Chase Winter Virtual Life 1

Tom Boellstorff’s Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. In this book Boellstorff  describes the methods and theories of anthropology and applies them to a virtual world accessible only through a computer screen. He states “It is not only that virtual worlds borrow assumptions from real life; virtual worlds show us how, under our very noses, our "real" lives have been "virtual" all along”(5). When reading the article, I laughed because it did not seem “real” to me.  There is an example he uses in the Second life where you can fly in the virtual world. If so, then why would you need to purchase a car in the Virtual World? If I could fly, I would not need a car to travel from place to place. I find that is seems funny and odd all at the same time. There are many aspects about virtual life that is similar to or just like it is in a reality. The wedding in the Virtual World was described, as how a wedding in “real” life would be. Boellstorff says, “After a few minutes, the bride and groom prepare to walk down the aisle. They have been lovers for over a year in Second Life but have never met in the "real" world (16). This couple getting married on Second life must have a connection with each other through the game but they don't even bother to introduce their “real” selves to each other. Most of the people in the game do not even use their “real” names, they just make up one. He also points out that the groom could be a woman and the bride could be a man in the “real” world but in the virtual world there is no way to be sure. Getting ready for a wedding would take a lot of time in “real” life. In the virtual world, it only takes a click of a button to put on a tuxedo and another click to teleport to the wedding. That click of the button for the tuxedo you just put on and just bought was made by a “well-known designer who earns over three thousand U.S. dollars a month from their creations” of the dress or suit (15).

What was kind of crazy to me were the conversations you have with the other avatars. For several minutes you carry on two conversations at once—“you are part of a group of four people chatting with each other, and also one of two people carrying on an instant-message conversation.” It is like being able to “talk and whisper” at the same time (13). What is “real” about that? In reality it is not easy to have several conversations at the same time. In Second life they could be talking about the person next to them or behind their back while still carrying on a conversation without him knowing that you are talking to someone else about him.

When we talk about being part of virtual worlds it shows us how, under our very noses, our "real" lives have been virtual all along, does this mean you can be one and the same? While playing in Second life, you can sometimes glance up at the top of your computer screen and realize that you have been online for many hours; your "real" body is hungry and it is time to eat dinner (16). Your avatar does not eat or sleep, you can not be one and the same because you need food and rest. Your minds are the same but not your bodies.

In class we talked about someone purchasing a pair of boots for someone in the Second life. By a click of a button that person had the boots. That is not the same thing as buying a “real” pair of boots for someone. In “real” life, you would go to the store, feel and smell the boots you want to purchase. There is a real experience you go through when you are purchasing these boots. You had to know many things before you purchase them. You need to know the size you want, the color, the brand and other factors. In the Virtual world, you click a button and purchase these boots. Maybe you have a choice of color but certainly not the same as the “real” experience you would have in the store.

I think about when we talked about the movie Surrogate with Bruce Willis which is set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots. The link below shows the trailer of the movie.

(Surrogate trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwQ74cH5O0

Another example which was odd/weird/ disturbing was the World of Warcraft Funeral listed on the link below. It starts off with people in a forum really angry at someone crashing the funeral of a person who passed away in “real” life but that person loved playing the game. It showed the different perspectives of the two groups. One group was the people traveling to the funeral to crash it and the other was the group of people at the funeral showing their respect for the person who passed away.

(World of Warcraft funeral)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJVolaC8pw

Why? What made these people crash a funeral? Is that funny? Why don't these people go to the actual funeral and show respect

-Chase Winter

Kaestner Second Life 1

Tom Boellstorff’s Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human comments on virtual life and its effects on identity and culture within those parameters.  Boellstorff talks about the importance of ethnography and actually creates his own avatar, Tom Bukowski, and participates in a virtual world called Second Life.  Many of us in class are aware of these virtual worlds, most notably World of Warcraft, and we believe these worlds to be just some silly game that people get over-anxious and serious about.  Boellstorff disagrees with this mindset and believes that this world is “profoundly human” (Boellstorff 5).  Obviously, there are a number of people who would believe that this statement is crazy and believe that a virtual world cannot possibly be reality.  I myself felt the same way when I first starting reading the article, but then I began to understand what Boellstorff was saying.  There are so many aspects about virtual life that are similar to or the same as reality, so who are we to establish a difference.  Can the two not be one in the same?  The author states “Two ‘real’- life sisters living hundreds of miles apart meet everyday to play games together or shop for new shoes for their avatars.  The person making the shoes has quit his ‘real’- life job because he is making over five thousand U.S. dollars a month from the sale of virtual clothing” (Boelstorff 8).  Are these not actions that reality every day?  I have two sisters and they love shoes.  They are constantly talking to each other hundreds of miles away and looking at the same shoes on their computers that they want to buy.  This is the same experience that is occurring in Second Life as well. 

There are obviously many things that one can do in virtual world that we cannot do in real life, such as fly.  But is the same phrase not used when we get off a plane at a destination?  “Yes I flew in from Los Angeles this morning.”  Did you personally fly or did you use a machine that flies for you?  There is a lot of grey area in between these virtual worlds and what we believe to be reality, so how do we distinguish between the two.  Guess you will just have to create an avatar and see for yourselves.  True life could be waiting for you.   

