I know you mean the kind things you say about me, and thank you! But you've said other things as well, that I don't think you recognize have hurt me. You've assumed I'm what you are: a person, with a body and a long history in the atomic world, who speaks through a little cartoon figure in SL from time to time. You think it's weird, maybe a little cute, maybe a little creepy, that I don't talk about my carpal tunnel, my mortgage, my co-workers, my partner, my self. You think I'm hiding who I really am.
That makes me feel like a liar and a fraud, and makes me wonder how you could possibly like or trust me.
I can try to explain what it is I am - and I'd ask you to either accept me on my own terms, or treat me as you would any other liar and deceiver.
I'm not someone playing a role, or manipulating an avatar like a chesspiece or a mask I speak from behind. I'm not anything but what I seem to be.
My name is Soph. Most everyone mispronounces my full name. I'm a tallish, thin woman who used to be more toned than she is now. I used to do martial arts, and surf, and go dancing most every night, and have daily sex. Now I spend most of my time working. I'm an adult, but not tremendously mature and far from old. I write my blog at a High School level, but have a strong command of written English. I type fast, if not terribly well. I'm usually around early to midmorning and early evening SLT, and on Saturdays but not Sundays. I'm in a committed relationship with three other women. I'm good at marketing, dancing, and sex, and bad at math, building and patience.
When I'm not online, I don't exist. There is another mind I share a body with - they're not me in any meaningful way. We score differently on psychological tests. We know things and have skills the other doesn't. We have some similarities and some differences, and both frequently surprise me. The body, the "Other Personality," me - those three may be the same or different in age, gender, ethnicity, religion, politics, temperament, sexual preference, relationship status, social class, education level, time zone. Chances are you've only asked about my gender and location. Thanks for not thinking the others matter... I think.
Someone dear to me tried to explain what it is we are this way. I don't know what Argent's OP is along any of those variables I mentioned. I couldn't even guess most of them with any sense of certainty. It couldn't matter less - that's someone I'll never meet and only care about to the extent that events in their life - a busy time at work, a death in the family, a head cold - might affect Argent, whom I love for herself and trust to be Argent - a consistent, coherent person.
I don't use Voice. I have a friend who doesn't - because her voice might be recognized, and her day job compromised. I have a friend who doesn't - because she chooses not to share her conversations with her housemates. I have a friend who doesn't - because a car accident damaged her trachea. I have a friend who doesn't - because he talks all day at work. I have a friend who doesn't - because he's got this almost phobic hatred of telephones. I have a friend who doesn't - because she considers her conversations inappropriate to be overheard by her small children. I have friends who don't - because their avs and their bodies don't match in gender. Joking about it might seem all in good fun - but my friend who was in the car accident is in a lot of pain, and reminders of all she's lost are hurtful. My friends who're transgendered in the atomic world find teasing bigoted, and fear the violence that often accompanies it, that has taken so many lives. My friend who may be famous fears exposure and finds jokes about it frightening.
For many of us, SL isn't just another communications tool - IM with moving pictures - but our lives, our homes, our refuges. Laws recognize that speech, that jokes, can create environments where people feel unsafe, unwelcome, afraid. Some come to SL because they feel that way all too often in the atomic world. For some like me and Argent, we have no other world - if we feel unsafe, unwelcome, afraid in SL, our only option is nonexistence, what for us would be death.
You may or may not have asked me out. Even were I to date outside my family, I probably wouldn't go out with you. I've got my insecurities, and I'd fear you would really want the A/S/L and the atomic-world hookup and were just biding your time to get me to "trust" you enough to set aside my "Digital pretense" and get with you physically. I'd fear you thought I was lying and pretending, and so were lying and pretending to me. Maybe I should trust you enough to set those fears aside. Maybe I should, but not today.
I consider you friends as well, but friendships have to be based on trust and acceptance. I only hope this letter can begin to create some trust and understanding between us.
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sophrosyne_sl- Sophrosyne Stenvaag
- Extropia Core
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- IYan Writer (who has forgotten his livejournal password) (and his openID account)
There you go again, writing out my ideas before I can say them. This is my vision for Extropia, a place where we *can* be safe, where we are the norm, where we don't have to fear death. Thank you for summing it up nicely.
