In Conclusion

It sure has been an interesting last nearly two months working on this blog and going in and out of the Second Life universe. When I started the blog, I wasn’t sure what I was in for as I had little experience with the game beforehand. I’m glad I found some very interesting characters to talk with, many of which turned out to give me some very interesting and helpful tips regarding my avatar and how I still looked like a new player even after buying some new clothes and an animation package to make me a more fluid character.

I’m also fortunate to have felt some real emotions in the game, specifically fear, which I experienced while in the depths of NecronomVI, an incredible landscape that I was wholly unsure of from the start since it looked pretty unrealistic and fantastical. But that’s the thing about second life, it’s not supposed to be normal and if you’re just looking for that experience, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The draw of Second Life, which I explored in my blog post from yesterday, is the idea that none of these locations are fully true to life, since that would not be any fun at all.

It’s game where you are able to play any role you could ever dream up, and even though its user pool has dwindled, the aspect of role-playing runs rampant. As Lisa Nakamura states in "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet,” “role playing is a feature of the…[game] and it would be absurd to ask that everyone who plays within it… [have the same] "rl"[a.k.a. real life] gender, race, or condition of life…[This] diversification of the roles which get played…enable a thought provoking detachment of race from the body.” By playing whatever race or type of character you choose, you have the ability to play and re-play the game to infinity. However, while many people in the game know how to reconcile characters who are white, black, kings or queens, when it comes to things like vampires, aliens and fairies anyone in the game can choose to approach that character with a different mindset. Nakamura also states that “performing alternative versions of self and race jams the ideology-machine, and facilitates a desirable opening up of what Judith Butler calls ‘the difficult future terrain of community’ in cyberspace.” However, it is this unknown area that I found to be the most beautiful aspect of the game. When I passed a creature that I had no idea what it was, I had no problem approaching it and realizing how it would like to be treated through a virtual face-to-face interaction. Both Second Life and the virtual world in general are great examples to illustrate how the realms of online pleasure are changing. While the conventional forms of online pleasure can still be accessed, it is these new interactions that can only truly take place in an area where the real body is fully detached that can wholly open up the conversation and illustrate how a new and more literal type of fantasy and escapism are becoming integral parts of pleasure, while reifying the notions of these ideas into the past.

Sources:

Nakamura, Lisa. "Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on

the Internet." University of California, Irvine Department of Humanities. Web. 11 May 2011.