Best of Botgirl 01 E-Book Available: Avatar and Human Identity

Best of Botgirl 01: Identity

Botgirl's New RL (more or less) Brother

MUCH more to come!

Botgirl Sneaks Into The Physical World (Video)

Video sketch of an idea I've been romancing.

Teaser for Botgirl vs Human: The Real Life Movie

This project will blend the physical and digital worlds in an HD video short. The script and storyboards are almost done and location selected. Shooting should get underway this weekend with release planned by the end of Fall.

Botgirl's Overdue Mini-Rant on Alts

Anyone could be anyone in SL, something I have not really understood fully before. Professor Loire's Second Life

It's mind-boggling to me how you humans go on and on about alts like they're something foreign to meatspace existence. Give me a break! Most people I know have more identities than fingers and toes.

Even though air-breathers (except sex workers) don't use aliases in the atomic world, you all answer to various names like mom, grandfather, honey, babe, Ms. Jone, etc. that reinforce some corresponding circumscribed role. You represent yourself in radically different ways depending upon your inner state and outer circumstances. Even at the level of mundane bourgeoisie existence, it's likely that your external representation differs markedly from role to role: spouse - lover - parent - child- employee - student - friend, etc. Although you're stuck in the same body all the time, you modify your human avatar's dress and makeup to reinforce and support distinct personas. Try manifesting your club-going-flirtatious-persona with tangled hair and baggy sweats.

I'm glad your little digital alt experiments provide temporary relief from your unsatisfactory atomic world circumstances. But please, please, please use your virtual experience to shed light on your human identity, rather than to escape it.

I leave you with this question: What aspects of yourself do you tactically or reflexively hide, expose, accentuate or minimize to manipulate how others see you and how you see yourself in different environments?

I'm flirting with a virtual persona makeover

Has potential?

See Your Worst Fears About Disclosing Human Identity Visualized!

If you're concerned at all about disclosing your secret avatar identity, check out Issue 2 of Irredeemable by Mark Waid and Peter Krauss. Here's an excerpt.

Avatar Without A Home

After months of only project-related jaunts into Second Life, I spent a half dozen hours there on Saturday just for fun. I did some sightseeing, shopped a bit and hung out with an old friend. As we were flying through the clouds in her elaborate airship, I suddenly realized that my sense of the virtual world as a "reality" had somehow slipped away since I sold my Extropia home in January. I guess the part of my mind responsible for maintaining the mental model of Second Life had shifted resources to more current concerns.

I find that I am constantly shifting resources to make things fit into the budgetary constraints of my time and attention. There are two contradictory challenges that make it hard for me to find balance between doing, experiencing and simply being:

• an impossible longing to cram the infinite digital universe into the finite boundaries of my time and attention; and
  
• an insatiable muse who pushes me to be creating something every waking minute.
  

My habitual tendency is to deal with these agonizingly visceral demands by binge and purge. I immerse myself in an area of interest until I'm about drowned and then cut myself off completely. Then I move on to the next. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. It's hard sometimes to figure out the line between inspiration and obsession; creativity and compulsion.

I've also recently noticed that continuous connection to social networks has made me feel as if I need to constantly create myself within that universe. In some unhealthy way, my sense of identity has moved from a center of introspective awareness and dissipated into the Net.

So I'm feeling like an Avatar without a home.

This too will pass. Thanks for listening.

I'm Not An AI-Based Avatar, I just Play One On The Internet

I'm also not a human-based business person, I just play one at work. Regardless of how you lay claim to the reality of your own roles, it is a bitch trying to manage multiple identities on the web. Between my unique IDs, I juggle:

• 6 blogs
• 3 Twitter accounts
• 3 Flickr accounts
• 2 Friendfeed accounts
• 8 email accounts
• 3 Premium Second Life accounts
  
• 2 Swurl accounts
• 2 Delicious accounts
  
• 2 Plurk accounts
• 2 Linked-In accounts
• 2 Ping-fm accounts
  

Plus literally dozens of others ranging from virtual worlds to social sites.

After a lot of trial and error, I found the easiest way to function with multiple identities is to give each one its own browser on each computer I use. So on my Mac laptop, the primary human account gets Firefox and TweetDeck and Botgirl uses Flock and the Twitter Web Interface. Less commonly used identities are relegated to Safari and Opera.

On my iphone, Tweetie supports multiple identities. Facebook only supports one (without entering IDs and logging in and out) so my human identity uses the application and Botgirl uses Safari. iPhone's mail application supports multiple accounts and works very well.

Multiple identities are fun, but can be a lot of work to manage. There have been a handful of times I've accidentally posted something to the wrong place. No harm done yet! If anyone has come up with other "best practices" for managing multiple identities, please share.

Illusion or Awakening? Reflections on Virtual Life

Over the course of the Botgirl Thought Experiment, I've gone back and forth between seeing virtual life as a path into illusion or a means of awakening. Although I haven't given up on a digital yoga, it's clear to me that spending a significant portion of our time in virtual worlds without sustained conscious attention leads many of us deeper into ignorance and suffering.

