s completely turned around my life. Looking back on things now, I am extremely glad it happened that way, I am extremely glad that I had to go through that suffering, which made me shed one skin and reveal another. I am glad that I no longer live the life that I did then.

And so, what exactly was that life like? I was an art director, very good at what I did, piling up awards, working at a very fancy international advertising agency. As superficial a life as any one could possibly wish for… Clients, meetings, office intrigues, nice dinners at posh restaurants, cute little “dates”… Very predictable, very much like those lives are meant to be, the world over. Nice apartment, nice clothes, nice vacations… Oh, oh, oh… and before I forget: I also dabbled in art!!! I painted… Jesus…

Then one day I went to a party and met a man. I had no idea who he was, had never seen him before. He was not good looking or even particularly charismatic/charming in any sense of these terms, but to me he became everything. And I most definitely did not become everything to him… Simple as that… Oh, we did get together, on and off we had an “affair” that lasted for well over a year and then one day he got up and left, never to come back. What compounded the pain was that there was no way that I could possibly blame him or be angry with him. No, he was not a creep, he was not some womanizing jerk incapable of commitment – what he was, was a political prisoner who had spent 14 years of his life in jail. They threw him in when he was 23, he came back out when he was 37… Need one say more? He needed me and “my love” like he needed a hole in the head. He saw the total misery I was in and he had the decency to get out of my life and leave me to it.

Even during the “affair” my work had started to suffer. My heart was no longer in it, in the superficial soap bubbles of advertising, and it could be seen in my output and demeanor. I lost the job in the aftermath of the breakup. I lost it very badly, screwing up a major account so thoroughly that not only did I get fired but word spread around pretty quickly in the advertising enclave of Istanbul making me a pariah, someone who was a liability, someone who was totally unhirable. I did have some money saved up and spent the next year or so, maybe even longer, at home quietly and steadily getting drunk. I did not try to contact him, not even once. Just sat there day in and day out in a total daze of misery… And getting fat… Fatter and fatter and fatter… Bloated… Blotto… This was the time when a close friend who was interested in meditation and magick came to help me, to show me how to somehow visualize my way out of the nightmare. It worked to the point where I started being able to go out again. Another friend, Erdag Aksel, who is still a very close friend and colleague today, got me a college teaching job as a design instructor, for which I had to leave Istanbul and move to Ankara.

In Ankara I met the “thing” that thoroughly transformed my life; the computer. Of course, I had worked with them before as a graphic designer, but here I met Mark Siprut, who gave me a Wacom Tablet. Photoshop was still in its infancy – version 2 something. Still no layers, only channels. I sat down in front of one of the machines in the computer lab, a Mac Quadra, and before I knew it night had come, they were locking up the lab, I had to leave. Something like 7-8 hours had gone by – without so much as a bathroom break and no need for a cigarette, remarkable for the kind of smoker that I am… For me the computer is magick. My dabbling in magick had led me to Jung and Freud. And although I could never muster up enough interest for the practice of magick when it came to Jung the story changed entirely: At the point where the Wacom Tablet entered my life, I was already quite well read in Jung and had developed a very strong interest in Alchemy as a psychological tool for individuation – hence the name of my website, Citrinitas, hence all the alchemical references at Syncretia, my SL island. Even as I was in it, I was aware that I was going through the phase of Nigredo, the dark night of the soul, which would result in Albedo, a calm period of gathering and learning, which would eventually lead me to Citrinitas, a new time of turbulence during which the silver in me would (hopefully) begin to turn into gold. All of this is very closely intertwined with the unconscious; and in a very strange kind of way the computer, that penultimate system of logical 0’s and 1’s, for me is an environment for the realization of the unconscious through the copy’s and paste’s that bring together the strangest combinations, creating associations that were not there a minute ago. I had dabbled in painting but never whole heartedly. Now, I started to create images in earnest, compulsively… I got another teaching job in Istanbul and moved back to the city that I love only like one other – New York.

