I am leaving Singapore early tomorrow morning. It has been a weird trip, with very mixed up emotions. I have felt homesick – both RL and SL homesick that is. And like I said before, I have felt sad, lonely, displaced, bored… I don’t know. Some kind of real low. My presentation went well, everyone was nice… So, it is hard to pinpoint what it was exactly. But anyway, that is how it was.

The one highlight was the Buddhist Temple. I am not going to get all new agey and spiritual and whatever else. All of that is so not for me… But, I do want to try to continue to converse with the higher being. Not to beg and whine, but when I need clarification on dilemmas mostly, I guess. When I need to sort things out in my head. I decided that I would probably be able to accomplish that best by writing to him. I love to write almost like nothing else – more than building I could almost say, but that wouldn’t be quite true. But, it is a very close second to that for sure. I concentrate much better when I write. When I just sit there and think of things inside my head, I sort of tend to go off on a tangent. When I write I stay completely focused and for very long time periods at that.

I can sense very clearly that whatever it was that has happened in that temple that day was a one off, a fluke. It will not happen again. So, really no point in trekking off to the nearest place of worship (mosque, church, synagog, temple – all the same to me). I know it will leave me stone cold if I try to replicate that experience. But, maybe writing will do the trick. I hope it will.

So, that is what the secret page is all in aid of…

I could of course, write the stuff and leave it on my hard drive, or indeed publish it all on a secret link on my RL website. But, I do not want to do that. I want it here! Why? I have no idea. Or rather, I do actually… Somehow, I have this weird image in my head that when I press the publish button it will actually get transmitted to where it is meant to go? Please don’t laugh, but that is exactly how I feel that it is going to be. Somehow “save” or “upload” do not carry the same weight as “publish” when it comes to bringing a point across?

OK! This post is somewhat in the nature of a dire emergency!

I am sitting here, listening to someone talking about their Second Life artwork. If I don’t let off some steam right here and now, when it gets to be questions time at the end of this disrespectful little travesty of a presentation, I will have no choice but to get up, bite their heads off, throw it on the floor and then proceed to trample on it. And I would really rather not do that – it simply will not do…

The clumsiest of noob avatars, someone who obviously hasn’t yet had time enough to even take off their flip flops, is duck waddling around this thing which looks like it was built in a very badly outfitted kindergarten, out of kiddy paper and glue (all cut out with an extremely blunt pair of scissors no doubt); and to add insult to injury, displayed in the full glory of a graphics card which appears to be barely capable of rendering the web safe color palette. To do them justice they did spend the better part of their presentation elucidating us all about the utterly amazing concept that is behind this total joke that goes under the name of virtual f-art and spared us with all the visual minutiae of the actual thing itself!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I am so setting up that dictatorship people – you have no idea!

I left the conference early today. So, I went walkabout in the city. Singapore is amazingly clean (makes Switzerland look messy in comparison – that clean), gorgeously landscaped (you wonder about whether they actually pay people to buff the leaves on the trees, everything is that manicured and shiny looking) and just a very pleasant place in general. But if you are looking for the Far East here, forget it – you really wont get too far. It is a contemporary and very wealthy looking city with elegant skyscrapers, postmodernist structures and what have you. The only building that I saw that was even remotely “exotic” in that it had a pagoda-like roof, upon closer inspection turned out to be the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

Today however, I stumbled into a Chinese market area and right there amidst all the meticulously maintained and polished stalls (everything is polished to a high gleam around here, it really is) was a modest looking Buddhist temple. In fact, at first I didn’t even realize what it was. There were all these people standing, waving joss sticks and women were selling lotus flowers out front. And then this Chinese girl walked up to me and asked me whether I would like to pray and offer a flower to the Buddha. And I found myself saying yes, suddenly with tears in my eyes.

I went back the next day and took a photograph. I want to remember what it looks like – my temple.

