Are virtual worlds like company towns you cannot leave? What’s the price of just deleting your account and starting over? Have we become so interconnected that we can’t just pull the plug and start over?
There’s nothing wrong with being part of a culture, or even a support group, which is often what it feels like Second Life actually is: a bunch of people with this sense that all of this MEANS something and is GOING somewhere but we’re all king of wavering between absolute faith and certainty and dark despair and a suspicion that maybe we’re living some kind of delusional fantasy of a new reality. We’re in it together, and we need each other, and let’s buck each other up and be there when the chips are down and we’re feeling blue.
But technology is creating other forms of connection that are making it increasingly difficult to pack it up and move on, if we choose, and these connections are facilitating tribal or cultural norms whose implications we may not have fully articulated.
The Obscure and the Practical
When it comes to virtual worlds, I suppose I prefer to dance on the side of totally useless and exploratory compared to the pragmatic and easily understood. I mean, there are tons of people exploring the pragmatic:
“Pragmatic technology buyers will require immersive software to expose and document APIs and provide out-of-box interfaces to enterprise apps, information worker tools, and back-end systems. Pragmatic end users will demand that applications perform as expected and are easy to use, even for the first time.”
But I lean to the side of prims that don’t entirely make sense but that perhaps challenge our notions of space or information design or community or art. I’m not interested in dress codes for avatars, although I certainly understand that you don’t want people showing up topless for a client meeting, in any reality (other than technology or car shows, but that’s a form of virtuality entirely).
And there’s room for both, I believe, because bless the practical and the process-oriented, they’re the ones who get the job done. They’re also the ones I surround myself with at work, mostly because I’m neither practical nor process-oriented but I do see the need for those things.
But let’s be honest: if you’re going to truly explore the potential and promise of virtual worlds you’re also bound to explore its perils as well. If you’re going to push the envelope and try to grasp the enterprise of the future through the prism of virtual worlds, then you’re going to bump head-long into issues of identity and what the ’self’ means. And if you’re going to just hang out in virtual worlds then you’ll also push up against some pretty stunning revelations about love and connection and the tyranny of body or geography.
Pretty mind-blowing stuff sometimes, and in contained doses even businesses can use these insights to quite possibly open the doors to radical innovation.
Welcome to the Tribe
Now, against this backdrop there’s something else, and I call it the shift from a territorial to tribal morality. As we become increasingly connected through the mediation of technology, there’s a return to a morality that is based on the common good rather than our property:
Celia Green has made a distinction between tribal and territorial morality. She characterizes the latter as predominantly negative and proscriptive: it defines a person’s territory, including his or her property and dependants, which is not to be damaged or interfered with. Apart from these proscriptions, territorial morality is permissive, allowing the individual whatever behaviour does not interfere with the territory of another. By contrast, tribal morality is prescriptive, imposing the norms of the collective on the individual. These norms will be arbitrary, culturally dependent and ‘flexible’, whereas territorial morality aims at rules which are universal and absolute, such as Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’. Green relates the development of territorial morality to the rise of the concept of private property, and the ascendancy of contract over status.
So what we have, online, are new exploratory environments in which this tension between the territorial morality that has informed much of capitalism and policy, and the tribal morality which arises from our ability to connect around common concerns.
“I’m Leaving, Now Let Me”
These thoughts come up today because of a rumor that was spinning around last night about the possible departure of one of Second Life’s top content creators/artists.
And bless Bettina Tizzy who is the mentor, advocate, fan, supporter, promoter, and, occasionally, our conscience, because the possibility spurred a plea amongst members of the Not Possible in Real Life group to – well, to not leave. Or if you ever plan to leave, to sleep on it.
So here we have an artist, who is exploring the very boundaries I talk about above. And we have a rumor that they might leave – simply delete the account and walk away. And the immediate reaction is a kind of horror, which I understand, especially when it comes to the person in question.
But I couldn’t help wondering whether the impulse to convince someone to STAY shouldn’t be tempered somewhat by an understanding of how DIFFICULT it can be to walk away.
While I understand mutual support and seek it myself, and I get the drama/emo bombs and have had one or two over the years, and I shudder to think of the loss of art if someone hits the delete key and takes their inventory with them.
But on the other hand, I resist the notion that this is a company town that we shouldn’t leave. That we’re obliged to be convinced, or to get a big group hug, and have it lovingly argued that yes, it’s worth it, one day this will all make sense and have its own rewards, we’re in this together and we can’t disband or just disappear.
Maybe we’ve explored the limits and we need to find new ones elsewhere. Maybe we’ve sat down and made a practical accounting of what we put in and what we get out and decided that the ledger tips in favor of departure. Maybe we just decide that we’re exhausted and need a rest and prefer the feeling of a clean start.
