Avatar Integration and Feeling the Burn

In my last post, I discussed the virtual world of Second Life. This is something that, as you probably noticed, is of particular interest to me – and I’m not the only one. Jenn Frank posted entries about the issue of avatars and personal identity at some length here and here – two articles on which I also commented at some length – and this led onto an interesting discussion of whether avatars were a reflection of your real-life personality or a fantastical creation from the depths of your own mind.

There are no particular conclusions to draw on this issue, as everyone’s different. Just because someone enjoys being tied up and sodomized in Second Life (not me, I might add) doesn’t necessarily mean that they will in real life. Just because a guy plays a woman (also not me, though I have been known on more than one occasion to play female characters in games), it doesn’t mean that they want a sex change. An avatar doesn’t have to look anything like the real-life human behind the controls, but sometimes it does.

My avatar, until recently, looked like me, sort of, a bit. A slightly-idealised version of me, if you will, if I were slightly cooler, less fat and able to pull off black leather jackets and red hair. This all changed the other night, however, when a friend that I had previously only had passing contact with on photo exchange site Flickr decided that tonight would be the night we would meet in-world. Said friend is an active Second Life photographer, fond of, as I am, grabbing groups of good-looking avatars, snapping some pictures of them and then Photoshopping the hell out of them in order to produce some pretty pics. I have something of a liking for this process myself, so here’s a picture of aforementioned friend following aforementioned Photoshop mangling:

(Incidentally, if nothing else, working on SL pics is a fantastic way to get to grips with Photoshop – I’ve learned far more about graphic design and image manipulation through playing with SL pics than by working on actual photos.)

But anyway: the point. Part of SL’s appeal is that you can change your appearance, shape and even gender on a whim. I hadn’t done this until now, as I felt something of a personal attachment to my avatar, as you tend to do anything that you “own” and “use” for a long time, or characters in a lengthy RPG *cough*Persona*cough*. Besides, I felt that my avatar was an expression of me – me putting myself “out there” as me. So it was with some trepidation that when Morgana and her friend asked me if they could try out a new skin and shape on me I accepted – I was stepping out of my comfort zone.

The new shape and skin were very different from what I had played before. I felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t me. But then the compliments started rolling in. Suddenly I was hot. As shallow as it sounds, a simple change in appearance – an easy matter in SL – was enough to bring these compliments and by extension, give me a huge amount of confidence. Over the subsequent few days, I have grown accustomed to my new avatar – so much so that I feel I am now unlikely to return to my old one, at least for now.

But something else happened in me, too. I looked at my new, buff, muscular self with cool hair staring back at me from the screen and I thought… “I wish I could be like that.” The next day I signed up to our local gym and swimming pool complex, and I’m now following a regular exercise programme. It’s funny the things that affect you personally and give you inspiration – I never thought the whole avatar thing would work in reverse, with it giving me a desire to do something positive about my real life appearance. And while it’s unlikely I’m ever going to look quite like my improbably-shouldered alter-ego, it was very much the “trigger” to set me off on this process. It’s an interesting inverse of the usual “avatar reflecting aspects of reality” thing that I hadn’t thought of previously.

I discussed this with some friends recently, and they each admitted that they had had similarly peculiar experiences where something “uninspirational” had, ironically, provided them with the inspiration to make a change in their lives. Each of these things carried a certain degree of personal shame to them, too, so I won’t embarrass those friends by sharing them with you now. Suffice it to say that I was faintly embarrassed to say that it was SL that inspired me to kick off this workout programme, until I realised that it really doesn’t matter what it is that inspires you, so long as it inspires you. And this is why I’m sharing this story with you now.

If you’re the slightest bit curious about following said workout programme and my feelings towards it, you can follow my progress on Tumblr here.