Meanwhile I was still very fat… Still withdrawn… I had started to become very good at being a teacher, and when I was not teaching I sat at home painting, gobbling up software in order to be able to do more and more. Completely absorbed in what I was doing to pay any kind of attention to how I looked, how I lived, what I drank or ate – which in those days was liters and liters of Coke and Burger Kings (the alcohol had thankfully stopped at some point when I still lived in Ankara, nowadays I drink very little – and only socially, never alone – I still smoke like a fiend though…). When I lost my job in advertising I also lost a huge circle of acquaintances, so my social life was meager, to say the least. I did have good friends but all were happily settled in relationships, with busy lives, so I ended up spending a lot of time by myself in front of my magick box, now fully enjoying Albedo. I was out of Nigredo, I no longer suffered. I only remembered my “love” very occasionally and whenever I did it was with more gratitude than anything else. He had come into my life at exactly the right moment and pulled me into a state of moulting that was much needed. The superficial thing that I was, needed to be put thoroughly through the mill and he was really nothing but the miller.

I became better and better at the teaching, which got me a bit of a reputation, which got me the job that I have today, which put me in a position where I had to formulate educational strategy not only for my own courses but for an entire university program. This led me to do research on the web, which led me to an amazing book called the Telematic Embrace, which led me to do a PhD at the Planetary Collegium, which led me into Second Life and to a hotel room in Montreal where I found myself staring into a mirror and a screen in a total shock of recognition: The moulting was complete for now. Doubtless there would be more to come, in years to come. I was far from finished, far from faultless. But for now Albedo was over and Citrinitas, that long awaited for moment had finally arrived. I had to go out there and live again, probably suffer again, certainly make mistakes – but definitely live again, become involved with life again. 

I cried a lot that night. I had enough to cry about anyway with a dying friend and the sad episode with my tutor, but the faces in the mirror and the screen brought home to me what a horrifying mess I was in and how if I didn’t do something about it, it would really and truly be over for me… Just as my thumb had spoken to me so did Alpha that night. And she and I agreed that I would do everything in my power to re-align “self” with “persona”, so that life can come and find me, or more to the point so that I have enough confidence to approach it once again. And that is what I have been working on between then and now, with Alpha, my amazing dragoman, showing me the way.

(Oh and… I have lost the weight btw. 32 kilos – which is something like 70 pounds altogether)

(It also has to be added that there was a very brief phase about 4 years ago, when I went through a half hearted version, (a rehearsal if you will?) of trying to align self and persona. However, it had no long lasting effects whatsoever. Before I knew it, within months, I was back to how I was, back deep inside Albedo, still some 30 kilos overweight, with nothing but a few laser peels to show for my efforts… My heart wasn’t really in it.)

So, the time has come to talk about a certain young lady, who seems to occupy a central position in my life; who, in a very bizarre way has actually managed to acquire a life of her own – an almost separate personality that is quite capable of evoking changes and responses in me, I might add. A decade or so ago, I used to do these visualization exercises, that were also somewhat related to magick. One of them involved getting your thumb to talk back to you and I was extremely good at it, I must say. So, I think Alpha’s origins lie in there somewhere, in all of my readings on Aleister Crowley… I was ready for her, I think. (Oh, and incidentally, no I do not practice magick or anything of the sort. My interest in all of that was to help me to get through a particularly emotionally turbulent period. So, really, no occult interests whatsoever over here…)

Alpha was born on March 5th 2007. She arrived in this world screaming to know where the appearance tab was – she had to do something about how she looked for god’s sakes!!!! Did Linden Labs think she would spend even a nano-second in these dreadful jeans and purple shirt??? And those flip-flops??? And that cardboard hair???? Please…  please… PLEASE!!!

In the event, it took her only a short time to sort out her shape (luckily her human did know her way around Poser) and she very swiftly replaced the noob uniform with a black jumpsuit and boots but the rest took longer, of course. Finding her way to the Free Dove where she got her first freebie flexi hair took a couple of days but skin turned out to be a much bigger problem: I have this compulsion to make Alpha look like Elif. A huge part of this does have to do with the thumb syndrome I was talking about, but in the beginning there were other reasons as well. Anyway, finding a skin in Second Life, that looked right, that would make Alpha’s expression somewhat similar to mine in RL took months! Finally, quite by accident Alpha stumbled upon the Mami Skin that these days Cory Edo is actually giving away as a freebie (!)…

