Anyway, I was recently talking with a fellow rider about how some stuff, like my motorcycle, is real and other stuff, like my Second Life motorcycle, is virtual. Not hard to grasp, right? But what about feelings? The exhilarating feeling of accelerating past a line of cars at an intersection and then tucking deep into a turn is real. The feeling induced by watching my avatar do it in Second Life is less real - or at least less exhilarating. Not hard to grasp either. But what about my feeling of love for my real motorcycle and virtual motorcycle? Can the two be equal? Can the latter be greater? Are virtual emotions different than real ones in any way?
I'm not sure, but I want to think about this more. Maybe I'll design a study or write a dissertation. ;) In the meantime, I am happy to connect this thought to a recent portion of an article in the New York Times about Vday.
Online communities like SecondLife allow members to create animated versions of themselves called avatars that can go on dates, fly, carouse, even engage in prostitution. Theodora Stites wrote vividly in this space about how she conducts much of her romantic life this way and confessed to enlarging her avatar’s chest and perfecting its features to attract suitable male avatars.
You might assume that on SecondLife you are protected from the emotional upheaval of real relationships because the animated couplings tend to be, well, fake. But here’s the catch: They’re not fake. It’s still you behind the screen and you who is being accepted or rejected, with all the attendant joy and pain. As Theodora explained, “I’ve found that I act much as I do in real life, and my SecondLife relationships tend to fail the same way my real-life relationships do.”
The question of whether I would love a virtual girlfriend or virtual motorcycle more is still open as well.
