Class 14: Examining Gender, Race, and Body Image in a Virtual World

For this assignment, I had to go into the virtual world "Second Life" which we have used for class in the past and conduct a bit of an experiment. I entered different worlds in the game and interacted with people randomly in each one by using text chat in an attempt to see if changing the look of my avatar would cause people to respond to or treat me differently. I was actually a bit surprised at times by how clear of a difference there was in some cases.

 I began by entering worlds as my default avatar, which is a plain white male dressed in casual clothes. I spent some time in two different worlds, which can be seen above and below, and would write generic conversation starting statements such as "hi everyone", "how are you?". I would usually get responded to by a few people, maybe 2 or 3, who would say hi back but not much else.

 I decided to switch my character to a different preset avatar which was a skinny blonde girl wearing a short dress, and instantly noticed a difference when entering different worlds. In a few worlds I logged into, I would immediately be greeted (they started the conversation, not me) by multiple people, typing things like "hey D403" (my username) or "hi D4", I would respond and make easy general conversation with multiple people, right away upon entering. Screenshots of the worlds I went to are seen below.

 After that, I changed my avatar to the darkest colored preset male avatar there was, which was a very tan guy wearing a baseball hat and jeans. This avatar was by far the most interesting because I got a range of responses in different worlds. In the first world I entered, I logged in and typed "hi everyone" and was greeted back but 5 seconds later a message appeared saying "you are no longer allowed here and have been ejected" and I was teleported to a different world (I made that screenshot larger in the post). After that I went into a few other worlds and had normal encounters, some people said hello, but I wasn't kicked out of anywhere again.

 The last thing that made this character the most interesting was in one world, when I logged in and asked "how is everyone?", I was responded to with "doing good baby ty[thank you] for asking", which can be seen in the larger screenshot above.

All in all this was an interesting experiment, and it was pretty shocking to see how seriously people take the name "Second Life". Some worlds contained 30-60 people all with their avatars on a dance floor or in a club, not really doing anything besides hanging out, which in turn means 30-60 people somewhere in the world would at that time prefer to virtually hangout with people instead of the same in real life. This makes me a bit weary about what could possibly happen when technology such as Microsoft HoloLens become as common to the public as laptops or iPhones. Technology like virtual reality headsets can literally mimic the outside world as if we are really there, meaning anything you want to do can be lived just as you would in a free world video game. Will people prefer to live an actual second life in a virtual reality headset, because any desire they have can simply be programmed into the world, instead of worked for and attained in the outside world?