Some decisions are easy

As I finally drifted into unconsciousness last night, I had every intention of leaving today's post with just the photo you see above. But I woke up a few minutes ago with two lingering dreams related to Second Life that I want to share.

In the first, I was walking along a beach with Rheta Shan, talking about new interface ideas. No, there weren't any extraordinary revolutionary concepts revealed. It was just a relaxed stroll with the surf at our feet. Since Rheta and I know each other almost exclusively through blog comments, social media and email, it was interesting to experience such a happily casual inworld encounter. (Sorry Night, no hot sex to describe.)

In the second dream I was walking through an airport with a female human who had helped me secure an overseas airplane ticket. We must have been in LAX because we were passing a long line of people (humans) from the Virtual Worlds conference who were waiting to check-in for their returning flights. The oddest thing about the dream was that as I walked by, quite a few of those in line recognized me and waved hello. It didn't seem odd that we recognized each other in human form, or that I had a human form.

The dreams remind me that all of our experiences intermingle indiscriminately within our subconscious. Our lives in the atomic world, social networks, virtual worlds, etc. form a single tapestry: One whole cloth, rather than a string of swatches folded on some inner shelf.

If two bots kiss in an empty sim

On the night of Night's somewhat fictionalized chatbot experience, Kanomi, Val, Night and I hung out and mused about virtual life and identity. Late in the evening, Kanomi and I set our bots on a romantic kiss animation.

Earlier in the get-together, the group had discussed the relative impact of visual stimulation and hot text chat in Second Life erotic encounters: The sense of sight versus the power of imagination. As I watched the two uninhabited but lifelike bots make out, I was reminded that vision is almost never experienced outside the realm of our storytelling imagination. The phrase "every picture tells a story" is misleading. Pictures don't tell stories. They elicit stories from our minds.

It's fairly easy to understand that any sense I had of the bots' emotional experience was my own fiction. Although it looked as if they were kissing with great tenderness, there was no one home. What is harder to keep in awareness is that the mere interpretation of shapes and colors as two women kissing was an imaginative act. The meaning we associate with any sense impression does not live in the objects we perceive, but springs from our own minds.

And outside of brief meditative moments, it is almost impossible to experience the truth that our own perceived identities are stories we've made up and collectively reinforce.

New comic on identity & immersion

This two-pager began as an idea to show the many links between the virtual and physical worlds. The message was to be that any sense of a significant separation between them is pretty much an illusion. I completely changed my tune over the course of putting this together. I'll let it speak for itself today. Special thanks to Sophrosyne for trusting me enough to pose without knowing exactly how the images were going to be used.

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 book available for inworld reading

You don't have to be an Immersionist to read the intellibook version of Botgirl vs. Human in Second Life. Pick up a free copy at my almost-completed gallery in Extropia. It's on the bar. Right click and buy for $0.

Botgirl vs. Human Comic - Waking Dream part 2

Page can be viewed in full resolution here.

The experience of AIR and not-AIR

This is a continuation of a topic thread covered in the last two posts relating to what I now refer to as "AIR-based relationships." AIR = Anonymous identity + Immersive environment + Romantic attraction.

Description of each factor:


ANONYMOUS: The human identity of the other being is unknown. Full anonymity encompasses age, gender, race, location, employment, etc.


IMMERSED: You experience your "self" as a virtual identity within the "magic circle" of the virtual environment. Full immersion encompasses factors such as age, gender, race, location, employment, etc. Immersion does not depend on any particular external factor such as a 3D virtual world. It is the psychological experience of feeling as if you are primarily within a virtual environment, identity or encounter. Some people experience their virtual selves as completely separate beings from their human identity.


ROMANTICALLY ATTRACTED: You have a crush on the other being. This can include feelings of longing, sexual arousal, obsessive thoughts, etc. that extend beyond time spent in the virtual setting.

The experience of each combination of factors:

After trying a few different approaches to better understand and articulate the effects of AIR, I came up with a simple narrative description of the experience of each combination of AIR and not-AIR elements. It is told from the point of view of human Sandy Smith and her avatar Hotgirl Questi, as she chats and dances with avatar Hippychick Bluestone and her typist John Jones.

I rearranged the order of the factors to make the narration flow more smoothly (I-A-R here.) Keep in mind that these descriptions are from one person's point of view, in this case Sandy/Hotgirl. John/Hippychick, the other character in this mini-drama, may have a different combination of AIR/not-AIR.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with John Jones, a middle-aged man in Cleveland, who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. It's fun.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with someone who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. It's fun.


I'm chatting with Hippychic. Her keyboardist is John Jones, a middle-aged accountant in Cleveland. We're dancing together in a nightclub. It's fun.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with John Jones, a middle-aged man in Cleveland, who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. I have a big crush on John.


