Kowalski's Korner

Finding My Other Self

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more attached to my av than I do right now. I’ve always been one of those folks who keeps a “healthy” distance between me and my avatar. I guess that’s a shield I put up years ago, back in my old Dungeons & Dragons days (the paper and books version, not the computer games). My friends would get so attached to their characters, and I’d have to keep reminding them, “It’s just a piece of paper!”

That’s the mindset I took into Second Life. I may have even started off less attached, because you can at least touch a piece of paper. An avatar is just computer code. A collection of 1’s and 0’s magnetically “remembered” on a hard drive. I created Kowalski for work, put a company t-shirt on him, and kinda thought of him as a walking billboard. He was a piece of office equipment, not an extension of me. He was more than my mii avatar, but mostly because Second Life allowed me to do so much more with him. He was just a computer generated extension of a figment of my imagination. And then…

Well, I quit my job the other day, and today was my first day at home. (Don’t worry… I’m a trailing spouse, so my paycheck was just the frosting.) Anyway, I changed Kowalski’s shirt, activated a different group, and poked my head in-world. What I found probably won’t surprise most of you, but it was a neat revelation for me.

Kowalski is connected to me!

My in-world friends don’t think of him as an extension of my employer. There were no questions about who I would be next or how I would find everyone with my new av. Just as my real life friends asked what I was going to do next, my in-world friends asked Kowalski what he was going to do next.

And this was no game interaction. This was honest, real-life compassion. Their avs weren’t role-playing concern for my av. The real people behind those avatars were expressing concern for the real person behind my avatar… me!

So what do I think of Kowalski now? Well, I’m still sorting that all out, and I guess that answer will continue to evolve. I do think I want to keep that shield up a little. I’ve known people in role-playing situations who have lost the line between reality and fantasy (I actually had a guy come over a table at me in a D&D game in college). I don’t want to head in that direction, and I’m pretty sure I won’t. But I feel a little freer to let more of me shine through Kowalski now. I guess if I had to find a way to express it (which of course I have to or this article would have a lousy ending), I’ve come to think of Kowalski as a personal communication tool. Just as the phone, or IM, or texting, or even snail mail can help you communicate with someone over long distances, Kowalski lets me communicate around the world.

But it’s still different, because of the immersive nature of Second Life. Kowalski lets me communicate in so many different ways. He’s like the coming together of so many previous forms of communication technology. Text, audio, video, and now even body language and facial expression!

And even better, Kowalski doesn’t have to know someone before he can communicate with them. It’s like living in a world where you have 10 minute conversations with someone who called a wrong number. Heck, some of my best in-world friends are people that Kowalski just walked up to so I could say “Hi”.

So what have I learned? I’ve learned that my av is an extension of my personality, not an extension of the situation under which I created him. I’ve learned that there are real people behind those virtual faces, and some of those people really care about me, not just my av. And I’ve also learned that when the Bell Telephone Company said that calling Long Distance was ‘The Next Best Thing to Being There’… they hadn’t seen anything yet!

Tallguy Kidd at the SLCC Musicians Ball

Tallguy Kidd performing live and in person at the SLCC in San Francisco, CA on August 15th 2009 Captured live by Kittie Serendipity (RL Susan Lionhart) at JenzZa Misfit's  ' Muse Isle Metro - A Cinema for Machinima ' at Muse Isle Connection in Second Life™