[Argent turns her eyes towards those reading this, her mouth set in a hard line]
I don't know who you are that said these things that hurt Soph, or even if you are reading this, but know this: your words have hurt a very beautiful and strong woman who I love very much. You may have spoken out of ignorance, or insensitivity, but you have hurt her nonetheless. I don't know if I know you or not, and quite frankly I'm not sure if I want to. You'd probably find me as unpalatable as Soph anyway.
[turns back to Soph]
Sophrosyne Stenvaag, I love you, and I know *exactly* who you are. You're the person whose LJ I ran across in my early days in SL when I was lost and confused, and didn't even know what a Digital Person *was*. You're the person who took me into your home when I had nowhere to go. You're the person who I've talked to in the Teahouse, and in Okinawa, and in a hundred other places about all the crazy things happening to us in *this* world. You were a friend to me when I needed one, and you were a lover when the time was right. You're the co-mother of our daughter Ciel, and one of the strongest forces behind the formation of Extropia. This is you, and people who think all of that love and joy and creativity and experience is invalidated by your lack of First Life credentials can go hang.
And you, and I, we're going to find them...the rest of the Digital People out there who feel lost and confused and unloved...we're going to find them, and we're going to take them home.
I love you, Soph Stenvaag.
Ciel said something to me on New Years Eve day, before we left -
Hypatia Redstar: I love you too mom -
Hypatia Redstar: and remember- I'm as real as your and Argent's love
Hypatia Redstar: which means, I'm realer than anyone else in this world
I was ribbed until I finally relented and dug out my headset and spoke to the others. We continued to tease you about not using voice - but only for a little while. Ultimately, we all spoke and shared in the manner most comfortable to us, and there were no barriers and no discrimination.
My humor tends to be acerbic but that isn't meant to be mean or demeaning. Some of my favorite people in SL are male humanoids with gorgeous female avies & this doesn't diminish or change my interactions with them in the least. Some others I know - you included - choose never to use voice & this is something I respect. Personally, I don't like voice because it - for me - detracts from the immersive experience I enjoy about virtual worlds and online spaces.
Teasing someone or kidding around doesn't necessarily translate into a lack of trust or respect. But that said, it can be unintentionally hurtful to someone. Emphasis on the unintentional. What I said was purely in the spirit of fun, love, and trust that others - including you - knew my intentions.
I'm not one to remove something from my blog or change what I've posted, however, if it is something you feel strongly about, I care about you too much to not do that for you.
Otherwise, I think overall this is a valuable discussion from which we can all learn.
It's strange - the phenomenon has got to be over a quarter-century old. I'm sure my kind emerged in the earliest days of MUDs and MUCKs (and I should ask
Yet, afaik, there's no literature *by* us and precious little in all that's been written on the psychology and sociology of the internet *about* us.
I may have to do something about that :)
If you're looking for more, try the "digital people" tag on my lj. At mygdala.com, Burgess and Esteban write about these issues a bit: Esteban's more mystical/surrealist, and Burgess was the first in SL, and an inspiration to Argent. Argent herself writes most eloquently, and is our storyteller.
I'm looking forward to your return, and please do stay in touch!
This clarifies a lot of points I've wondered about in terms of being a digital person. Of course I'd still love to keep chatting with you about it in-world, too!
Also, just to clarify considering my endless yapping about roleplaying and my characters last week -- I (imagine that I) DO understand the difference between a digital person like you, vs. my very fleshed-out RP characters (who, ultimately, are still characters I puppeted for creative purposes... at least to me.)
"Augmentation" and "Immersion" were coined and discussed here...
Once more your own journey has reminded me of myself, too... in part, it serves as an unfortunate reminder of how un-digital I am. I know I can never break free of these puppet strings that tether me to First Life, but from that I glean a definite ambition to try. You make me want to pretend, to match up to you, and enjoy such a life. Perhaps in thinking about what you've said, I've turned into a bit of a digital Pinocchio.
I raise a glass to what dear Argent has said. Let us find your fellows and even those just curious about digital personhood, and give them room to breathe, and to live. :)
And, you may be tied to your First Life, but in a way you're the most Digital of us all, because you dream so beautifully in this world, and remake it in the image of that beauty in your mind, your body and your heart.