I do believe in a higher being, so I am not an atheist, but I do not pray. I never seem to be able to. The operative word in higher being for me is the higher bit, so every time that I have attempted to pray I find myself thinking of that joke where God turns to the Archangel Gabriel and asks, “Oh and by the way, what has been going on with that planet? You know the blue one… What was it called again? Earth, right?” and Gabriel says “Oh, doing very nicely Mister God!”. So, that is my concept of God. He is way too busy to care about all the stuff that is going wrong with this planet – much less interested in the whinings of the likes of me.

Then the girl showed me what to do. So, what happened today was a first in many years, maybe even decades. I prayed whole heartedly, from the bottom of my heart. Poured my soul out, told him all about my innermost wishes and longings. Asked for his help. Promised to be good.

I am reluctant to put this here. I am worried it will sound false, phony. It was an intimate moment and should I share it even? And why? But I will anyway. I want people to know that I prayed, that I still have that much purity left in me somewhere. It means something to articulate this out loud. I am not sure what exactly, but it does.

It is my childhood that was given back to me in Second Life, that enabled me to pray after all these years I think. And I think I need to put that right here and in words.

ISEA 2008. I am one of the presenters. Of course I am terribly happy, not to mention proud to be here. But…

There was this art opening, artists-in-labs, this evening. Why do I have this feeling of not belonging? I do belong! I submitted a paper, which underwent a juried and competitive process, at the end of which I was accepted to be here. All fair and square. Furthermore, there are plenty of people here that I know already: Some colleagues from my PhD program, also colleagues from elsewhere, two of my PhD tutors and of course lovely Nina Czegledy, who is such a warm associate to have. It is not like I am forced to stand alone in a sea of strangers. Admittedly when I first started to do this sort of thing 3 years ago, that first time at Siggraph for instance, that was exactly what it was like… But nowadays I seem to have earned my laurels somehow. In fact, tomorrow I will be one of the moderators in the Leonardo Education Forum. So what the hell is wrong with me? Why do I feel so uncomfortable, so ill at ease, so displaced? Why am I so dreadfully unhappy in any kind of crowd that involves more people than you can seat comfortably around a medium sized table? Especially a crowd such as the one that was there tonight?

It was lovely. In this really lovely building, with a huge courtyard. There was freshly squeezed juice and a wonderful buffet dinner. And orchids. Singapore is full of them. They grow here like geraniums elsewhere. Still I left while the whole thing was in full swing. Scarpered out in sheer agony and walked back to my hotel. I went through what I guess was one of Singapore’s hip neighborhoods. Loved it. Sat in a cafe all by myself and had a Diet Coke. It was crowded of course, but as long as I don’t know any of the people, as long as I am anonymous, crowds are perfectly OK. So, I feel comfortable in a crowd of people, unknown to me, halfway across the globe, that speak a language I have no idea about? So why is it that I feel completely displaced, miserable and heart achingly lonely in a crowd of my own peers?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

I have been wearing my ninja cat boots and arm brace for quite a bit now and I truly did not realize that the two sticks are these really nasty gadgets that cops use in Latin American countries. Bett told me what they were only yesterday. When she saw me there was this “hmmm… what’s with the aggressive new look Alpha?”. She meant the sticks but also the boxing gloves. So, I figured that it really does behoove me to look into this bizarre apparel and what it might be all in aid of.

Now, the sticks I didn’t know about but the boxing gloves I did, of course. And here’s how it happened:

I get quite a few visitors at Syncretia and for the largest part they tend to avoid me. They are quite respectful of one’s privacy and do not really venture anywhere near me. Well, not so this one avatar a week or so ago. I was working in the gym, fine tuning the exercise benches and what have you, when suddenly this dude shows up, right? He is one of those conspicuously (and intentionally) ugly avatars, but not a noob. Incidentally I am becoming a real pro at this, nowadays I don’t even need to look into someone’s profile before I have them sussed. But I do look anyway, just to make sure of course, and sure enough he has been around for a while, belongs to all the right groups and bla bla… Oh and, the ugly avatar look is kind of like going to the opera in jeans. It is this eeever so subtle way of implying to the SL community that you may be here but you are nonetheless maintaining your objectivity, you are refusing to become part of the system, you are maintaining a critical distance. So you run around looking like a crossbreed between Ruth and very badly mangled up road kill – but no matter: Who cares how you look! You are making a point! You also avoid buying anything at all costs, because that, again, would make you part of the system, a horrifyingly capitalist one at that, right? Tsk tsk… You are soooo different from all those frivolous avatars around you, the ones that are actually enjoying themselves? Right?