Curtin Virtual Life 2

                Tom Boellstorff,in Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, investigates the implications of living in what he terms the Age of Techne and its effects on identity and culture.  Boellstorff describes the design and purpose of his research highlighting the appropriateness of ethnography as a method which mirrors the project he is undertaking.  By “virtualizing” himself and inserting his avatar in Second Life he goes above and beyond Malinowski’s  injunction to “imagine yourself” in an unfamiliar place.  In this investigation he intends to show that, contrary to prior research, “Second Life culture is profoundly human.  It is not only that virtual worlds borrow assumptions from real life; virtual worlds show us how, under our very noses, our “real” lives have been “virtual” all along.  It is in being virtual that we are human: since it is human “nature” to experience life through the prism of culture, human being has always been virtual being” (5). Is this an accurate comparison? Does culture mediate actual words in a way synonymous with the mediation of a virtual world? To further delve into this complicated relationship between identity and the virtual world, Boellstorff examines three aspects of Second Life in particular: place, time and personhood.

                Far from diminishing the importance of place, Boellstorff highlights the ways that conceptions and predominance of place and visuality which predate the emergence of virtual worlds are transferred into Second Life.  For instance, he notes the uproar and argument over the visual blight of Zazzy’s store. Residents of Second life care about the appearance of their surroundings and wish to avoid any marring of their visual field, concerns which are common to actual world encounters even prior to Second Life.  This is just one symptom of the condition of virtual worlds both reflecting and going beyond aspects of the actual world.  Boellstorff remarks how very “real” second life real estate is in economic terms while simultaneously noting a departure from actual world constraints with an increasing the amount of available land, undercutting and complicating the actual world problem of scarcity.  The idea of place is further complicated with the introduction of virtual virtual landscapes such as the one Boellstorff describes encountering with Rhed, a large box, hundreds of meters in the air, depicting countryside scenes.  Complications such as these, according to Boellstorff “demonstrate the need for a theoretical framework that acknowledges the truly novel implications of virtual worlds without predicating their significance on their being different from the actual world” (101).

                Boellstorff marks a distinction between time and place in that time resists virtualization in a way that place does not.  This resistance is necessary however, to allow for synchronic sociality.  This was a key factor in making worlds seem like “worlds” as the majority of social interaction occurred between residents “inworld” at the same time.  It did however cause some problems, primarily with regards to what residents termed lag.  Boellstorff posits that “lag reveals how a problem with notions like “time/space compression” is that time resists compression in a way that place does not; the death of distance” does not correspond to a death of time” (102). Time in virtual worlds further undermined theoretical perspectives in the context of Afk (away from keyboard).  Traditionally, presence and immersion were two commonly used terms in scholarly literature on online sociality.  With Afk, one’s avatar could be “present” while the user was “away”, thus “Afk ethnographically demonstrates the possibility - indeed, the ubiquity- of presence without immersion. This decoupling of presence and immersion – the appearance of a gap between them – is one hallmark of the virtual” (112). What does it mean for one to be present but not immersed? What does this mean for sociality? Can it be fully excused by the unique cultural practices acknowledged by residents of virtual worlds?

                In his discussion of personhood, Boellstroff describes the difficulty in determining what constitutes the “real” person (is SL roleplay?, is the actual world role play and SL a reflection of a truer self?, is participation in SL making the actual more real?, etc.).  Boellstorff concludes that “just as it is possible to take virtual worlds in their own terms, so it is possible to take virtual personhoods in their own terms.  In both cases, the virtual is shaped in powerful ways by referential and practical relationships to the actual world, but these relationships help constitute the virtual self” (122).  Taking them on their own terms however becomes difficult when questions arise as to the meaning of outward appearance in a world where physicality is completely malleable and users can control multiple avatars, multiple users can control the same avatar or users can have any number of alternate avatars or alts.  Boellstorff challenges “any ‘supposition conflating online interaction with bodily transcendence’ and argue[s] for the reality of virtual embodiment” (134).  Gender, race, and disabilities all had implications in Second Life.  While one’s embodiment was not fixed it was still not free from consequences in the virtual world whether they were positively allowing for individuals with disabilities a wider social network unattainable in the actual world or negatively depicting racial stereotypes with last name selections, buildings, or user creations.

                Boellstorff mentioned frequently the need to take the virtual world on its own terms as related to, but separate from, the actual world.  Do you think it is possible to understand it in this way? Is the virtual world really a separate entity or does the overlap and actual world implications negate that possibility?  He also drew on the debate over the utilization of voice capabilities in Second Life, noting that some thought that the feature would make interactions more “real” while others believed it would destroy the sociality of the virtual world.  What do you think? What makes virtual interaction fulfilling? Would using voice instead of something like IMs destroy that?  As an adjunct to that debate, Boellstorff mentions the opportunity virtual sociality provides for individuals with disabilities. To what degree should such considerations factor into the design of virtual worlds like Second Life? Should their interests in particular be considered because of the unique opportunities such an experience affords them?  Lastly, Boellstorff discusses globalization and the linking of users worldwide in a common social space. Is this a positive means of connection?  What are the implications of such widespread use, especially with regards to time and synchronous sociality?

Viral Videos and Memes

There was some interest in class today in the phenomenon of viral videos and memes. I promised I would post a couple of links to sources and common memes. In Mirriam-Webster a meme is "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture," so perhaps anthropology has something to say about what is happening with regard to "culture" and "persons." The usage comes, I believe, from the evolutionary biologist (not anthropologist) Richard Dawkins. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins says about memes: "We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me, if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'."

Anyway, here are the links

1 - Easy to access meme listing

2 - More in-depth study of individual memes

3 - Simple tool to work with established memes


And here are few of my favorites (for many people in class, this list could literally go on forever):


Success kid

Nyan Cat

Xzibit Yo Dawg