Virtual Interaction: As Real As “Reality”
by Kozfear, HSM guest contributor
Clifton Fadiman wrote:
They will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they have Cleopatra’s infinite variety.
He was speaking of books, but it sounds nearly identical to the way one might describe virtual friendships and interactions. Gideon’s excellent piece on the PSN outage reminded me of the tenuous nature of such connections (please forgive the pun), for better and for worse—what is the inherent value of a relationship that can be approached or abandoned at will? On a whim?
I’ve always found Home intensely fascinating as a grand sociological experiment: the real Real World, with strangers instantly thrown together to interact along with the added, albeit intrinsic, caveat of anonymity. It wasn’t an idea altogether new to me, as my early internet days were spent haunting various chat rooms on AOL, and though the Home format granted one a physical embodiment of sorts, I found that the same familiar, sometimes bitter, often difficult rules of virtual interaction did indeed apply.
The anonymous nature of such interaction is multi-faceted, granting many a source of social bonding and acceptance that may otherwise be denied them, for various reasons, in “real life.” For others, as most Home users are likely all-too aware, it’s a cloaking device to be used for the random release of tremendous rage, a phenomenon that’s been reduced to the cutesy term, “trolling.” Still another advantage for some is the freedom to simply “invent” whole new selves, or parts of self, or entirely foreign selves, for a variety of individual motivations and goals.
For those of us truly interested in investing in the human experience on Home, the risk inherent in the anonymous nature of its use is one we’ve opted to accept, though we cannot then shunt our personal responsibility in this experience if we discover the “girl” we’ve been wooing for months is a 40 year-old former truck driver on disability named Bubba, or if we discover the many-layered stories of grief and woe that so endeared us to our latest VFF are a concoction borrowed from soap operas and Twilight.
When we embark on the road of having, wanting, and accepting real relationships with those we meet online, we also must accept that the “who” we’re relating to, and indeed the self we individually put forward, may be quite different from the human that haunts behind the screen, if for no other reasons than those of perception and projection. This is the nature of anonymity, and also that of trust, and of human nature.
Yet my major concern with worlds online stems from what Clifton Fadiman wrote above: They will visit you at your convenience…They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation.
Convenience? A lack of obligation? These keywords are the very antithesis of everything involved in the reality and word: relationship. Relationships, by their very nature, are obligations. They are often messy, inconvenient, and come and go when we least expect.
Many people run to Home, and other online environs, for this very reason—because it is an escape from the messiness of “real life.” Because they can, if things don’t go their way, simply “turn it off,” delete a suddenly unwanted friend, or place others on mute, all luxuries the physical world has yet to afford. But these actions also remove and displace our sense of personal responsibility. They belittle and reduce our online investments to little more than a flirtation with the true and abiding connections so many of us have turned to Home to seek. And they place the virtual a world apart from the “real,” creating separation rather than true immersion.
The virtual world differs from “real life” in many ways, but it also mirrors and replicates the who and what within each of us to a level most are unwilling to address. We have a distinct ability to truly reach out and communicate with others we would never otherwise encounter, to develop and nurture deep and lasting friendships, and to see parts of ourselves often shrouded by our fears, disabilities, and insecurities…but not if we shirk our obligations to them. Not if we treat them a world apart from anything the “real world” has to offer.
I insist on embedding that term in quotations because I fail to see what is less real about the virtual than the physical, as both are filtered through the mind, both rely on our participation, our intent, and most vitally, our acceptance that we bear the responsibility of our actions—that we not dismiss those phantoms humming in the dark as anything less than the messy, complex individuals each of them—each of us—truly are.
April 27th, 2011 by kozfear | 19 comments
koz is a writer, photographer, and wayward college professor from the San Francisco Bay Area. A certified bookaholic, she nurtures intense passions for literature, philosophy, history, poetry, linguistics, and reference books. Among her other obsessions are felines, cephalopods, typewriters, scrabble, skeeball, cinema, music, minutia, irony, metaphor, curiosity, idiosyncrasy, artisans, Italia, communication, and conversation.
She also plays video games.
Wow Koz. This was an incredibly well thought out and true assessment of what Home is. I for one take my obligations and friendships in Home very seriously. I know that though some may abuse the privilege they have of being able to come to this fantastic and fanciful place and hurt others in the process, I for one will not be one of those. I am always polite, even if I decide to delete a person on my list (which is rare and usually due to inactivity) I always send them a message explaining why and tell them to feel free to contact me through messages still if they want to keep in touch.I agree with you in that many seem to forget that though this is a virtual world we frequent, there is still a real human being behind that controller. Thanks for this literate reminder of the truth of Home.
I think you give too much credit to the driving force behind some of the controllers out there. And I’m only half joking. I don’t think there are many people who are able to completely change who they are online for role playing purposes. Not for long anyway. For the most part, if a person is nice online, as you are, they are nice in real life. I also think trolls, many times, are trolls through and through, real life and virtual.
I wasn’t saying that there aren’t weird and angry people out there Gid, I was just saying that I will never be one of them, and I think that the ones who act that way deserve whatever Sony can dish out to protect those who aren’t like them. You are right in that those who act out behind the anonymity of a controller are usually people who are the same in real life as well but don’t have the courage or the wherewithal to do it in real life. So they come to Home and do it there. They are cowards.