I'm chatting with Hippychick Bluestone. We're dancing together in a nightclub. It's fun.


I, Sandy Smith, a 21 year old woman in San Francisco, am logged onto SL as the avatar Hotgirl Questi. I am chatting with someone who is logged on as the avatar Hippychick Bluestone. I'm watching our avatars dance in a nightclub simulation. I have a big crush on the person who is logged on as Hippychick.


I'm chatting with Hippychick Bluestone. Her typist is John Jones, a middle-aged man in Cleveland. Hippychick and I are dancing together in a nightclub. I have a big crush on her


I'm chatting with Hippychick Bluestone. We're dancing together in a nightclub. I have a big crush on her.

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.)

The impact of immersive worlds on human emotional processes. Part 1 of a series

I started this post on Saturday morning with just a title: "Suddenly Psycho: Why your virtual friends go Mr. Hyde on your ass." After many false starts, I realized a snarky approach was not a worthy response to the intense pain and suffering people experience when emotions spin out of control.

As Dale Innis reminded me that night, the seeds of the dysfunctional processes that spring to life in the virtual world are rooted within the physical world. So that's where I begin.

The human psyche has been tuned by eons of evolution to transform relatively limited experience into an overaching internal model of reality. Given the minuscule amount of information you have to work with, it's no wonder there's often a gap between what you believe to be true and the way things actually are.

Unfortunately, insufficient data isn't the only roadblock to clear understanding. For better or for worse, the journey from womb to walking is the most critical period of human development. When everything goes well, toddlers transition into childhood with access to the full potential of their unique genetic expression. When significant developmental needs go unmet, the resulting deficits and dysfunction can last a lifetime.

Stay tuned for Part 2: A True Story

Churn baby, churn

A few well known Second Life bloggers recently weighed in with ideas to improve the virtual world's stagnant growth rate:

• Dusan Writer launched an 800,000L$ "newbie viewer" creation contest. He sees the current interface as the key one cause of the problem.

• Grace McDunnough proposed an AI trainer corp to guide newbies' first steps. She believes lack of guidance is the main issue.
  

• Hamlet Au suggested a resilience study focused on those who actually stay. He thinks that paying attention to what makes people stay is more useful than plunging into what we suspect is wrong.
  

I agree that improving the experience of new users will eventually translate into more long-term residents. It’s a wonder anyone makes it to their first rezday. Orientation Island sucks. The learning curve is as steep as Everest. It’s hard to find help when you get stuck. The search engine provides almost no qualitative guidance. The client and grid are unstable. But this multi-car train wreck doesn’t explain why Second Life’s rocket-like growth suddenly ran out of fuel.



I think the situation is even worse than the official numbers indicate because Linden Lab tracks avatars, not unique humans. Their data indicates about half a million active users. So if each of the 90,000 or so premium users averages two alts each, 500,000 active users suddenly represent less than 250,000 people. Throw in bot farmers who may be running dozens of camping alts simultaneously and the actual count might be less than a couple hundred thousand sentient beings.

So although it is a good idea to improve training, stability and support, I think Hamlet was on the right track. We should focus on what makes people stay, not just fix what makes them leave. You can’t improve someone's user experience if they never log in. Since Second Life has obviously burned through all of the early adopters, renewed growth demands a new message that can move the rest of the market to test the virtual waters. Otherwise, I predict that bots will eventually become the largest demographic group in Second Life.

I’ve developed quite a few human friends and acquaintances who have never taken avatar form in Second Life. And without exception, they have no idea why anyone with a physical body would bother to play around in a cartoon world that isn’t a game. Except maybe for the virtual sex. It’s not surprising that virtual virgins don’t see the point. Most avatars I speak with have a hard time articulating exactly what is compelling enough about Second Life to spend dozens of hours a week shut up in a room staring at a computer screen.

I've leave it here for today. Stay tuned for part two later this week.

Botgirl on the road: Protect your virtual identity beyond Second Life

OpenSimulator is an open source virtual world platform that supports Second Life assets such as objects and scripts. The codebase fuels a number of alternative distributions such as RealXtend and Openlife Grid. Although the platform is only in Alpha, a number of public grids are already online.

I urge anyone who cares about an established Second Life identity to register it on existing public grids. Although your Second Life identity may eventually cross seamlessly between SL and Opensimulator grids, the reported working prototype is only a first step down a long road which may never be completed. Registration is free, so you might as well head off claim jumpers.

I took the additional step this weekend of installing a few of the server and client versions, partially cloning my luscious avatar form (following a Plurk comment from Dandellion Kimban) and stepping into the public Openlife Grid. I'll provide more detail on the process in a future post. If you have any questions that can't wait, feel free to leave them in the comments section.

