Who am I? What am I? Does it matter?

Getting to grips with Second Life or any online system can take time. What doesn't help is that you have a range of possible criteria with which you can alter your online persona. It's not just about using a different name or a nickname/pseudonym/nom de plume... but also about the graphical and factual representation of yourself you provide.

Eh?

Well... for example, are you a boy or a girl? Easy enough for most two year olds. Research suggests that it is a distinct minority who are confused about their gender and become transvestites or even transexuals.

This is not a new observation. A quick Google search on 'Gender in Second Life' will produce a load of links to other articles and blogs talking about it going back two years or more. And why do some people have avatars that look like the 'Alien' creature or Cartman from SouthPark? Apart from the obvious fan-geek thing?

A few weeks ago I created my avatar and wanted to make him/it worse looking than me... not a better version... and modified the standard dress to be a dirty t-shirt, baggy jeans and red tartan boots. He looked like a cross between a Hell's Angel and the Bay-City Rollers.

However, I'm going to be using the avatar 'for business' - and thought it's probably better that at least I dress him in a suit. So I tried to buy a suit in one of the SL shops. Some are expensive (well... $2 for something so stupid is expensive!)... but found one relatively cheap. Only to find that somehow I had bought the poster of the suit and not the suit.

So now, if I put it on, I have a huge billboard sticking out of my mid-riff. Not good.

Then I fiddled with the settings in SL and realised that there was a suit in my inventory as standard. So I put it on.

Strangely, it changed my very pale, fat, bald white avatar to a fat, bald, black avatar! He looks better than the white version... but I feel that it isn't just the skin colour that has changed... not all the elements I'd given my previous attempt (huge chin, crooked nose) seem to have transferred to this new option.

So, now the question is, do I keep him? Will people treat me different as a black avatar than a white one? This is an obvious reason to experiment with gender in SL... as an experiment. So perhaps some 'formal research' could be conducted to see how attitudes change in SL to different avatars, different genders, skin colours, sizes (fat, thin, tall, short, muscular, buxom... )? It could provide, potentially, a real life insight into racism, sexism, homophobism etc. .. but I'm not the one to conduct the research.

And by the way...can anyone tell me where the squirrel came from? Never saw him before! Nice touch though... well... when you touch him/she/it... it squeaks!