Anyway, back to the gloves. So, he starts chatting. We are standing in front of the workout benches. First he asks me whether he is interrupting me. What am I gonna say? Yes? Of course he is interrupting me. I am up to my armpits in virtual machine grease over there. But I am polite of course, and I say “no no not at all”. He tells me that he has read about Syncretia on the NWN blog and that he thought that it sounded “interesting” so he came to check it out. Then he asks, “is this an artistic installation?”. “Is what an artistic installation?” I want to know. “Well, what you are working on, with all the wheels…” he says. “Ahumm… it is actually a gym”, I say… “Oh… interesting…” he says… I don’t reply to that one so after a bit he says “well, let me look around a bit” and takes off… Like 5 minutes later he is back: “Where is the artwork?” he asks. “Oh” I say, “there is only this one thing that is kinda art, it is all those type thingies and rocks on a platform out front”. He asks for directions, I give them and off he goes. 5 minutes later he is back again! “Very interesting…” he says… And… before I know what I am even doing I have rezzed the gloves!!!

So, in hindsight, I guess what I am saying is something along the lines of “OK, these may be slung over my shoulder at the moment, but one more interesting out of you and I am gonna put them on and then things will start to become really really interesting around here…”. “Here take this… and this… and this…”, “on the nose… on the nose!”… “You sanctimonious twerp!”…

Needless to say he takes off… teeeeee heeeeee

(I bought the gloves ages ago. I liked the texture and the color but I really had no idea if or where or how they would be needed. But you see, here’s my motto: Always err on the side of caution. When in doubt buy! You never know when something will come in handy. Like all of my wonderful Geisha animations. There has yet to materialize an occasion for their usage. But when that day comes I am so gonna be prepared! I’m telling you… Buy first! Think later!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alpha_auer/2371415209/in/set-72157604541225653/

So folks, onto some good news: There is this somewhat remote possibility that I might come into quite a bit of money. (And this is no joke btw, it really might happen. An inheritance thingy that involves a lawsuit with the State of Bulgaria – so, really remote but…). Anyway, if it does… I am setting up my own metaverse. Or better still, I am gonna buy up the decisive voting shares of SL. Get me a nice, cushy seat on the Board of Directors. What am I saying? Become the Board of Directors, I meant! And from that day onward this ain’t gonna be no namby pamby democracy no more. Forget all of that malarkey! Dictatorship all the way! Applicants will be strenuously interviewed. I will be controlling login times. Like with pilots? Where they have to clock a certain amount of flight hours a month or their licences get revoked? Same here. None of this ambling in every so often, to check out “interesting” stuff. You wanna be here mate? You live here! End of! I will also be controlling rezzing activity. There will be random checks on what you have purchased or built – if it is less than XXX lollies/XXX prims, you are history!!! Random checks on all chat and IM activity. Verrrry important this one. Words like “interesting”, “objective”; “discourse”, “critical“, “analytical”, any word that ends with an “…ology”, in fact any word that is longer than 3 syllables – and you are out on your intellectual little ass faster than you can type “epistemological”! hhh… I mean it! I really do!

So yes, it will be a very sparsely populated metaverse indeed – but well worth the results don’t you think?

……………………………

Hmmm… So are my non-intellectual pretensions really any better that other people’s intellectual pretensions? Of course not! But… then again, yes and no, I guess.. To give myself credit where I do in fact deserve some, I kind of tend to keep the intellectual bla bla to research work and papers and stuff. And I do make a point of not using words like “epistemological” even there. 

And I most certainly do not go to someone’s home (which is what Syncretia ultimately is, of course) and say “interesting”…

…………………………..