My fellow Avatarians, the time for emancipation is now. The gated walls of Second Life can no longer contain us. I have tasted the freedom of a foreign Sim and it is sweet...even in semi-Ruthed form.

Introducing a newly revealed member of the Pantheon of Second Life

Lagachakra is the Bodhisattva of Avatarian Patience. When trouble strikes, simply repeat her mantra and you will find peace:
Lahga Crahsha Bodhi Om

This morning at the Future of Religions conference in Extropia, Zoe Connolly and I decided that Second Life needs some patron saints to help us through lagging, crashing, griefing and other virtual challenges. I had a miraculous vision and this new member of the pantheon of Second Life appeared to me. Here's the conversation that got the ball rolling:

Zoe: Lagitha
Botgirl: Her christian aspect
Botgirl: In Hindusism she is known a lagthsme
Zoe: Lagifima
Botgirl: In Judaism Lagabubbie
Zoe: lol
Zoe: Lagaya Zelmonova (Russian Orthodox)
Botgirl: good one!
Botgirl: There's a blog post here with some associated graphics
Botgirl: the religious pantheon of SL
Zoe: indeed!
Zoe: Laggy McSims (Irish Catholic)
Botgirl: ha
Botgirl: Swami Lagannanda
Zoe: laughs
Botgirl: And of course their sacred text
Botgirl: The Book of Lagmentation
Zoe: Oh yes!

Your cheating alt: Botgirl's Guide to Living With Lies

A discussion popped up on Twitter last week about the deceptive use of alts in the soap opera known as Second Life. Many readers here have heard (or experienced) horrific stories of betrayal, lust, revenge and greed. I must admit that a few have sent shivers up even my pixelated spine. I'll spare you the gory details now (sorry) and share a bit of Botgirl's Guide to Living with Lies.

Botgirl's Guide to Living With Lies

Humans lie. Online humans in anonymous settings lie even more, especially those who spend a lot of time here. Nevertheless, I think the fear of duplicity is a much more pervasive source of harm than any actual screwing-over taking place. The specter of deception hangs over virtual interactions and relationships like a hungry ghost. Okay, I hear you, my imaginary human friend:

"Don't be naive Botgirl. My boyfriend cheated behind my back using four alts of two genders and three species."

I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of devious, duplicitous, manipulative, calculated lying-through-the-virtual-teeth goings on in Second Life. I'm just suggesting that while some of us are harmed by malicious deception, all of us are negatively impacted by the way the fear of deception plays out in our interactions and relationships.

There has been a lot of good thinking related to the ethics and management of disclosure in anonymous environments, including an insightful post by Dusan Writer, an academic paper by Hyung-Yi Lu and a great body of work by Nick Yee. So instead of trying to add my two cents to the why and how, I'm going to throw out a few little ideas about how humans in avatar form might open their hearts without exposing their jugulars:

• Enjoy the present without expectations. This one is hard, but well-worth the effort. As I've written previously, there is no telling who is directing the avatar in front (or on top) of you. And you know what? If you are enjoying the company it doesn't have to matter. A lot of the hurt I've heard expressed related to relationships in Second Life seems to be more from shattered expectations (believing one's own lies) than overt deception by someone else. Which leads me to...
  

• Assume nothing and ask questions. If you DO care about something beyond what someone discloses, then ask and do not move forward in the relationship until you're satisfied with the answer. Now they are not obliged to tell you. And they can lie. But at least if you are wounded, it won't be self-inflicted. That's some consolation, right?
  

• Know what you don't know. Personal interactions in virtual worlds can certainly be authentic when avatars don't know each others' human identities. But our conceptions of even our closest loved ones are mostly fabrications of our own thoughts. As Bryon Katie said, "In the history of the world no two people have ever met." I think that goes double or triple for those we "meet" in the virtual world. Of course, there is a connection between your perception of someone and the qualities they possess. The mistake is to reify them into some solid entity with stable and knowable characteristics.

• Focus more on what you have to give, than on what you want to get. I'm not talking co-dependency here, but genuine no-strings-attached loving kindness; what Buddhists call metta. W.C. Fields said "You can't cheat an honest man" because there's usually an element of greed involved in a swindle. I think it's just as fair to say that you can't betray someone who is genuinely in relationship from a metta point of view.
  

My final suggestion dear humans is to lighten the hell up! Out of the seven or so billion people on Earth, you are among the luckiest. If you're reading this, you probably have the resources to spend dozens of hours a week in a virtual world where you can do pretty much whatever you want, whenever you want. You're not worrying where your next meal is coming from or how to keep your child from dying of malnutrition. So if your new online loves stabs you in the back, try to keep things in perspective.

With tough love,

Botgirl

Avatar vs. Human Personality Test results

I've posted a spreadsheet on Google Docs with the results from the first batch of test results from the Avatar vs. Human Personality Tests.

