Have you ever had one of those days when you meet someone and hours later you're regretting having to go to bed, or to make dinner or whatever. Yesterday I interviewed Desi, the avatar of the "Barbie with a brain" project (reported here). Seven hours later I regretfully had to give up and go to bed as the time at the computer was threatening to trigger a migraine. For that reason, among others, what follows will be rather edited to fit into a reasonable space. I'll present it as if transcript still, so it is easy to see who is saying what.
Eloise: I read on your blog that you came to SL, then went away, then came back again and are staying this time. What made you come to SL in the first place?
Desi: I do other educational gaming and so, I had heard about SL through talking to other educational gamers. I came here the way everyone does through Orientation Island and I managed that ok, but once I was born I just couldn't find anything good. I found some clubs but I had no linden and I looked terrible and had NO idea that I had to buy skin and shape and hair and I couldn't find any good educational content. I was told it was here, but I couldn't find it.
Eloise: Was that problems with search? Lack of communication?
Desi: I think things are better now, SLED is a major improvement and helps new faculty get connected to veterans in here. I tell people that they must join that group it is an essential tool.
Eloise: Why did you then leave?
Desi: I thought that my students would not be able to use this platform: if I couldn't get it they wouldn't be able to get it. So, I left and thought it was useless: too expensive and too risky for students
Eloise: Why did you come back?
Desi: I read about the Cyber One project out of Harvard and joined their At-Large group and was blown away. I haven't gone back. Once I got connected to SLED and others I found the good stuff and I also wanted to see how research would be done here so I did the "Barbie with a brain" project.
Eloise: Where typing fast is more important than spelling right? :-)
Desi: YES!
Eloise: Can you tell me about that?
Desi: I did 30 days as a stripper at Aerolite Dance Club where I found out that personalized service, knowing names, not being judgmental, treating men and women the same, furries and gor alike. Maybe a newbie doesn't have a lot of linden but if you treat them well they learn the ropes and they remember and come back when they do. It is the same I suspect as RL: people want to be noticed and liked for who they are and what they bring so, in that 30 days learned that people just want to made to feel special It's about connections: pixels are just pixels but connection transcends the boundaries here from here to RL.
Eloise: Let me check I understand what you mean by that: we're interacting through pixels, but they're essentially facilitating a connection between my body (which doesn't look this good any more) and your body (which doesn't look like Barbie)
Desi: Right: there are people who do get aroused at pixels but, really the chat is where the arousal seems to really form and build. If you have a butt ugly avatar but you are a good communicator in text chat you make good tips. You can have a hottie pants avie, never speak, and get zero tips. So, while pixels are important in the overall pic it is the text chat that matters and the connection that builds between you.
Desi: Mostly people never connected me back to Barbie: they didn't know I was trying to look like the doll but, the comments I got about this avie was how natural she looks, human I guess. All the clothes I buy I can find in my niece's Barbie bag. All these revealing clothes, these dresses, hairstyles we buy for our daughters but dont let them wear. I do like the clothes in SL. I wear stuff here that I would love to wear irl. I have suits and such for teaching engagements here, but I prefer the sexy look. I am libertarian irl so, I have no problem with nudity irl and it doesn't bother me personally to have students see a naked stack of pixels. But it is not the [education] community standard so, I have to be careful or they won't trust what educational work I do here. Personally I find nudity far less worrying than violence in society: I think it is odd that we accept violence as standard but then criticize the BDSM people that role play privately on their own sims we judge them and say it is bad, but think nothing of giving students tazers. I have been told several times to create an alt but I think that is cheating. The solution on SLEd is to create two avies and keep the research me separate from the teaching me. If I ever created an alt it would be to get work done not to hide. For example, I have no problem going to the Lesbian clubs here as I have no problem IRL. So, to me, I am just as accepting here as in real life that is how I feel about my brain and heart. Frankly, I think this environment allows us to explore and to be who we are and test out who we are. I couldn't be a stripper irl not because of getting naked but because of the exhaustion of chatting like that for two hours at a time, so upbeat, that was a drain but it did teach me a lot and I met a lot of very nice people. They aren't academic, they are just regular people, and I am glad because sometimes the academic only want to be academics, with academics, teaching their own students. I want to be the connector: this is why I still sponsor a weekly dance at Aerolite to merge the communities a bit.