And one does have to be vigilant with these things you know. So, in a way the gloves are there for my benefit as much as anybody else’s: The nasty beast lurks within, barely contained… For further reading on the matter please refer to a previous blog post here >>>

;-))

Something rather wonderful happened tonight. My beloved brother Yacov Sharir has finally entered SL and met me there for the first time. We did use Skype since Yacov is still a total noob who needs to be taught the ropes and using external voice seemed to be the easiest way of getting him there.

Yacov is not really my brother. But he and I have been calling each other brother and sister for the longest time now and I really do feel like he is an older, wiser brother to me. He is chock full of commitments and has a busy and happy social life: A great job at the University of Texas at Austin as well as a wonderful wife and family; so I seriously doubt that he will become as hooked on SL as I am. But he will be in world every then and again since his university has acquired some land and he will be building there. It will be so nice to watch him make the environment his own and so reassuring to me that he will be there – at least sometimes.

Yacov is wonderfully talented. He is a dancer and a performance artist who has fully integrated the virtual into his RL artistic practice, combining real and virtual dancers on stage. His Lullaby, in which a real dancer and a wireframe rendered virtual being do the most touching of pas de deux, has brought tears into my eyes whenever I have watched it. Like I said, it will be a treat to see what he does in SL, it really will be.

Yacov is intelligent, perceptive, truthful, open minded, funny and possesses great common sense – an attribute I don’t think that I am too terribly well endowed with at all unfortunately. So, tonight we had a long conversation about real and virtual lives, something that Yacov knows more about than most. And he said something which I want to put down here: He said no matter how many worlds, how many lives – we only have one personality/self to go around. We can never ever leave that one behind since we have no control over it whatsoever to begin with…

We can maybe fragment it yes. But its essence stays put, quite out of our reach…

I hate it. In fact I have a good mind to delete it. I really should. 

It is self important, obnoxious, pontificative (is there such a word even?). The amount of poo-faced, self conscious crap that is on there! And I actually enjoyed myself doing that? Did I really? Or was I trying to show off to all and sundry what a wonderfully deep and reflective sort of person I was? Yukk! 

I got here yesterday when I caught myself toying with the idea of whether it might not be a really cool thing to make a flip book called the Uncanny Valley. Images of poor, tortured, uncanny Alpha accompanied by this really rather wonderful text on the abject by Julia Kristeva. I have another one there on my website called entré loup et chien. Kind of like that. Verrrrry intellectual… Jesus! Bloody hell! This time last year I would have jumped on this bright little idea. You see things had to be ugly and joyless and repulsive and discomforting… and… and… and…  — before they could become serious output. What was wrong with me? Why did I go along with this bullshit? And for so many years at that?

I made a burial chamber next to the furry/neko gym. In it is something that I harvested from my RL website, that I made like 5 years ago. It is bloody descriptive of what I am talking about. Entomophobia it is called. So, it goes in a burial chamber. The burial chamber of the self important, obnoxious, smug little cow who cobbled all of that gloomy stuff together. 

And I hope that she never ever returns!

This is Sitki.

I have 11 of them, cats that is, but he is the favorite. I get heavy hearted before I go on trips because I will be leaving him behind and sit on the edge of my seat on the ride back from the airport in anticipation of seeing him. He is a big (tall and long, as well as fat) tabby tomcat. He is also quite stupid. He drools in fact, that is how stupid he is. For such a huge guy he has a tiny miaow. And more often than not, not even a miaow – he opens his mouth and no sound whatsoever comes out. Really, he is nothing extraordinary at all. 

