10: Fly-man.... Up up and AWAY!!!!

So, truthfully speaking, if it weren’t for the assignment, I probably would never play an online multiplayer game (I always thought that I would be required to buy an account or have a credit card, and that it may become too addicting). But as it turned out, this isn’t always the case (not the $ part anyways)
Second Life is the world of my choice. I chose the user name “NightmareHorseman Silvansky” – it would be nice if I could conquer my nightmares and ride upon them (kind of give out a Batman feel). I was going for a Dark Magician look (cool, not-so-conventional and powerful), so I chose the CyberGoth as my temporary avatar. The CyberGoth avatar looked cool at first glance but unexpectedly went overboard as it gave out a “scary guy look” according to some guy (but that may be just his opinion since my new friends Auree and Lily didn’t mind). It looked much better after I customized it a bit: tall-dark-and-handsome, elfin ears, MIC, Celtic sword, black-blue suit, waterfall-texture jacket, and angel wings – in other words, Dark Angel.

And who needs a car if you can fly? That’s the beauty of Second Life. It’s great to be able to fly even without wings (though I tried out a pair anyways to get the Dark Angel look since I couldn’t find a staff, a cape or a robe to complete the magician appearance).
According to Yee & J. Bailenson, “users who are deindividuated in online environments may adhere to a new identity that is inferred from their avatars…. Or more precisely, in line with self-perception theory, they conform to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have.” In other words, we get into character when we use our avatars. For example, a person with a tall avatar would be more confident (since it’s said that a person’s height is “more often associated with self-esteem and competence”), and a more attractive avatar would act more friendly, “[walking] closer to the confederate” and self-disclosing more pieces of information about themselves. This phenomenon is coined the Proteus Effect, named after the Greek god Proteus for his shape-changing abilities, which online users now possess to shape their images.
Personally, I don’t feel much different about how I act online and how I behave in the real world (though chatting with friends while we were all hovering several yards above ground was totally cool). Well, I suppose I do talk and self-disclose more, but that’s due to the removal of gating features in an online environment (no weird accent, no low volume issue, no way they can reach me offline). Then again, I may have modeled my avatar after my real physical appearance and some aspects of my personality—I am somewhat tall, not-so-bad-looking, funny and friendly in real life. But a customized good-looking avatar does make me feel confident.Back to the subject at hand, I suppose all my behaviors online do follow Yee & J. Bailenson’s results: tall and attractive avatar does make me act more confident and friendly. My new friends and I told each other where we are from, what we do, and chatted about the countries we have been to, about their people and about our views on life (a friend actually told me that he wants to move to Japan because he thinks Japanese girls are pretty). You don’t have this kind of conversation with almost complete strangers everyday in real life.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5400576841210402935&postID=7263292871481610276

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5400576841210402935&postID=6455980606591197610