Developing a New Major

from SL book – ch5 – SecondLife Culture and Relationships

SL all about the people – notice data from the chapter came from interviews – remember behind every avatar is a person with real feelings and real lives outside of SL – no npcs (well – there are a couple of bots being used for research on some university islands), also remember some people are bad, rude cheats – just like in RL

keep avatar anonymity – don’t publish chat transcripts, don’t out real world identities of SL avies, when i do research with the qual class we even give the avies fake names to really protect their identity (remember people come to know your avatar, it develops a reputation, just like real person so don’t want to embarass the avie anymore than the real person)

and because avies are anonymous – people can lie about their identity – you don’t know really who’s behind the avie – in qual we say treat them asyou would that kind of person in rl – so if it’s a girl avie, use femal pronouns, if it’s a male looking wolf, juse male pronouns and so on. – role play

talks about hte profile and what others can see about you – people profile surf (i don’t and won’t look at your profile unless you ask me to) – see when account created, see the groups belonged to, there’s an about area where you can put info about yourself, you can put in links to rl webpages that you like – maybe your blog, a myspace page if you have one, a business website if you’re working, can put in info about what you like to do in Sl and nay skills you have, Picks is interesting – you put in places in SL that you find interesting – a way for others to find out a little about you, section for rl info – don’t have to put anything there if you don’t want

part of the chapter about relationships (interesting bit is the interviews he did online and the observation that relationships seem to move faster in SL than in rl)

another bit about sex in SL – don’t have to read that if ya don’t want to – we’re not going to any sex clubs in class – skip over to p. 112 to read on about standards of behavior – especially teh big 6 things not to do

discussion on p. 114 and 115 about Bartle and player types (we should have mentioned him backin videogame and mmo parts) player type sort of suggests what part of world they’ll llike – hanging in clubs, exploring by themselves building

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