During all this time Alpha went into Second Life every day, completely alone, completely lost. I was not at all sure what I was doing, what I was looking for, or looking at even. I had suffered a huge bereavement in Real Life very recently and part of it was an escape for sure… To a certain extent, I was reminded of all the psychotropic trips that I had been on in earlier years – the altered state of being… I saw very ugly landscapes and buildings… I teleported to art galleries where the work displayed had me lost in total amazement at the futility of it all. Why create things in a place which offers you a chance for an altered state of being/expression that look exactly like the sort of stuff you would churn out in Real Life, I wondered?… I joined groups and went to meetings – only to immediately drop them… I attended some educational conferences only to be gobsmacked by the vapidity of it all… I went to a lot of live music events: I found that the best ones were classical music events, so I joined a group for that… And also the Bliss Basin, where they did have some nice concerts I guess… I made some aquaintances but nothing earth shattering… So, when all is said and done, I did not see or do anything that was in any way rewarding or would have provided a reason to stay on – but I did anyway…

Somehow, through all of this, somewhere I saw the glimmerings of what this place could be: It left you alone to do what you wanted to do. And given the right circumstances it could provide a matrix for a vast transformation of self thorough make belief and play. True, no one that I observed around me in those early days seemed to be engaged in anything of the sort, but I somehow managed to recognize this embedded attribute within the system nonetheless. And that is why I stayed…

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole law and nothing but the law…”

I have my own website, Citrinitas, and one that gets so many visitors that I have had to drastically increase my bandwidth, I might add. Some of what I put here originates from there and yet I have decided to keep two blogs, on the off chance that one may go down or whatever.

So why? I write too much. My emails are too long, I end up boring the pants off of people that have to read them – or don’t, as the case may be… I discovered, somewhat late in life, when I started doing my PhD a couple of years ago, that I enjoy writing. I also enjoy getting responses to what I write – this urge to communicate… But, like I said, I seem to be doing it where it isn’t at all appropriate. The website does not allow for responses but the blog will of course – that is what it is here for.  It is not like a private diary, I am not remotely interested in those. This people can read or not as they choose, comment or not as they choose.

I cannot talk to anyone in my Real Life about my Second Life. But I do need to talk about it, to sort out the countless thoughts and feelings that it generates. Main reason.

Every other profile that one clicks on in Second Life professes undying love for a partner or proudly displays snapshots of friends and virtual families. One often hears of severe depressions that have resulted from lost or unrequited love. On the other hand virtual loneliness can be as profound as its real counterpart, as I had to find out during my early days before I became part of what we now, amongst ourselves, refer to as our avatar family.

A virtual snub can be every bit as painful, a virtual joke every bit as funny and virtual admiration every bit as flattering as any generated by any kind of interaction anywhere. Even during the course of superficial acquaintanceships the power/effects of human interaction can be felt quite intensely. But it is at the point where you start to forge real friendships that Second Life starts showing its full impact in terms of relationships. I have yet to understand exactly what the dynamics involved here are but this is what I sense:

Hackso… Hackso… I have seldom laughed as hard as I have in the metaverse…

I have, of course, wondered whether I would have connected with Hack, my closest friend in the metaverse, in quite the same way if we had somehow been thrown together in, say, a Real Life work environment. The answer, I think, is (sadly) no, not very likely… We simply would not have had that kind of time for each other in the hectic schedules and endless lists of priorities that Real Life seems to be made up of. We would, in fact, probably have passed each other by completely: One simply allows far more time for the development of a relationship, for the process of getting to know the other in the metaverse. We simply no longer seem to have enough time to get to know one another, to spend time engaged in pure conversation in Real Life. However, time is the one thing that Second Life allows us to deploy in huge chunks. The very fact that we are in there and ready to devote ourselves to the discovery of a new way of being calls for spending time and inevitably huge portions of this are alocated to the propagation of friendships, It is this readiness to spend time just getting to know someone, with no particular rush to attain certain ends, to define goals, to set hidden or overt agendas that I believe makes the huge difference in the forging of Second Life relationships to those in Real Life.