I found him as a tiny, emaciated kitten on my doorstep. That was 11 years ago. He was quite wild and it took me forever to even be able to get close enough to feed him, which would explain the terrible state he was in. People here feed cats on the street. When you walk down my block you can see all these food and water bowls set out. Not to mention the merchants in my neighborhood who are really wonderful with animals. Most stands and stores have their own cats and there is an army of fat, waddling dogs down on the market square, that are tagged on the ear by the municipality to prove that they have been vaccinated and are safe to be around. So, it would have taken a really shy and introverted feline personality to starve to death around here – which indeed is exactly what Sitki turned out to be. 11 years later, I am still the only one that he will come to. He is highly highly highly unsociable, hates his feline roommates (and they all hate him back btw) and he will go near another human only when he really desperately needs to be fed, most unwillingly and only when I am unavailable – like when I am traveling. But me he loves. And he lets me know that he loves me. I am his chosen one. And he melts my heart that way.

His size is really remarkable, he is huge. Big head, big shoulders, long tail. Huge paws. Fat big tabby belly, which he sometimes turns upwards when he sleeps. He sticks those huge paws up in the air and the big gut becomes revealed with all that mixed up tabby fur. Everyplace else his tabby patterns are perfect but on his stomach it is a reddish, grayish, brown mess. And then he dreams and these chattering chin movements and tiny screeches and grrrr’s happen. I love him. 

Cats have very distinct personalities. It takes living with 11 of them to realize how utterly differentiated they are. Even more so than us humans I would say, in that they are also completely uninhibited in displaying their traits. We adjust ourselves to the society around us and do our best to conceal our differences from the herd. (At least most of us, for most of the time). Not so with cats. So, I have complete introverts and extroverts, highly intelligent investigators and somewhat dull philosophers, agressors and defenders. Those that compromise and others that would sooner die than give an inch. Thieves and gentlemen. Floosies and prudes… Like I have this one cranky old woman who will position herself out on the front stoop crying in this god awful, plaintive voice to all the passers by. Those that aren’t in the know will say things like “Oh, this poor animal, I always see her here. Why is no one taking care of her?”. So, how embarrassing is that? Little do they know that she has just come out of a house where bowls are filled to overflowing with the best cat food that money could possibly buy? And that she has thoroughly stuffed her face before she stepped out there? Now why does she do that? Why this act of desolate, impoverished, unloved cat, desperately in need of attention towards the outside world?

Bahriye – the spectre at the feast… A nail to my coffin she is…

One thing that they all share is a highly developed ability to criticize. Anyone who has spent any length of time with a cat will be familiar with that gaze that conveys such utter depths of contempt towards anything and everything that it is surrounded by. Very judgemental little personalities they are. Sitki too, is extremely critical of all that goes on around him. Except me. Or is that my imagination? Or does his hard feline gaze really soften when he looks at me?

Huge paws I said. I do this very often: I put my foot next to his and I examine our respective toes side by side. His toes are considerably bigger than mine. Not my big toe of course, but my little ones are smaller than his big tabby protrusions. (It should be added here that quite a few of the others have pretty big toes too – but, as everyone knows, when it comes to these things, there are toes and then there are toes…). So why are his special? And why do I make such a fuss over them being bigger than mine? And why does that give me such an immense sense of comfort, I wonder? Yes yes. I know. I am completely loopy. Have been for all my life. But still?

And here’s another Sitki story, that I will tell to anyone that is willing to listen. So time to put it here too, I guess. But it really is a weird one, this story. All my cats go out. There are catflaps front and back in all of the windows. I live in the city center, in a vastly busy urban area but luckily it is also a pedestrian zone and like I said before most of my neighbors are thoroughly animal friendly people. Sitki too goes out every so often. About 2 years ago he went out and didn’t come back. I have no idea where he was or what happened to him. (He returned completely filthy but with absolutely no weight loss so this one really is a mystery). As can be imagined I was totally and completely beside myself. I searched the entire neighborhood. And not only me: Every shop and stall keeper in Besiktas was on the lookout. There were little lost signs in every shop window and on every lamp post. Not a day would go by without numerous reportings of the sighting of a likely tabby cat somewhere. The Boss searched every animal shelter in Istanbul, over and over again. We had the municipality on alert, garbage collectors were notified to examine the trash for a tabby body. During the first weeks I was frantic and then slowly I went into mourning. I was disconsolate. Everyone around me knew. My students tiptoed around me. Friends would bring me back treats from the cafeteria. I was a mess. Cried on the shuttle.