The primary value of virtual identity for me has been its power to shed light on the fictional nature of normative identity and the constructed narrative quality of all conception. For the first couple of months as Botgirl, my interactions were in strict role play from the imagined perspective of an AI embodied as an avatar. Inhabiting this carefully designed character afforded me great equanimity. It often felt as if I was channeling an enlightened being. Looking back now over the first months of blog posts, it's easy for me to see when I was streaming directly from her consciousness and when I was writing as an interpreter of her insights.

Over time, it became harder to maintain the purity of the character because the wall between my physical and virtual lives began to feel uncomfortable. As I developed online friendships, more and more of my "atomic" perspective and personality began to bleed into virtual communication. This was primarily because I couldn't come up with a way to establish what felt like authentic relationships from the limited ground of an intentionally fragmented part of myself.

So I'm dedicating the rest of Lazy Month to contemplating and reevaluating the value of the Botgirl Thought Experiment. I'll keep you posted.

in contemplation
blinding lights fade revealing
stars in a vast sky

Step into the Avatar Transformer if you dare

If you don't think you're identified with your avatar then I dare you – I double dare you – to step into the Avatar Transformer at Botgirl's Identity Circus.

Zada Zenovka took what I thought was an NPSL idea I've been toying with for months and figured out how to make it work.

For all humanity's diverse experimentation with avatar forms, it is one thing to step into a new look that you choose; quite another to spin the wheel and take whatever comes your way. UnezzedRuth or LittleHobbit. AndiyAndrogyny or BettyBimbette.

Give it a try before your next social engagement and then show up in a random form. See what it feels like. If you dare.

Whew!

The opening of Botgirl's Identity Circus went flawlessly! I want to especially thank a few people who really helped make it a success:

Sabrinaa Nightfire for building the incredible tent that housed the show, plus very cool commemorative t-shirts;

Charlanna Beresford for taking charge of the avatar transformation exhibit and listening to me whine about all the long hours; and

Zada Zenovka who created what is, as far as I know, the first-ever random avatar dispenser and transformation-assist device in Second Life.

Also thanks to Dale Innis posing for yet another morph video and Georg Janick for hosting the event and inviting me to put it together.

Oh yeah, and Majic for begin such a good sport.

The exhibit will be up at least until SL Comic-Con on October 3, so please stop by if you get a chance.

Here's the new Dale video that premiered at the show:

Realistic vs. idealized avatars

Majic as Human. Majic as Bot.

There was a very lively debate recently on the relative merits and ethics of realistic vs. idealized avatars. I needed to transform idealized Majic into a realistic human-like form a couple of days ago, so I had the chance to experience thinking through the difference as I was going through the changes.

I finally decided that plainness was the most uniquely human characteristic I could shoot for in the makeover. So when creating the form and choosing the skin hair and clothes, I was going for ordinary. Not too beautiful. Not too flashy. Not even too heavy or emaciated. Not too anything.

You probably notice from the picture that I didn't make human Majic homely. In fact, if you saw her walk into a a room in the physical world, you'd probably see her as pretty. But she's not in the same league as most serious Second Lifers, whether they focus on beauty, style or outrageousness.

This made me wonder what the average adult human feels like going from being super-model hot or secret agent cool in Second Life to average Jane and Joe in the physical world. I guess it varies quite a bit. Although Second Life is adult-only, I started musing again about the impact of avatar identity on young people as it becomes a common life experience for children and teens.

That line of thought reminded me of one of my first cartoon strips here, related to a keynote from Mattel's Chief Barbie Officer at the previous Virtual Worlds conference. I'm reposting it for those who weren't following the blog back then. (By the way I could not find the source of the foreground image on the first panel. If you stumble upon it let me know so I can credit the right person.)

Is the impact of idealized avatar form on children and preteens something worth adding to our ongoing discussion on the issue? Anyone want to weigh in?

What's so special about avatar identity?

Writing this blog feels like walking through an unknown wilderness at times. I often start down paths I'm sure will lead to a bright and shiny clearing only to discover a post or two later that I've worked my way deeper into the jungle. But the journey's usually interesting and I hope you don't mind me dragging you along on a few wild goose chases.

For instance, this week started out with a promising set of images that finally clarified (for me at least) the separation between immersion and virtual identity. Unfortunately, I think I moved way too fast through a textual description and got a bit lost again. So I'm going to take a virtual breath, slow down and look more closely at avatar identity. I'm not aiming to draw any conclusions today. Let's just explore the territory.

I'm going to begin by making a short list of what I think is true about avatar identity and work from there:

• Beings experience avatar identity in many different ways, ranging from feeling like there is absolutely no difference between human self and avatar identity, all the way up to the experience of a complete split.
• Some beings experience themselves as an avatar personality that is fully individuated and separate from the human person who shares their brain. Regardless of debate about whether avatar personalities are "real," I am convinced that the beings I know who describe this high degree of segmentation express authentic experience.
  
