My name in Second Life is Jacquelin Bienstock, ha ha. This is my second go-around with the program, and my first avatar's name was Lisa Frieman. I was fine with that name, but I had so many complications I just let her die and recreated myself. Some of the not so funny things that happened during my first use of SL include:
* Before the graphics had fully loaded onto my screen, and SL looked a lot like a grey planet for nude ameobas, a group of Germans began speaking to me. I was the only English speaker on the island, and I ended up turning off the sound.
* I tried on "fine hair" from my inventory, and it sat like a blonde wig over my black ponytails. I looked like a fair skinned cousin to mini-mouse.
* In trying to remove the hair by modifications, I ended up with a reverse mohawk, in other words, a friar-like balding pattern.
* In learning to walk, I stumbled into some bushes, and fell into the ocean. I had to learn to fly in order to find my way back to the center of the orientation island.
Here is a photo of me looking a lot more confident than I was feeling.
Thankfully, on my second visit, and with my new, non-balding city girl chic body, I arrived on orientation island and was greeted by a mentor named Udge. Udge was beautifully dressed in white feathers from head to toe, and as we typed to each other her feathers fluttered. I was starting to become engaged in the play of it all. With my mentor's patient assistance I gave myself green eyes, made myself taller, changed my capri tights to denim colored baggy jeans, and made my white t-shirt into an orange tank, switched my gold flats for matching orange heels, and made my skirt length longer. I guess I was trying to differentiate myself from the numerous other city girls walking around orientation island with me. After saving the changes, and reviewing myself from behind again, I noticed two teardrop shaped holes in my skirt, which went straight through to my jeans. Udge informed me that the problem was, technically speaking, my butt was too big for the skirt I had chosen. Ha ha!! Just like real life...
The biggest challenge to me in using SL, besides my obvious ineptitudes, are that I just don't value the virtual world enough to want to participate with it in an interactive medium. I get that the site is constantly changing because it is created by other users, and conceptually that's really cool, but what is the point? As a child I was also disinterested by video games, but even as the graphics improved, and the story boards expanded, even now when I see that "anything's possible", and this realm will continually be advancing, I am disinterested. I have a limited number of hours in the day, and I choose to spend the majority of those hours in endeavors that fulfill my needs and represent my values. I just don't think SL, or any other virtual world, is going to provide me with opportunities to develop myself in ways that are important to me, at least not in ways I wouldn't rather do in my own body.
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