Eloise: You seem to have run full circle with relationships in SL... from being in one, to being anti, to being back in one. Is there anything you'd like to say about juggling RL, SL, relationships in both, impact on the heart etc?
Desi: When I came here the second time my mission was to help every newbie I found. I am married IRL but my husband does not play sl but he was ok with me having a sl friend. But Adrian is not married irl and, in the beginning, I thought it was all just fun and games. Then he started to take it VERY seriously and we had an argument like I have with my RL hub. I thought, good grief, that isn't what I came here for and I started to feel very attached to him with my RL emotions, so i let him go. But then I missed him: his sense of humor and the romance. SL became like a job, it isn't the same without him and so I tried to just be his friend and well that was insane because I feel very deeply for him irl and isl. So I crawled back and asked him to start again and we are together again.
Eloise: And how's it working out? :-)
Desi: It is great. He is everything my husband is not and my husband is everything he is not. We will never meet irl because of the distance and we have no interest in meeting either. But he and I are together, we skype every day and we build our life together in here and it is all good. But we do sometimes fight, just like irl, and for the same reason: I work too much. Both husbands get pissed about that!
Eloise: Well... they both want their quality time with you
Desi: Yes, lol
Eloise: It's back to your comment earlier... about pixels mediating hearts and souls making connections
Desi: yes
Eloise: I know your research exploration as Barbie with a Brain didn't draw any hard conclusions, and wasn't really meant to probably: But you did say you found that RL conversation strategies didn't run from RL into SL, more or less. Could you expand on that a bit?
Desi: Sure. I was relying on the academic theories of Jürgen Habermas: he argues that we operate in a style called system communication where there are clear bosses and people communicate in the structure of someone being higher than another where the ones on top make decisions for the ones below. He argues that the ideal structure is the lifeworld pattern that allows everyone to contribute equally and where consensus is the goal. So, I thought that in a world created by its users we would be more equal in our speech, interaction etc. because we created it. But, I have not found that to be true. We still have bosses, there is still top down communication.
Eloise: So actually it's more that we bring the RL communication modes into SL
Desi: Exactly. We bring a lot of rl into sl: stereotypes, prejudice etc. And this is a world we created: we set the pace, we set the laws, and the same conflicts happen: the bosses make the decisions and the workers follow or go somewhere else. There may be psychological reasons for that I think perhaps it is so much part of who we are by the ways of our collective culture... that it is just the way humans are, but it's not an area I'm at all expert in really. I think we could break the mold but look at the people who do and look how they are treated: the creative and the innovative. The system shuts them down.
Eloise: I'd say here that the system is quite a lot more nurturing of the creative and the rules breakers
Desi: Yes, overall the system is - you are right in the bigger culture but, if we take the groups represented here, the creative ones are ok so long as they follow the rules. The brit. lit. classroom, for example, has a bed but no pose balls when pose balls are the thing that everyone buys. If we had a culture that would allow for us to epress freely through consensus people wouldn't have to pocket the pose balls. If you think about it, it is also true in the commercial realm. Your shop has all the teaching stuff on one side for example and the other stuff on the other. So, you also recognize that there is a system. in my dream world you could put it all out in the same place and no one would bat an eye but, even unconsciously, you might have placed them that far away. I know I would, lol!
Eloise: I don't know I can analyse precisely why I did it that way when I did, it was some time ago. The only conscious thing I remember with setting up the educational things vendor was I wanted it easy to find, hence a section on its own but how much any drive to keep the two areas apart influenced where that was... I just don't know.
We moved on from here to "talk of many other things, bees and sealing wax, coronets and kings" as Lewis Carroll once wrote. We rounded the evening off at the
