I'm beginning to think that Jemma may need her own blog. Not only has she accepted a marriage proposal from Mo, with the prospect of a full blown Second Life wedding, she has somehow also obtained a girlfriend, Megan. This is all with Mo's blessing, and participation! He actually found Megan, a noob on her first day of SL, wandering on a beach, perhaps on Orientation Island; he didn't say.
This whole thing makes me think Skip may have been the wisest of all, keeping his identity hidden all these years. Well we always knew he was wise, and I have requested his Maskipperly advice more than once. But it goes back to the age old question (well, as age old as the interwebs), "Who are you talking to online? Is it a real person, or someone playing a role, pretending to be someone else?" Or maybe it's that person feeling free to finally be themselves, without the limitations of snap judgments, or a physical body.
Tom Boellersdorf's ethnography of SL discussed the population of residents who have physical handicaps in real life, and yet are free to walk and run and fly like any other SL resident. Does that make their SL identity false, or deceptive? Not at all. Some of these residents choose to have their avatars use wheelchairs or other aids, even though they don't have to. Does this make them more authentic? Perhaps they just remain as they are already comfortable with themselves. Similarly, I've created Jemma in my own image, as a short, full-figured woman. Does that mean it's me doing everything she does, or is she just my agent, able to safely try things out that I would never really do? Whether it be bungee jumping, or a new haircolor, or something more significant.
What makes me (and/or Jemma) uncomfortable then is when Mo and Megan confess about their real lives. "In real life I want this," or "In real life I feel that." They both sound really similar when they speak like this. In fact at first I thought perhaps Mo created Megan as an alt. It just seemed too convenient that a willing noob, still in noob's clothing, could be found so readily. And she also talks like maybe English is not her first language, just like Mo. Now I'm pretty sure Megan is not an alt. Mo would have to be quite a multitasker.
Speaking of Alts, Marshall attended his first SciFri. On his own due to continued sporadic outages of the SL grid on my iMac, he was immediately welcomed by a cute girl there.
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