Virtual Heart Break

This video is quite funny and pertinent to my ongoing discussion about emotions experienced in RL vs. virtual environments.

"If This is Second Life Why is My Heart Breaking in Real Life"



I love that the women speak in TTS (text-to-speech). I guess now that SL is going to allow voice-communication, audiences may expect more expressive voice-acting in such videos - perhaps in real-time SL as well. I wonder if someone will offer voice-filters to maintain some of the anonymity afforded by texting.

But back to the main point - these women are heartbroken - in real and second life! But what if this were a para-authentic event (i.e., the same people who were dating in SL were dating in RL)? What if this guy was two (three)-timing these women in RL and SL? They would be even more heart-broken, right? What if he were faithful in RL but cheating in SL? I think they would be less heart-broken than in the previous condition. Now, what if he were faithful in SL but cheating in RL? Would his faithfulness in SL even matter? Probably not - unless the women ascribed more importance to their SL than RL relationships. This is not such a profound assertion, but perhaps it will lead to some better thoughts later. For now, it leads me back to my sea of email - the tides are rising, I'm hypothesizing.

Wheelies - In Second Life, not on motorcycle

This is a great story about a dance club in SL for RL disabled people to kick it, literally ...hmmm, well, at least virtually ;).



This brings me back to the question of whether emotions experienced in virtual spaces can be more intense or important than those experienced in RL. Perhaps we experience emotions during para-authentic virtual events - virtual events which have RL corollaries (e.g., my virtual motorcycle) - differently than we experience emotions during completely artificial virtual events. This seems obvious - someone who doesn't have a motorcycle in RL experiences a virtual motorcycle in a very different way than I do. Do they love it more or less than I do?

The more salient question is how the disabled person who tends to avoid RL dance clubs feels in the virtual dance club. It seems obvious that they enjoy it more than RL dance clubs. But if they don't go to RL dance clubs, then is the virtual dance club a para-authentic or artificial virtual event. Further, do they enjoy the virtual dance club more or less than I do?

More thoughts for the eventual dissertation? I have a feeling that if I contemplated this for awhile longer I could come up with a theoretical framework to organize how we experience emotion in virtual environments depending on whether it is an artificial or para-authentic event. But I've got more short-term thinking to get back to.

----UPDATE----
After reading this posting, Simon sent me an email saying he doesn't like RL dance clubs but dancing in SL makes him feel great. He also offered me an interview, which I will most likely follow up on when I have an official (IRB sanctioned) research project.

Beatbox Chef Cooks up a Storm

This is another posting that may or may not relate to media or technology. Regardless, the chef boxes a succulent beat to titillate your hip-hauditory taste buds.

Valentars Day

Okay, it's a stupid subject, but since feb 14 is my bday I have poetic license.

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.

Extreme Pogo

In addition to communication, I am big fan of transportation. In many ways the two are intrinsically linked - communication is virtual transportation. Hmm, maybe I should write a dissertation about that.

Anyway, this video has nothing to do with media except that it's on youtube. I came across it when my roommate's friend stopped by and remarked that my motorized scooter (it's a Bladez Elite 250 - a little electric lazy mobile which haven't used it in awhile) looked like a pogo stick. Next thing we were exploring the vurtego website and watching people do crazy things with powerful sticks on youtube.



It's fun to watch, but I still prefer wheels. Speaking of lil' boyz pushing big wheels, check out a silly cartoon video of my newest favorite pop-hop song, "The way I live", by Baby Boy Da Prince.

From SL pic sharing - to - I want to work at LL!!

Snapzilla, a website for sharing photos from Second Life, is one of the many cool things I learned about during my interview at Linden Lab this Monday. Why would they give an internship to someone as clearly ignorant about SL as I am? Well, I'm an overworked PhD student with a passion for the metaverse. Although I don't spend much time in it, I have faith that metaverse will make the real world a better place. But doesn't that mean I have blind faith? Well, I would argue that faith must be blind in some regard in order to be faith at all. Anyway, I promised I'd read some blogs and spend more time in-world before my start date - if I am fortunate enough to have a start date.

Nicktropolis is coming - tomorrow

Virtual worlds seem to be springing up all over the place. Can Second Life handle the competition? I hope so. And then I hope they all merge into one beautiful unified mega-virtual universe.

Here's an article about Nicktropolis, a virtual world for kids and predators.

And in a completely unrelated story, click here to make a mii on your PC (I played the wii today. Thanks Anna for the link!)