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Sunday 30 May 2010

Scattergun thoughts

OK. Time to take stock after a frantic week's reinvention and rejigging of my second life.

I remember that the Amity Island sim didn't 'sell' freebies (clothes, skins etc) to avatars under 14 days old. Maybe this rule still applies. I'm warming to the idea that new born men don't qualify for even a freebie cock for 14 days, maybe even longer. I honestly believe that many male users of SL need to develop their conversational skills, and not see SL as a gateway to nothing more than cyber.

We've been told, for years, that girls outstrip boys in education, and that females are more articulate. This certainly appears to be the case in SL. This isn't an observation based on just last week's evidence, but over the course of the past year. If I'm dependent upon an 'articulate male' (oxymoronical, surely?) to pitch up and woo me, I'm beginning to think that my SL virginity is safe for some time to come, LOL. Men just don't appear to have much sense of verbal skills.

Of course, this may be something to do with the sims I'm inhabiting. I'm coming to the impression that certain sex orientated sims encourage the emotionally and sexually stunted, and maybe the psychologically damaged. For all of Linden Labs adult rules, it's clear that many 'adult male' users are either teenage boys or worryingly inarticulate. The minds of teenage boys trapped in the bodies of adult males. Scary. Just how did so many of them manage to reach the age of maturity while being so stupid? OK, it's a virtual world, but if they replicate their actions, behavioural and social skills in RL as they do in SL, then I'd be afraid for them to be allowed out without the presence of a responsible adult.

My profile...LOL...appears to be scaring guys off. What used to be a constant parade of 'Hi!' IMs, followed up by that classic of conversation, 'what'cha doin?' (I'm sat at a keyboard connected to the internet in RL, and in the same sim as you in SL, so you can see what I'm doing, you moron!) has suddenly stopped. Hmmm....it looks like there's more profile readers in SL than I previously imagined.

This is really rather interesting. While the two-syllable grunts that pass for conversation appear to be fine when confined to IM, there's a marked change when the threat/promise to discuss my SL sex life openly on a blog becomes an issue. Suddenly, it seems like the machismo has been emasculated.

The profile, however, must read as it does. It's not about entrapment. It's the opportunity for guys to read and respond as they see fit. If their conversational and cyber skills are as good as they imagine, what's to fear? Maybe the freebie cock Jimmy modelled for us in an earlier post, the one named 'how guys see their own cock', is an allegory for their entire second lives. That priapic flagpole is smbolic of how they view the entirety of their SL, but -just as they boast about their RL appendage, 'Oh, I'm just the average nine inches, baybee', while looking at a shrivelled acorn of a penis in the mirror- their boasts to be 'great cyber lovers' are possibly uniformly empty. The idea that their textual intercourse will be openly discussed on an internet blog seems to be cooling their ardour.

And, of course, that leads back to some of the issues I discussed with Eleanor Maven in an earlier post. Much of SL is sexually orientated, but it's women who have the control inworld. They're the ones (in the main) doing the designing and running successful businesses. They're the ones (in the main) selling clothes. These are issues to which I shall return, again and again, in this blog. It would appear that, for many guys, the purpose is to get virtually laid as often as possible, while women's expectations of SL are markedly different.

So far, the only sims I've seen where men and women's expectations dovetail better are naturist ones. Stripped of their clothes, and often lacking poseballs, the emphasis turns to dance and conversation. The conversation flows, often in local chat, and is simply a series of laugh out loud moments. I'm not naive enough to imagine cyber is not occurring between users, but from what I've observed, people are discussing their real lives, and real experiences, with SL existing as a social networking tool, and the chance to unwind after the rigours of RL work.

Me? I'm off to experience prostitution next, and report back on my observations.

1 comment:

  1. You write really well, Emmanuelle, and this is a brilliant blog from what I've read. for what its worth I think that SL men have a very idealized view of what they expect of their SL women without applying the same effort to themsleves. Big tits get IM hits. A skin with lipstick wins out over a plain face etc.They want to wear tattoos themselves but dont like women covered in tatts. Theres a lot of double standard.

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