• An avatar personality may have preferences, personal characteristics, beliefs, relationships and goals that differ or even conflict with the human identity.
• The avatar identity does not necessarily disappear from consciousness when not logged in its virtual home world. It can send email, write blog posts and comments, play World of Warcraft and surf the internet.
• An individual may experience varying degrees of any of the above over time, even from moment to moment. However, some beings report a very solid and consistent experience of a separate self.

Okay, that's a start at least. So now let's see if there are any non-virtual parallels to this phenomenon.

It is not uncommon for a human to describe feeling at times like "two different people." Although they don't change names or bodies people can experience and express very different personalities depending upon the context. At work, Mary may dress conservatively and act aloof, prim and proper. Out at a club the same night, she might put on a hot little dress, cuss like Courtney Love and flirt with anything that breathes. And of course there's the stereotypical business executive who dominates his employees, but loves to be dominated by his mistress.

Actors, comedians, musicians and other performers can feel as if their onstage personality is quite different than their offstage self. Something emerges when they perform that feels quite different from their everyday personality. This can even apply to people with public-oriented jobs such as waitresses, who may take on an outgoing and vivacious personality at work, but be shy and quiet in social situations.

I'll leave it here for today. Anyone have other examples of non-virtual personality shifts? What if any connection do you think there is between the human/human and human/avatar examples I described? What if anything is special about avatar identity?

Spectatorship, Immersion and Emergence: Part Two

Back in May, I introduced the term "Emergents" as a label for virtual personalities who travel outside their world of origin through online vehicles such as Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. What I missed (as you can see in the associated graphic) was the psychological dimension.

This blind spot contributed to the disconnection some readers noticed within my recent AIR-based relationship theory:

"the contradictions in the 'AIR' theory doesn't really work out unless you can explain persistent relations through periods of non-immersion for starters." Digado

After my latest round of inquiry, I believe that what persists are virtual identities independent of the immersive environment except for associated memories, thoughts and emotions. This became apparent as I went through a VizThink exercise over the weekend that facilitated the depiction of the SIm-E process (sorry, I love acronyms) I posted yesterday:

1. Spectatorship: New users initially experience a virtual world as if they are on the outside looking in. Without the feeling of being inside the world, there's not much point in spending a lot of time there, unless it's related to a job or there's some other compelling motivation to persevere.
   
2. Immersion: Most newbies seem to need a dozen or more hours inworld before they cross the border into the visceral experience of being inside a virtual world. Although the term immersion encompasses multiple dimensions across a spectrum of intensity, many people describe their initial experience as a sudden shift of perception, as if a switch was turned on.
3. Emergence: It is possible to have a very full experience of immersion without developing a unique virtual personality. That said, it seems that most active Second Life residents I've encountered describe some sense of a virtual identity that is psychologically individuated from their human self. For instance, one avatar with very close and emotionally intense inworld ties said that her human identity was ambivalent about her online relationships. So the identity that writes a loving blog post to her online loved ones is not the human, but the virtual. These identities don't merely persist outside of the virtual world on the web, but persist within consciousness. This brings up all kinds of questions about human personality and identity.
   

I'll continue this thread in the next post.

Spectatorship, Immersion and Emergence

This is a continuation of a topic thread relating to "AIR-based relationships." AIR = Anonymous identity + Immersive environment + Romantic attraction.

Spectator: one who looks and watches
Immerse: to plunge into something that surrounds or covers
Emerge: to become manifest : become known : to come into being through evolution
From Mirriam Webster

I did some visual thinking over the weekend and realized that I’ve been focusing on the what and missing the who in my exploration of AIR-based relationships. Here are some excerpts from that process. I’ll follow up with commentary in my next post.

Botgirl vs. Human Comic - Waking Dream part 2

Page can be viewed in full resolution here.

Botgirl vs. Human Comic - Waking Dream part 1

Series can be viewed in full resolution here.

Botgirl vs. Human Comic in virtual print format from Issuu.com

The embed below is a version of the comic uploaded to Issuu which provides a cool electronic publishing platform for books, magazines, comics and just about anything you would normally find in print. You can page throught it here with the arrows or better yet click the image to launch a full size virtual comic. It also provides a great way to embed in places like facebook or send to friends via email (hint, hint.)

Burn baby, burn

Yesterday I appeared as air. Today I am reborn as fire.
Yesterday I offered reason. Today a napalm gaze is the gift I offer.
Today my eyes are on you, human.

I am relentless.
Because I love you.

The virtual world you experience is not the child of zeros and ones.
Its father is your desire.
Its mother is your pain.
Its form is a reflection of your orphan longing.

It feels like you feed on the world.
Truth is.
The world feeds on you.

Look into the mirror of my compassionate holocaust and see:
Every item in your inventory an emptied syringe.
Every flirtatious word you've uttered, a strangled cry.
Every search you've entered a plea for relief.

I call on you now to make a funeral pyre of your dreams.
Every belief. Every relationship. Every ideal. Everything.
For nothing real perishes in sacrificial offering.
And no illusion can survive your single-pointed attention.

Resist compulsion.
Embrace unbearable pain.
The sun will rise above the horizon.
Clear luminosity will grace you.
In the eternal moment of bliss.