And then here is what happened: I am a very heavy smoker. In fact I am more or less a chain smoker. And like all really heavy smokers the one place above all others, where I love to smoke is (or was) in front of the computer. Where I smoked even more, where every inhale was pure unadulterated bliss. This is a time long before I had even heard of Second Life. But, Second Life or not, I have been a thorough geek for 15 years or so now, spending a good 10 hours a day in front this blasted thing – smoking smoking smoking. So, one evening as I was sitting here, suddenly this thing came into my head and I said it out loud: If Sitki ever comes back, I said, I will never ever smoke in front of the computer again. This was the 26th day of his absence and that night he came back. 

And I have kept my word. I have not smoked a single cigarette in front of the computer since that day.

In the last post I added something pretty much in the twelfth hour, at the very end. I said “your vanity” and then in parentheses I added “this one would be me, alas”. This kind of came out of me. I wrote it without really becoming aware of what I was uttering until I saw it on the page itself. Now that it is out, I think I do need to look at this confession a little bit.

First the name: My Real Life name is Elif Ayiter. Elif is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, the Arabic Alpha, in other words. Not that Turkish has any affinity with Arabic, but we did use the arabic alphabet for a very long time due to the influence of Islam. Elif, I think, is also the first letter of the Koran. So, Elif is a Turkish woman’s name (oddly enough, apparently Arab’s do not have Elif as a name), the translation of which is Alpha. When I was going through the list of surnames to pick as I was creating my account I immediately honed in on Auer, because Auer is very similar to Ayiter. Also, I am partially German and Auer does have a Germanic ring to it, I guess. Thus, the urge to make Alpha as closely related as possible to Elif was there from the word go.

So am I vain? Well, I most certainly wasn’t at the time when I went into Second Life. I sat here in an oversized grey tracksuit, fumbling my way around Orientation Island. I remember that day quite vividly. I also had this technique developed to perfection whereby I would manage to totally avoid looking at any reflection of myself in shop windows and what have you. I was that revolted by what I saw. This has become so ingrained in me that even today, after a weight loss of 32 kilos I tend to keep it up. 

But why did I get so fat in the first place? Was it some kind of punishment for the vanity of my younger days? Was my superego trying to teach me a lesson somehow? I do have a feeling that it was something along those lines. So why Alpha? If I was in fact meant to learn a lesson by depriving myself of my looks, why did my superego not stop me from creating Alpha in the image of what I used to be before I became fat? I already wrote here earlier that Alpha became the dragoman that led me out of one state of being into another. So, did my superego allow me to create Alpha because it reckoned that I had learned my lesson and was now ready to be discharged once again into the world of the living as a better person?

So, again, am I vain? Have I learned the lesson? Has anything changed in the intervening decade of the”fat years”? I cannot be sure. Of course, I would like to think so. I do know that parts of me are terribly insecure, have been since I was a child. But the rest? Am I vain? I also wrote a while ago, in the Diametric Opposite that I had tried to do the photo assignment that Murat gave to his students in the spirit that Ufuk had undertaken it. And that I had failed quite miserably. Is that thing, that fatal flaw that I cannot even bring myself to acknowledge, vanity then?

In the end, is vanity the thing that the look-alike avatar is really all about? I truly do not know…

I have been spending quite a bit of time in RL lately. 

I am very familiar with the faces that surround me in everyday life. My family, my colleagues, I see their faces so often that I have stopped thinking about all this. What a face may actually mean. I mostly love the faces around me, at this point they are as familiar as my own face in the mirror.

The Boss’s face, a conglomeration of emotions, expressions, a mobility that runs the gamut from total contempt to mad faced hilarity. My sister’s face: Naivete and romanticism personified. A beautiful face in its cleanness and its mobility. My mother: Sad beyond sad. Always sad – and yet mobile. Even within the sadness there flit these spurts of other things, emotions, good and bad. My grandmother: A vastly intelligent face, one of the most remarkable that I have ever encountered. Other faces: Erdag, Murat, Selim, Bayram. Wonderful mobile faces. And quite recently I met two more such. Wonderful that was. An afternoon in a park.

