The article “Just Like Me Only Better” (2008) by Suely Fragoso and Nisia Rosario explored Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) like Second Life in order to find out how avatars of oneself tended to exhibit certain realistic and exaggerated characteristics. Second Life has a vibrant community of users, and reading this informed me of how “connected” people get into this role-playing game. The extensiveness of the avatar customization tied into the scope of the subjects they were representing, and there was an international breadth of representation for cultures, images and social status. The online world of Second Life bustles with copies of real life elements of physical and social standing, and “the similarity between the bodies of the user and the avatar” (5) can invoke real emotions for virtual actions.
I discovered just how in-depth the online community is, and while I know some definite World of Warcraft players, the sweeping diversity among the different groups of aggregate sites, fan pages, forums and blogs (9) reminded me of how wide-reaching it is. The results, though, planted me back into a more stereotypical setting since there were majorities in the avatar selections for men and women that conformed to “a contemporary Caucasian pattern of beauty that is ever present in Western media” (11), and that was disappointing.
I haven’t played Second Life, but I would’ve expected crazy avatars, physics-defying events or games and lots of non-realism in such an environment. However, when so much of it is based on real life, including how communities are run and how people behave under those avatars, I guess we conform to what we know and are comfortable with in that online world. Is the article titled this way because of the beauty standards being ideal and informative, albeit exaggerated? Representing yourself with realistic but “perfected” body parts in an online environment that behaves idealizing real-life is one sure way of finding social relations with a “better” self.
This article had similar effects on myself regarding how in-depth and diverse MUVE playing environments are. My post on this article concentrated on my own stereotypes of the users of programs like Second Life and World of Warcraft. This article disputed these stereotypes and painted the audience group as diverse and not just ‘nerds’ like I originally thought. Your final paragraph bought up a very interesting point and I think it is undeniable that generally speaking, society loves to create a glorified version of them. In the case of Second Life they are able to do this in a form of avatar and distort their physical features. I believe a wider group of people do this on Facebook. Our recent data gathering project highlighted that many Facebook users attempt to create a better representation of their ‘self’. While most users cannot distort their images to enhance their beauty (although some definitely incorporate photo shop into their profile pictures) most try to glorify their self-representation through their likes, interests, education and relationship status. Your response to the article addresses some very interesting thoughts and I was somewhat comforted that I was not the only one naïve to the diversity and depth of MUVEs.
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