Life in Second Life – Part 3

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This past Monday, April 7, in Second Life was a pretty interesting venture through the synthetic world (to use the term of a book we are reading right now). The co-facilitators did not seem to have much to say about the articles, and we seemed to almost wholly leave out 2 whole articles from the discussion since the two co-facils only decided to report on the McPherson and Bailey articles. Still, the articles were difficult and I think that the co-facils did a good job stimulating the discussion about race with their commentary on the nature of the Civil War and their overview of McPherson’s neo-Confederacy research. On the subject of some of the questions posed by professor McGlotten, I believe that I have not the strongest connection with my avatar since I am only connected to it by keyboard and mouse, and so my avatar only really stimulates 2 of my 5 senses (sight and sound), but I do feel that the avatar represents progress towards taking part in a more magical world where you are free to do more than you can in your real life, and that I have some personal investment in my avatar such that I worry what will happen to it if it is hurt in any way….

Up next for the day in Second Life was our journey through the various, specially chosen landmarks given to my group. I was chosen as the leader of my group for the day, and I was a little nervous as to what I was supposed to do, since I was not totally sure what my responsibilities were outside of handing out the landmarks to my group members. Still, it turned out that I did not have to worry too much since that was the really major part of my job. I could not figure out how to do a conference IM, so I simply IMed all of my individual group members in order to keep lines of communication open. The places we went to were the “SOULPHONIKS” Hip-Hop clothing store, Some/B’s wedding and ceremony Outlet, and the Bad Boys Gay Bar. The first location I went to was the “soulphoniks” store. I noticed that this place seemed to be a more high-end retailer of a particular 2L product – hip-hop, rap and otherwise what seemed to mostly be Black and Latino fashion. I could tell it was a higher-end retailer because of the front of the store having a sign that showed the names of major brands that I actually recognized from people in my first life I had seen wearing them – Avirex, G-Unit, Adidas (thought not just a hip-hop company), Akademiks, Ecko, Puma, and others. Otherwise, the most significant thing that I noticed about this place was the presence of posters and ads all over the walls that represented the interface you would use to buy the products - all these posters had the stereotypes of advertising within them. You had big, muscular black men, and women who were shapely, had prominent breasts, and most significant, never had a very dark skin tone. The store’s most notable ad technique that is probably less noticeable is, indeed, the latter – the women tended to never have too dark a skin tone due to conformity with colorism, I guess, because I do remember reading somewhere that studies show that women with darker skin tones are considered less attractive than those with lighter skin tones. Just compare this picture of ads for male clothes in the bottom image at the top of the blog (2).

….Versus this ad for female clothes in the top image (1) at the top of the blog....

and pay attention to the difference in skin tones between the men and women, and you can see the difference.

As for the other places my group went to, they were both places geared towards the gay community in 2L, clearly? one was a gay bar where you could use pose balls to dance, get in gay sex positions, and have a, well, gay old time doing stuff like that! I actually slow danced in my spiky, samurai suit with one of my group members, and everyone got a real kick out of it! I also went and tried some of the sex position balls, at one point, putting my head in a toilet! A very strange place, indeed…. As for the Some/B’s wedding outlet, that was a place that featured a mixture of wedding items with a place for BDSM just outside the doors! One of my group members even found a wedding cake with a penis on it! What kind of places were we sent to? In summation, it was a very eye-widening day post-co-facilitation in Second Life for me and my group….