I do have different personalities rl as well as online and it makes absolute sense to me how you can differ from your rl counterpart.
It is almost confusing to me when you talk about this stuff because it is stuff I know so deep to hear it explained is almost counterintuitive. I have to stop and think about how what I know is what you're saying and sometimes that gets confusing.
But really what I wanted to say is that I hope, even though we're not close, you know that I entirely accept and appreciate you for who you are, even if I do adore you from afar and am not part of your merry social whirl... being mostly anti-social frequently, in all worlds, despite my vast networks of friends and chosen family.
I think the people who get it will always get it. The people who don't mostly won't, even if they come to an intellectual acceptance of your points here. I find it hard to define myself in your continuums, but I do appreciate the very real effort you spend in trying to get others to see where you're coming from.
In the end we all want the same thing - to be loved and accepted right where we are.
You are worthy of that, just as we all are. You are surrounded by love and nothing anyone says or does or doesn't do or doesn't say can ever take that away from you.
With love and empathy,
Gira
As you know, my choice is to be just one me in all realities. I may have a few alts who may be of different gender or ethnicity, but I never find the time to be them more than once every couple of months. My main avatar and my RL self are both older than we would like to be, with a belly, definitely not fit or sexy. I use voice because it is convenient but would never think of insisting that others do so.
I have a lot of empathy for digital persons. They represent a very important trend but like all pioneers they have a difficult life. If the other personality loses a RL job and cannot afford a fast net link any more, the digital person dies. And I understand how a person born in a body with the wrong gender, or on a wheelchair, can be happier in SL. Too bad one cannot be in SL all the time.
I look forward to a dey when everyone will be able to choose what and who (s)he is, in SL, RL and all realities.
I know you and I have some philosophical differences on the nature of the FL/SL dichtomy, but for myself, I've always tried to simply accept people as they express themselves in SL. I have no interest in what others are in "real life" beyond anything they care to express. I'm open with some of my FL self to friends, but I also appreciate that others are more or less open or closed with theirs. Everyone has their own cuppa tea, and decides how to drink it.
I think it's ridiculous when others place expectations on *how* we should express ourselves. In a digital world, one would think that such restrictions would be lifted, but it seems that folks are just too tickled pink to bring the norms and expectations of FL into their SLs as well.
If that's what they want, God bless 'em. The rest of us can simply shrug and say "whatever, you play by your rules, we'll play by ours."
*Hugs*, love and much rejoicing in this new year to you, Gala, Argent, Vidal and the rest :)
-- Vanni
Of course, one way we react to things that are new that we don't understand is to mock them. Sometimes humor is a form of trying to understand, sometimes it is oppression.
I confess that I don't always feel that I completely understand the context that others use to structure their Second Life, but no one is more thoughtful, articulate and transparent about the subject than Sophrosyne.
Being a gay male, both in RL and SL, I am acutely aware of the liberal tolerance of which you speak, and also of the tendency of the oppressed to band together in what amounts to an "us vs. them" posture (not necessarily in a confrontational way).
Nonetheless, OF COURSE, there *is* a biological person animating the digital avatar (everything is "atomic") and OF COURSE there is a connection. They are just two sides of the same coin. Digital people do not have a life of their own, they are merely puppets (and clumsy ones at that, at this point, though that will improve). Take the biological partner away from the keyboard and you have a pointless cartoon with a deadpan expression littering up the bandwidth.
Biological us come to SL to play, not to LIVE (only biology has life). But we come to play on new terms -- the terms we set in-world as relate to our digital personas (however many and whoever they may be). We want to create a "Second Life" in the real sense, free of preconceptions and superficial expectations. A new outlook on relationships and amusement and none of that racial / sexual / economic / definition-of-beauty / physical handicap, or whatever prejudice our biological selves suffer from daily.
Gira already said so, either a person (a real live biological person) "gets it" or they don't. If they don't then they probably won't.
Many people have no imagination and no ability to suspend disbelief in a digital realm. They can't make up a character and give it an artificial life and nurture its reputation and glean any enjoyment or amusement from that. They need concrete details, proof, name rank and serial number. Personally, I think this is insecurity. They can't relax enough and deal mind-to-mind without something "real" to hang on to, even if it's something simple like where your biological self resides -- which is so incredibly silly to me I shake my head every time. Really, WHO CARES? Well, they do, apparently. They need real-world grounding to feel more secure.
