Monday, March 31, 2014

DIGC335 - Character Creation and Inextricable Identity in the 'Real World'

As an individual who has spent large portions of his life probing and participating in varied virtual realms, I found myself acutely affected by Dibbell’s (1998) account of an aggravated sexual assault that took place in the world of LambdaMOO. I found the author’s interrogation of the ill-conceived divide between the virtual and the real, exampled by an examination of “netsex”, particularly pertinent to our tutorial discussions, resonating with my own notions of online identity.

During my years as a resident of Azeroth within the World of Warcraft (WoW), I was a socially active participant of a prominent guild. Within this guild, there were many I counted as close friends, and yet I knew nothing more about them than what was shared with me through a scrolling chat feed next to their chosen username. For me this wasn’t an issue, as the sincerity and authenticity of these users, combined with actions of “identity-in-practice” (Larsen 2008, pp.15), allowed me to form friendships just as real as those formed in a physical environment. Dibbell (1998) described my participation perfectly when stating that experiences within a virtual world are “neither exactly real nor exactly make-believe, but nonetheless profoundly, compellingly, and emotionally true.”

Of course role-playing games (RPGs) have a fantasy element, but I found that within WoW at least, those who wished to assume a false facade would do so within dedicated role-playing realms, with chat on my server closer to that of an IRC room. I encountered the odd “faker” (Larsen, pp.8-10), but these were easy to spot and ignore, especially with ever decreasing anonymity online (Fahey, 2010).

I believe that regardless of the realm we occupy our identity is a constant, and is inevitably imprinted in any form of character we create. The emotional anguish suffered by ‘exu’ as a virtual victim (Dibbell 1998) illustrates this inextricable identification, proving that our emotional engagement with virtual worlds may have deeper ties than we care to admit.

References:

Dibbell, J 1998, ‘A Rape In Cyberspace’, Julian Dibbell (DOT COM), weblog post, viewed 30 March 2014, <http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/>

Fahey, M 2010, ‘Blizzard's Real Name Forum Policy Has Fans In An Uproar’, Kotaku, weblog post, viewed 31 March 2014, <http://kotaku.com/5581209/blizzards-real-name-forum-policy-has-fans-in-an-uproar/>


Larsen, M C 2008, ‘Understanding Social Networking: On Young People’s Construction and Co-construction of Identity Online’, Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark

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