Cole’s Axiom: The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
Excellent read Koz. I think the reality of the virtual world is something that is too frequently overlooked. People visit online worlds for very real and many times, very powerful reasons. These reasons lead to a very wide range interaction comfort. You will meet people on Home who willingly open the floodgates of their life and will (seemingly) trust you with very personal details and others who guard the particulars of their life like they have terrible secrets to hold. There is just no way to know who is being more honest in this situation, or who is worthy of a second glance. Although I do agree that the medium of communication has an impact on the nature of online relationships, I do believe the obligation of relationship (or lack of) is more dependent on the individual. Some people are comfortable with ending relationships on a whim with no rhyme, reason or regard for the other person, no matter the circumstances or “reality” of the connection.
Great article!
Enjoyable read Koz, good job! Much truth written in your words and interesting comments to boot.
*boots random comment*
I’ve been humming that damn A-Ha song all day….
Nice article Koz.
Very indeed. Very indeed, indeed.
Imagine if the only interactions we had with others could only be had in the mind. There would be no escape; not to the virtual, nor to the physical… maybe…
Or maybe (if interactions were had only in the mind) we truly would be able to “delete” the unwanted. The “undesirables”. The dangerous. The intimidating.
the matrix is thatta way —-->
p.s: any chance of a holodeck ?
“We have a distinct ability to truly reach out and communicate with others we would never otherwise encounter”. I was placed in a college prep school at the age of 13 and also spent every minute outside school working to earn enough to be self-supporting. So my last contact with ‘normal’ people was approximately 60 years ago. From prep school to university (undergraduate) to university (graduate) to entry-level in a gigantic multi-national corporation where an entry level job required a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree to get an interview was a very contained environment.
Then, for 50 years, the upward climb through circling sharks and dangerous reefs. Always having to deal with people not only armed with stratospheric IQ levels but also a lot of ruthless ambition. Making it to the top meant living that work 24 hours a day.
Next, retirement -- and an immersion into video games that had previously been a stress reliever after a long limo ride home from the airport. Then, the fateful day of discovery: what is this Home thing on my PS3? Curiousity followed by enthrallment.
But then -- an entirely new social dynamic! Other than “Is my dry cleaning ready?” and “Please check the transmission fluid” and “Do you also have that dress in my size in black?”, I had never spoken to people other than business colleagues and immediate family members.
Now I was meeting -- and discovering -- lifestyles I was completely unaware of. People who are involved with their local community. People who are concerned about making ends meet financially. People whose families take precedence over career. It was an epiphany. I became a ‘people watcher’ in Home. I understood how Margaret Mead felt when she wrote “Growing Up in Samoa” while researching how the tribe on the island of Olosega lived. It was a whole new world.
Being away from it this week has also been a revelation: Going back to the internet website where the ” class of ’56 ” hangs out did not hold the appeal that it did before. Catching up on latest happenings in my former industry was boring. I missed the reality of the people in the virtual reality.
In real life I am judged by my looks…in Home I am judged by my avatar’s looks. In real life I am judged by my clothes and belongings… in Home I am also judged by my clothes and belongings. In real life I sometime drift away from friends… that happens in Home as well. In real life people can and do say things with the intent to hurt me…that happens in Home as well. In real life people lie to me to try and make them selfs seem like something they are not… I am sure this has happened to me in Home as well. I make mistakes in both worlds. I make friends in both worlds. I learn from my experiences in both worlds. I love in both worlds (but I am only “in love” in the real world). I spend money in both worlds but Im only in debt in one. I am in perfect heath in one world but not the other. In one world I never have a bad hair day.I could go on and on and some may think I already have. The line between the “virtual” and “real” world is blurring and fading to me. I spend so much time in the “virtual” world that the real world is starting to become less of the “norm”. Right or wrong, better or worse, health or not. As I see it right now, and I do reserve the right to change my mind on this, the biggest difference between “virtual” and “real” is physical matter. I can not physically touch a friend on Home. I can’t knee a troll in their micro-crotch. Relationships on Home may ask for a larger trust down payment but the risks are just as real. One thing I have noticed, in Home I feel at home. I “real life” I am afraid more because more things can hurt me out here. So is Home my escape from the real world or is the real world pushing me towards Home.
wow, that actually got me crying, olivia. thank you, that was dead on.
Avatars don’t cry
But their humans do, sometimes in relation to occurrences in Home, sometimes out of their “real life” troubles and frustrations, sometimes just because.
Indeed, tears, I shed many and often for all of those reasons. Yet in home my avatar never weeps and no one can tell how I fell by looking at me. That allows me the freedom of having feelings and not having to explain them if I don’t feel like it at the time. Without expressing my feelings in texts, I am strong and brave to the onlooking avatars. And I can not judge their emotions. I haven’t really thought of that before. One of the freedoms Home gives me that I value most is the ability to control the perception of my emotions by shielding them from plain sight. What a wonderful gift that is. Sure there is a flipside to that coin and I can see how someone could make a case that it isn’t a good thing. But as someone that has always had an expressive face, not having to keep a check on my emotions is a relief for the most part. Like I said, I haven’t really thought about this to much till now. I may see it different after giving it more thought.
Avatars do or can cry because they are controlled by humans. We may no see their tears but keep in mind we don’t always if not often see tears from humans when they cry, perhaps not crying with teardrops but crying inside their mind’s eye.
That’s a weird place to see that particular screenshot from that anime. Hm. I don’t get it. Ahwell.