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.

Back in the love box with AIR-based relationships

Based on feedback from digado and Rheta, it seems I didn’t do a very good job of tying together the various threads within yesterday’s post. One reason is that it was written as a stream of consciousness rather than a reasoned argument leading to a previously formed conclusion. I made a few big leaps between ideas without taking the time to walk through the chain of connections. Maybe my textual communications skills have become corrupted by too much comic creation. Anyway, I'll have another go at clarifying yesterday’s missive by answering some of digado's thoughtful questions:

How did immersion get dragged into these relationships?

I'm not dragging it in by iteslf. I came up with the snappy acronym and catch phrase “AIR-based relationships” to define the area of my inquiry. AIR = Anonymous identity + Immersive environment + Romantic attraction. It seem to me that the combination of these three factors creates an especially unstable and volatile mix.

When not 'immersed' you wouldn't have the relationship either, is that what you are saying, or does immersion create these relationships...?

Well, it seems to me that if you weren't immersed, you'd be more conscious of the fact that the hot babe you were flirting with could quite possibly be someone who looks like your grandfather in real life. Humans exposed to attractive images of their preferred gender(s) can experience reflex physiological responses that flood the brain and body with hormones that act like a love drug. I've written about this process in the past. If everyone walked around in a Naruto avatar, I reckon there would be far fewer romances.

People created 'virtual' relationships long before 'worlds' such as SL over the internet, with or without immersion

Well, I would say that if you are focused on a text chat enough to get romantically attached to someone, the text chat environment is immersive for you, and your online affair would be an AIR-based relationship. At least until you traded real IDs and/or met in person.

I'm still trying to get my head around that last paragraph tho, I'm sure it makes sense in some way - I just don't see it...

Well, at least forelle saw it. :) What I tried to convey in the last paragraph was that the person you are in a relationship with is a complex living being with vast potential for growth and change. So if your love requires that they don't externally express significant inner changes, then it is a love of an objectification of your lover's past state, not of who they are now. From my limited experience, it seems there is generally less slack for change in AIR-based relationships.

Well, I'm out of juice for now. If any of my ideas still seem cryptic, please let me know and I'll give it another go.

Love me in a box

Four main types of gameplay Immersion can be found in games: Spatial Immersion, Emotional Immersion, Cognitive Immersion and Sensory-Motoric Immersion. from Patterns in Game Design by Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen

Game designers work to create immersive experiences so that a player's consciousness is drawn deeply into game play. Immersion supports the consciously chosen suspension of disbelief by directly engaging subconscious systems that generate emotional and physical responses. For most people, it is easy to separate the authentic experience of emotions within games from the fabricated environment and narrative that stimulate the experience.

The line between fantasy and reality is not so clear-cut within virtual worlds. The highly immersive nature of the experience makes it almost impossible for us to separate the real beings we interact with from the fictional elements they are enmeshed within. In the fuzzy world of anonymous relationships, authenticity becomes equated to some extent with character consistency. This seems to be especially true in romantic relationships.

In the atomic world, relationships often have difficulty when one person makes a significant change such as newly found religious observance or even an avid hobby that their partner doesn't take up. Physical change such as significant weight gain or loss can also put stress on a relationship.

It is not surprising that in virtual worlds, relationships are very vulnerable to changes from established norms. In the atomic world, your partner may now worship Allah instead of Jesus, but you know they have the same parents, siblings, job, gender, etc. In an anonymous virtual world relationship there is nothing solid to hold onto.

It seems to me that if you are not willing to let your partner change to pursue a non-destructive interest that doesn't break a core agreement such as fidelity, the relationship is grounded more in objectification than love. This applies to all worlds.

Polyamory for Two

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

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