Continuing my series of things I recognize from muds in Second Life versus things that are new to me, I will now talk about Dicksian themes and music.
Recognition: Dicksian themes
What are Dicksian themes, you ask? Philip K. Dick is a classic science fiction writer. For some reason unusually many of his stories have been turned into Hollywood movies, from Blade Runner to Total Recall, from Paycheck to The Minority Report. I'm not sure why this is so. I can imagine that because of these movies your impression is that P.K. Dick stories are full of high-tech hardware and cyberpunk futures, but in fact he mostly wrote during the 50s, 60s and 70s, and his stories breathe the atmosphere of these times more than anything else. His stories tend to start out in what appears to be an everyday world, and then characters figure out that not all is as it seems. Philip K. Dick's favorite themes are to mess around with what is real and what is human. Philip. K. Dick suffered from quite a few psychological problems, including paranoia which help make his stories interesting. Not that he had nothing to do with cyberpunk fiction at all - he's often considered a forerunner of the genre.
Now what does all this have to do with Second Life? It's a Philip K. Dick world made real. Well, made virtual. The world seems in real in some ways: there are people, and land, and objects, and you can move around in it and do things. It is actually a service being made available on a computer network. The conflicts between these concepts cause a lot of confusion. One can easily make multiple copies of something on a computer, but it's typically hard for physical objects. It's not easy to copy rice and potatoes except by the method of agriculture, unless we someday perfect some form of magic nanotech. A virtual world is magical: one can copy existing objects easily, create new objects out of thin air, and imbue them with behavior by writing complicated spells in the form of scripts.
Dicksian themes are familiar to us old mudders. Creating new objects, copying existing ones, scripting them, all this was already possible in muds. It all looked less pretty as we only had words to play with, but just like a novel and a movie can contain the same story, muds already had that feel of unreal reality that Second Life has today.
What was far stranger than just unreal objects were the unreal people. It's a bit of a paradox: even though the objects are virtual and therefore can behave in unexpected ways, the people we encounter in a virtual world are in fact not virtual. But since you can't actually see them, they can still behave in entirely unexpected ways. They might use the virtual world to express their multifaceted selves as is usual in real life. They might use the virtual world to play some role. They might clearly indicate they are playing a role, or they might not. They might be expressing just some facets of their multifaceted selves more than others, or try to make up altogether new ones.
When I was a young innocent 18 and just started playing with muds, I immediately realized intellectually that the female character I saw on a mud might in fact have a male typist. That intellectual realization didn't stop me from getting quite confused emotionally at times.
Some people responded quite violently to the concept of gender-bending online: it just shouldn't be done. Evil. Other people were more accepting of it. Even given my initial confusion I think it's quite an interesting way to explore oneself and the way people respond to gender. It took me a while to get comfortable with the concept though.
How far is roleplaying supposed to go? Is it acceptable to play a role invisibly, not disclosing that the character you play is in fact a character? In virtual worlds many people present more or less themselves, or themselves in fancy dress-up, others present some other character, but obviously (I know that's not really a faun in real life!), or simply put their presumed real-life identity in their profile (skimpily clad young woman stating she's a grandmother in profile). Yet others present someone else than who they really are, whatever that actually means (a typical Dicksian question, that), and don't disclose this. And then there's the double bluff: I'm not a grandmother but I could put it in my profile just to see how people would respond. A fascinating experiment I shall endeavor to try out one day!
I imagine Second Life is where many people are confronted with this unreality and uncertainty for the first time. Quite a few of the problems in the Dear Randi section in that highly reputable newspaper AvaStar are about confusions like this ("I've fallen for my RL step-brother!" "I'm 21 and my girlfriend let slip she's 71!").
More confident and emotionally secure now, not to mention quite used to it, I've become quite fascinated with this game. When I interact with people, I take them at face value. I feel I have to, even though it's clearly not a dragon in real life that's doing the typing with his paws. At the same time, in the back of my head, I keep in mind that not all may be as it seems. Over time, little facts and hints come in that can help build up a decent intuition that this person is male or female, old or young, British or American. I get to know the person and build up a certain level of trust. But there are very good actors in the world, and I cannot discount the possibility I'm being fooled until I actually meet this person in real life. And even then... everybody knows even in reality not everybody is what they claim to be.
Some people try to keep a strict separation between Second Life and real life. If I got a euro for all the profiles I've seen that claim "SL is SL and RL is RL" I'd be rich now. I don't believe such a strict separation is really possible - such a strict separation would make it completely impossible for the RL typist to actually enjoy Second Life at all. Something has to get through in both directions. I imagine many use this as a marker to warn that their Second Life avatar may not be exactly what it seems. That is, at least, how I interpret such statements. My mental "this person is probably not as he appears" dial will move way out.
As for me, I like to roleplay at times. To highlight facets of myself that I usually show less. To see how others respond if I present myself differently. Be an American among Americans, instead of a Dutchman, say (oh no! you think. That American friend of mine might really be Beam Ray, a Dutchman!). It's a tricky ethical balance to maintain: I don't want to hurt anyone, and I think I've managed to avoid this.
You might learn something about yourself, and others, by playing a role for a while. A man could for instance learn about the various silly ways in which males can hit on his female avatar, and then avoid this practice himself in the future. Perhaps pick up nicer approaches too (like talking to the girl as if she were a fellow human being) - but be careful, don't hurt these people!
Then again, you might also learn something about yourself and others by just being yourself. My shy 18 year old geeky self noticed other people in those muds seemed to like him and want to be his friend. He found it strange at first. It helped him build up confidence.
New: live music
This section is going to be much shorter. As used as I was to Dicksian themes, I was not at all used to music in my previous explorations of text-based virtual worlds. It was in one of my first weeks in Second Life. Much of it was a feast of recognition. Just flying around, I happened upon this cafe with many people in it.They were not chatting a lot. I wondered what was going on. Why was everybody so quiet?
Then I turned on the music stream, and I heard someone far away sing a haunting song. That was when it hit me that Second Life had things to offer that were truly, beautifully, new to me.
That concludes the familiar and the new for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Now to think about what to write next!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment