Assigned Readings:
- Minsky, Richard. “FIRST-RATE ART IN “SECOND LIFE” – Jan. 2007
- Petronilla Paperdoll, “Book Art Museum to Open in SL” SLArt, 2007 (be sure to click on links within the article to better understand what they are talking about)
NO RESPONSE ASSIGNMENT – just read the above.
Presentations
1 response so far ↓
1
Laura
// Jul 5, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Response Assignment #10
Second Life is a completely new concept to me. I had never heard of this virtual world before and to be honest I don’t think I would like it. Mostly due to the fact that I can barely check my own email regularly let alone keep up an online persona of myself. Even though these virtual homes don’t seem like my cup of tea, I started to realize why people might like them. They are places where you can be whoever you want; you can change your whole identity, gender, job, or even race. After reading the “White Like Me” blogs it seemed not to be as racially anonymous as I would have hoped.
The blogs that I read made me sad. They are all examples of how even though this is a virtual world and your avatar is what you want others to see, people still want to know what your real race is. Like in the blog about how Bel is one of the most popular avatars in Second Life and in real life she is black. People in this world assumed she was white and some would ask her if she was black, because she used the word sista. “high tech culture, is already assumed to be a ‘white’ thing.” “I’d say that’s true,” Bel answers. “You’re white until proven guilty.”
The whole thing that bothers me about this situation is why would anyone ask what someone’s real race is? Why is it important? To me a virtual world can never even be close to the real one. Things are lost in translation, so in my mind Second Life is a game, an escape. You are what you want to be and maybe can’t be in real life. Or you are as close to who you are in real life but it is never really you. The real world is so focused on labels and race why would anyone want to bring those unnecessary and irrelevant discriminations into a world that could be free of that. If I created myself in a virtual world I wouldn’t want to know what anyone’s race is, it’s not important. This is an escape from real life, I wouldn’t want to pay bills in second life, I wouldn’t want to be judged and labeled while just walking around. There is enough discrimination and hardships in real day to day life. Some people think that your race defines who you are. Race should be irrelevant; it shouldn’t matter but in our world people focus on race. It’s hard to escape it in our culture and its sad that people still find it important to define peoples their heritage in their “second life”.
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