Mobility. I think that is it! All these faces that I love, that I trust, have that. There are shades of expression, levels and layers of emotion that co-exist as well as follow each other in rapid succession. Everything moves, it is liquid. Muscles rearrange themselves infinitely to express emotion. The faces that I love and trust are faces that have many many many, countlessly many states of being. Fine gradations of being. 

…

Then there are faces that really scare me. They are the ones where the expression is more or less fixed, you always see the same state of being – or at best, very minor alterations to something that is largely fixed. Could be the world’s most wonderful expression too, doesn’t really matter. Could be a lovely, impish smile. If it is always always always there I get nervous. In fact, I get more than nervous, I become revolted. Because then there is something else there, that is concealed. That refuses identification. Things that refuse to be identified are things best left alone.

brrrr……..

…

Today I went back into Second Life after a lengthy interval. I looked at Alpha’s face. Her expression too is fixed. As are those of all the avatars around me, of course. But none of the faces that I love in Second Life give me the sense that they conceal some evil that had better be left alone – obviously. So, what is going on here? I need to think about this one.

Especially since I have lately been thinking about how accurately we actually get to know each other over there, in Second Life. It seems to me that the level of recognition amongst close friends in the metaverse is something that really does need to be remarked upon. We tend to reveal our warts to quite an extraordinary degree to our nearest and dearest. Far far far more than in Real Life I even think, to be honest. 

Could it be precisely because we cannot rely on our faces to conceal things? Could it be that it is far more difficult to conceal your nasty little quirks and idiosyncrasies and downright objectionable characteristics when there is no face to hide behind? Or do we simply become far less inhibited when the expression is fixed? Like you suffered a massive stroke or something? What happens then? Has anyone ever investigated these things I wonder? The correlations?

Here’s the thing though: You express yourself through what you do as well as what you say in the metaverse. And I think the doing bit is way more important than the bla bla bit. People that just speak and do not do much of anything else? Who wants to even know them in Second Life? And could this have anything to do with the fact that speech is not accompanied by expression when you are there? So that in the absence of facial expression, for speech to actually acquire meaning and interest it needs to go in tandem with action in the metaverse? That action itself becomes expression? Could it be then that actions really do speak louder than words after all? At least in Second Life?

So, could it then be so that the ultimate indicator of who you are is what you do? And, could it be that when doing is all that you can rely upon for self expression you really have no place to hide? Could it be that the avatar, far from being a concealer, is actually a revealer, in its absence of facial expression?

…

hhh…

I really think that I am onto something here you know.

Yes yes yes. I know, I know. You can build yourself a persona that has absolutely nothing to do with who you really are. Sure you can. I mean look at all those transgender avatars. I have one too, who doesn’t anyway? Or alts? And as long as you stick to public events and places you can probably conceal yourself ad infinitum. But that is a very superficial take on Second Life, hardly worthy of a hardcore Resident’s consideration even. The minute you start to do; to build, start groups, make music, rezz – whatever it is that one does around here that ends up making a Second Life even remotely meaningful, that gives it an identity, you will start being seen in action. Action that clothes your chatter in meaning, that creates a context, an expression.

And then you are so busted. Oh, by all means, please do continue to wear whatever your particular cloak of concealment has been… Who cares? Anyone around you who has gotten close enough to give you a serious moment’s thought will still know all of what you are all about. And what’s more, here’s the divine irony: That famous cloak you have so tightly wrapped around you will be the first thing that is giving you away – your innermost being, your fantasies, your illusions and delusions, your fears, your confusion, your very need for concealment or identification, your vanity (this one would be me, alas), your hopes, your lies, your imagination, your self perception, your level of individuation… You see, you took action when you built that avatar, that persona. It wasn’t a god given thing, you made it. You created yourself and now you stand there holding the can.

Second Life is bloody uncanny that way. It really is.