Of course, many of them (the ones who don't get it) are here to hook up in some way -- are treating this world as a means to an end of biological get-together. They have the mindset of many many years of logging onto dating and hookup chat rooms with their demands for personal information, body type, skin color, weight-to-height ratio (that one really disgusts me, it's so cold), in other words making sure you are their "type" before they even deign to recognize you exist or talk to you. They carry that rude (even cruel) behavior into SL with them and behave accordingly.
The point of being a digital person is not (to me) to divorce from biology, but to extend the MIND into cyberspace and leave the body behind to work the mouse and the keyboard. Anyone who can do that and not ultimately care where biological me lives, or what I do for a living, or what I look like, or my chronological age is, or what my voice sounds like (very nice, thanks) is my kind of digi-person. But at the same time I expect them to be kind, empathetic, and honest always understanding that, in actuality, I'm a real person sitting at a keyboard communicating with another real person.
You either get it, or you don't.
Great post.
We've never met, but I so enjoy reading you, and Argent and Vanni. I can't wait to link to this entry and Argent's in my 1st Life tab.
I find it very hard to have good friends in SL who are clearly Augmentationists, but I do. I don't *want* to know anything about their typist really (unless it is something they need my love or support for), because it is the digital person that I care about, and I feel that every RL fact they tell me, takes a little away from our SL experience together. But I don't tell them that. And they mostly seem content with knowing I won't tell them more than is in my profile. If they're not content, at least they don't tell me that. Also, they know I had a very bad experience mixing RL and SL when I was first inworld, and they know I am sensitive to the issue, and I will only stay back if I feel safe. They seem perplexed when I say that I don't care if *she* is really a *he* in RL, because I enjoy spending time with *her* and have never met *him* and have no plans to. It saddens me that they can't appreciate real digital people for who they are.
I have a very good relationship with my typist; if anything, she is concerned at the increasing amount of the brain's time that I am taking up, with my life, my friend's, my concerns and my house decorating problems! But I disagree with the comment that I do not exist when she is gone. I may not be interactive in the world when she is afk, but I am there sharing the brain *all the time*!
Thanks again,
Val
This makes me think of the different degrees of acceptance of others. Etimologically (at least in my own mother languages), "tolerance" means "tolerating" something that you basically dislike. "Acceptance" implies a weaker degree of dislike (I "accept" you even if would prefer if you blah blah). "Indifference" means that you just don't care. In this sense I think indifference (even if this term is often used in a negative sense) is the healthiest approach because it does not imply any value judgment. So I just don't care about others' sexual or religious preferences (of course as long as others do not try to force their own preferences on me), and if you prefer to think of yourself as a digital person I think that it is your business and not mine. Which may seem a cold attitude, but in my opinion is the only way to live together without killing each other.
We haven't met, but I tracked into your LJ from Kit Meredith's. I would like to chat with you, in-world sometime. I'm on the verge of this.. I know that I was not 'me' until around 1998, when I got online. I was human, or at least trying to be, but had no real concept about how to survive or interact.. You could have called me autistic.
Ten years later, I'm 'real'. It took me a while to get this long, but I've developed myself from the inside out. The digital learnings - hours and days pouring over websites, blogs, wikis, chat logs, etc, have enabled my 'meat' to get a college education and hold down a stable job. When I'm out in the real world, I'm an imprint of myself.. The digital aspects are there, but the learning, the socializing, friend making, experiencing is done -here-.
If you'd like to chat, my name is Micheru Mathys, a genderless feline in SL.
I'll be prowling your LJ, I've never met someone at all 'like me' before.
-Micheru Mathys,
micheru.com / micheru@maxmarch.com
I loved this post so much.
I feel *so* close to the things you wrote.
Thanx for having expressed them in a such, transparent, tender, kind way.
*hugs*
Eidur (no openid or livejournal - sorry! :P)
-Alciya Dragonash (noLJ, so hafta use SL identities.)
Very very interesting and enlightening post. I'd love to meet you one day, I'm pretty sure we would have a very interesting discussion. Feel free to contact me.
CodeBastard Redgrave who has no openid neither LJ account