Looking Back at the Classroom

As avatars are central to Second Life and other graphical social environments, analysis of the construction and interaction of user avatars is one of the more exciting ways Second Life can be incorporated into the composition classroom. Because Second Life avatars start out very simple but can become amazingly complex depending on the interests and abilities of the participant, the construction of an avatar offers multiple opportunities for students to consider the rhetorical underpinnings of identity online. As an example, while there are over 150 sliders for use in adjusting one’s avatar in Second Life, each player is presented with a series of stock avatars to choose from when signing up. These avatars often reflect typical standards of beauty as coded by society—Caucasian; thin; big-breasted and slim-hipped for women; burly and broad-shouldered for men. In her examination of female player avatars, T. L. Taylor (2003) noted that for many MMOGs, women who choose to play with female avatars are presented with limited choices, all falling along standard gendered lines such as very little or sheer fabrics, pronounced cleavage, and stereotypical body shapes (p. 36).

These technological constraints prevent users from ever fully fulfilling the Linden Lab slogan, “Your World. Your Imagination.” Donald E. Jones (2006) illustrates the limitations of such a slogan: “While Second Life captures the imagination of individuals who wish to create new lives free from societal and physical limitations of ethnicity, gender, geography, sexual orientation or status, it still manifests significant aspects of the society (American, capitalist, gendered) from which it sprung and therefore is more reflective than transcendent” (p. 4). Composition classes that meet in Second Life can easily consider how the space is paradoxically both limiting and freeing, both unfettered by the boundaries of the real world and constrained by stereotypes that cross over. In considering how and why they have constructed their avatars in particular ways, students can discuss in what ways the limitations of the space and the software presented to them have altered their visions of their online identities. How was their ability to construct an online identity hampered by the sociological constraints programmed into the system? In what ways did this then affect their interactions with others in the game?

Real life meets Second Life. Image courtesy of Erik.Hugo on Flickr.

Avatars in Second Life, therefore, both represent the dominant culture within which the player is enmeshed as well as potentially offer “a means of transcending an unsatisfying body or life,” even if only for a short while (Jones, 2006, p. 26). The performance of self online can have both virtual and real-life consequences and effects. Sherry Turkle (1995) may have described MUDs as places where “you can be whoever you want to be. You can completely redefine yourself if you want. You can be the opposite sex. You can be more talkative. You can be less talkative. Whatever” (p. 184). But her words belie the fact that users can never fully escape the realities of their offline personas, and that “being whoever you want” online is a valid choice, yes, but a choice with consequences no matter what. These consequences can thereby be rich sites for student analysis in the writing classroom.