Another important feature that aids bonding in Second Life is that the metaverse provides a common ground of understanding: If anyone in your contacts list is there about as often as you are, you can be pretty certain that just like you they have a fundamental gripe with Real Life, that the search for a certain missing something therein compels them to be in Second Life. For me that missing thing in Real Life is “das maerchen” (the fairy tale), my long lost and yearned for childhood complete with its state of spontaneity. I am not sure what it would be for others but I am fairly certain that anyone who takes some 30/40/50 hours per week out of their Real Lives to be immersed in a “Second Life” is doing so out of motives that are other than cold, naked self-interest. I think the demographics of Second Life, which seem to indicate a far more mature user group than what one would expect, are not coincidental either: It seems to me that embedded somewhere in the psychic make-up of any hard core Resident is some kind of disillusionment with what Real Life has had to offer so far. Cyber-punk afficionado Mumixer Yoshikawa who shows up kitted out in elaborate backpack and headset; Corwin Carrillon whom I do not often get to hang out with but who I know is always out there; one of my oldest acquaintances in Second Life, Bree Birke, who has transformed a mountain ridge into a wonder forest for her many musician friends to hang out in… I am pretty sure that these people are in there for pretty much the same reasons that I and my avatar family (Hack, Mossy, wolfie) are there also…

However, this still does not mean that one should go about in a starry eyed state of acceptance towards everyone one encounters in the metaverse – far from it: The vultures have already moved in big time, networking activity is rife on every street corner, deals are struck, professional alliances forged – Real Life is very much with us in Second Life… But, I still stand by my original assertion: Do Real Life agendas motivate the truly hard-core Second Life resident? I would at least like to think that they do not, or at least not yet…

And finally, we seem to base our affections on the inner world of the object of our affections, rather than on their outward attractiveness: Their dreams, their fantasies, their playfulness and ultimately the creativity with which they materialize all of these in their virtual lives. Second Life, with all its accoutrements, its buildings, its vehicles, its “play” brings about a renaissance of childhood: A childlike way of being, an emergence of childhood emotions and fantasies; as well as a staggeringly naked expression/display of primal childhood traits which, as adults, we take very good care to conceal. This childlike presence not only enables some very deep lying characteristics of the other to emerge but also results in a deep recognition and acceptance of who that other is. And I think it is this that guides our affections and makes Second Life bonds, of whatever nature, so very powerful.

Hack, Mossy and Alpha about to embark upon a joy ride in a pink Cadillac

As the medium within which all these emotions and attachments materialize, the difference between Second Life and standard chat applications has to be perceived. Again, to come back to the question of whether Hack and I would have hit it off the way that we did in Second Life but this time in a regular chatroom? No, we probably wouldn’t have: For the largest part communication in the metaverse tends to center exclusively around occurrences within the metaverse and is very seldom RL related. The renaissance of the child within the adult: Excursions undertaken together, places explored, meetings attended… The joint memories that all these have generated… The comparison/showing off of creations, toys and the exchange of shopping and building tips… And, of course, the indescribable hilarity that is generated by the absurd events that can only occur in the fairy tale world of the metaverse; where wolves, lions, felinoid humans and dwarfs embark upon joint adventures in the sky and underwater, where one can either fly or build/acquire the weirdest of contraptions and vehicles to accomplish the strangest of journeys…

SL is a leap ahead in that there are extensive modeling tools that change everything from body shape, to hair style, to outfits. Because all of this choice is present, you are now much more vulnerable to being exposed by the choices you have, or have not made in creating the avatar you created to represent YOU.

Mike Shannahan

http://interactive.usc.edu/members/students/2006/05/post_2.php

Hardwarehacker Hoch. I call him Hack or Hackso, others call him Hardy…

Given the changes that can be wrought upon one’s avatar, the question as to what extent residents enact completely different roles to the ones they possess in Real Life is a valid one. My feeling is that while physical identity can be manipulated and changed, personality cannot. It is of course true that within the bounds of a superficial aquaintanceship the personality who sits behind the avatar may be successfully concealed. However any deeper relationship, any length of time spent together will reveal character, warts and all, even if the identity itself remains under wraps. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the avatar somehow presents a more accurate embodiment of the inner self that the Real Life persona does. The avatar embodies the most secret wishes and dreams. The avatar can also be the representation of prominent personal traits. Thus, the naughty, irreverent, politically incorrect dwarf avatar Hardwarehacker Hoch, whose “human” is no dwarf by any definition of the word, is not a representation of the actual Real Life body but of the human spirit, embodying a marked ability to create mischief, to be nosy, unscrupulous, mercurial and unpredictable, as well as the owner of a highly developed sense of humor!