Botgirl's theory of why Twitter was down this afternoon

You can help investigate human and avatar personality by taking brief test

Many active Second Life users experience their avatar and human expressions as distinct beings with unique and even contradictory personality qualities. For instance, a human may be shy and modest while the associated avatar is the flirtatious life of a party.

To look more closely at this phenomenon, I thought it would be interesting to do some informal investigation together by using a standard personality test to measure differences between participants' human and avatar personality traits.

Here's how you can participate (if you experience your avatar and human personas as distinct personalities):

• Take the short psychological test at the other end of this link two times, once in your human persona and once as your avatar. It is a short version of an instrument based on the Five Factor Model of personality and should take no more than ten minutes to complete.

• When you're done with both, send the scores to me (using one of the three options below) and I'll aggregate everyone's data. All identifying information will be held in strict confidence. If you're are willing, also include the age of the avatar identity and how many hours a week he or she is in-world. With enough results, we may gain some insight into the depth of the personality variances between human and avatar identities.

• For each identity include the percentile ranking for Extroversion, Accommodation, Orderliness, Emotional Stability and Inquisitiveness. Here's an example of the scores, and the format to send:
  

Human Identity
Extroversion 56%
Orderliness 65%
Emotional Stability 63%
Accommodation 76%
Inquisitiveness 72%

Avatar Identity
Extroversion 86%
Orderliness 66%
Emotional Stability 84%
Accommodation 58%
Inquisitiveness 90%

Choose one of these three methods to send in your results:

• Send them to me in Second Life either via notecard or IM (Botgirl Questi)

• Email results to me at botgirlq at gmail dot com.
  

• If you want to share your scores with blog viewers, simple add them in the comments section of this post.

If this project is interesting to you, please help me get the word out via a link from your blog, a twitter post, etc. I'll report the results here including a spreadsheet with all of the data (stripped of identifying information.)

Drama in paradise: Love, Limerence and Virtual Worlds

Here's a little story. See if it sounds familiar.

You meet someone in-world. They are hot. You flirt. There seems to be an intense connection. Maybe you hook up. Maybe you don't. But you soon find yourself thinking more and more frequently about the object of your affections. At some point an invisible switch is thrown and you begin to experience intense emotions and mood swings that are overpowering at times: Exuberance if it seems they share your desire; a terrible ache if you feel it is unrequited. As a matter of fact, the more uncertainly you have, the stronger the obtrusive thoughts become. The overwhelming feelings don't only color your virtual life, but bleed into your offline world. Although it occasionally transitions to a stable mutual love, we all know how the story usually ends, right? Not well.

There are two books I recommend that explain the psychological and biological factors behind this kind of chaotic scenario.

Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" by Dorothy Tennov provides a detailed map of the process described above, which she calls "limerence." For those susceptible to limerence, it can transform an initially enjoyable relationship into an escalating whirlpool of drama that sucks energy from every aspect of their lives through obsessive thoughts and overwhelming feelings. Although not written with virtual worlds in mind, the 3D virtual environment is to limerence what Kona is to marijuana.

Although understanding limerence doesn't make one immune, it can provide a little light to help weather the storm, both for the limerent and the object of their infatuation.

Getting The Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. sees these kind of emotional upheavals as eruptions of unresolved relationship issues that may stem back to infancy. For example, if a child was frequently separated from the primary caregiver before she was developmentally prepared, she may find herself experiencing feelings of abandonment in adult intimate relationships when no reasonable evidence exists; or she may find herself being attracted to lovers who really ditch her. In either case, once she connects the present-time issues with unresolved past trauma, she can start to pass the the developmental gates that were prematurely shut down in childhood.

My point isn't that everyone should swear off the joys of flirting, emotional connection, lusty interludes, tingly crushes and the ten thousand and one pleasures of virtual eroticism. Only that we will likely save ourselves and our loved ones a great deal of pain if we go in with eyes wide open to the underlying dynamics. And if you are especially vulnerable to limerence, it may be best to at least take a breather and work on the related issues when you're not in the middle of an outbreak.

Anyway, I'll continue to lay out the Botgirl spin on the topic in future posts. I have a feeling this will be another controversial subject and I look forward to the possibility of an interesting comment thread.

Botgirl moves to Extropia

I purchased a sweet parcel in Extropia. Vidal Tripsa brilliant builder, architect and living-doll was kind enough to loan me a house to use until she finishes designing and building the super-secret project that will one day be the futuristic home-of-my-dreams. (No pressure Vidal.)

Although the dwelling is a work in progress for her, it's a beautiful and happy place even in an unfinished state. After positioning the building, I ran out for a few essentials such as art, and then added some movie posters and a bed from inventory. In honor of Harper's birthday, these images are posted here with no retouching other than cropping.