There are lots of reasons for just, well, deleting our virtual selves.
But technology is making it increasingly difficult to depart. I wrote about this in reference to an interview on UgoTrade with Eben Moglen:
“I see again and again,” said Moglen, “The ways in which people now find themselves unable to make certain life choices easily because there digital self has acquired an inflexibility that constrains their non-digital self.
He gives the example of a woman who wanted to close down her mySpace page but was pressured by friends and family not to do so, because they depended on her for the archiving of photos and some other information. As Moglen pointed out:
“Now there is a point that a fundamental decision occurs that she feels pretty seriously about as an individual. But she is being subjected to a campaign of peer pressure to hold her in circumstances that she is not going to like in order to get the photo album back.
Oh we might say oh there are a million other ways to solve that problem you can upload them all to Flickr and get the hell out of there. But what is actually happening she wanted to leave town and she couldn’t.
We have got to understand that when she wanted to leave town and she couldn’t. The digital self was trapped by a fence that the physical self had no problem passing through and moving on from.”
So, while the loss of an artist in Second Life is a loss for us all, I can’t help also applauding the instinct which allows someone to say: I am not bound to this, there are many frontiers to explore, and a benefit of this virtuality is that I can just walk away.
I like the feeling of being exclusive to no place or anyone.
I’ve known a number of very active and high-profile individuals who walked away from their virtual identity this year. I think the root of their decisions was the challenge of reconciling the demands of their physical life with the time and energy it took to maintain their significant virtual social and creative pursuits. The latest to leave is Eshi Otwara – http://eshiotawara.com/
For those who need to sleep, eat, do chores and support themselves through a typical job, there are maybe fifty or sixty hours of week open for other pursuits. It’s not surprising that those who spend thirty or more hours a week inworld find that they are neglecting their human relationships and RL pursuits and/or are flaming out from lack of sleep and burning the candle at both ends.
This kind of double life is especially difficult for those who maintain a pseudonymous virtual identity, often hidden from even their closest friends.
My solution was to limit my virtual life to small creative projects and maintain my online relationships through social networks and instant messaging that I can attend to in small snippets over the course of a day. Also, by letting go of pseudonymity I was able to integrate my human and avatar creative work for the benefit of both personas. So far, we’re both very pleased with the strategy.
good lets examone these tribes, new? well not really.but….
these “virtual tribes..” total hogwash, and they exist only as the loudest self promoter – hypsters exist. Virtual Cults is so much more accurate a title for this form of interaction.
how many – leaders of virtual tribes 1. actually lead anywhere.
and 2. last past the “technology” that they get “paid” to hype- usaully for a corporate boards wealth more than theres in way uneven terms….
do some AOL, forum guides- googling history to see how it will term out.
oh yeah, if you want art and design in the virtual world, , then pay for it ( look at the real world for all the issues)nothign new—. if the ARTISTS ego being stroked is enough, well fine, but 30 cents to a dollar is again, no system for an fair economic system that you and other bloggers still attempt to see as in any way “valid”
people are leaving because the system cant sustain 300 dollar a month tiers and 30.00 a month returns.
PERIOD.
offer only a balanced commerce platform for realife commerce, and maybe people with-uh uduh- REAL lives will use it.
OR make a entertainement toy, like yoville..etc.. but this constant delusion that SL can be both, has finally become evident even to the most grasping hypsters of neo fame.
Ebay has been stagnant and is dying for the same reasons SLs grid is….no rocket science there..and god help us. NOBODY except for ebay PR paid flunkies EVER thought there was any real EBAY tribe…lol:)
the myth of the digital tribe is total bookselling dribble from the same folks who brought you open source and ip protection only for their code and consulting fees.
and yes, every service TOS makes it a delete it(but we still can use it forever) culture that will find that the individual will come to control nothing, but believe he has total control of his own singulary virtual world, untill they attempt to ask or google a question not on the owning, controling corporations mind….
use SL as the example of a virtual culture it has been..and one can still be waiting for 25 more groups and megaprims for 3 years..:)
or watch TV survivor, th TRIBE has spoken, but only the weakest is sacrificed each week, and really only Burnett and the advertises/networks makes the BANK…:)
and one naked guy wins 1 million and the tax man asks for 66%, and he goes to jail…lol reality tv, reality virtual culture..
again i ask, whats new? lets move on and offer sustainable value in virtuality before we forget we can.
c3
Wow, quite a thought provoking post.
Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry have done some interesting performance pieces dealing with abandoned virtual identities, and what we do with our avatars when they’re no longer needed. Their latest piece, “The Second Death of Caspar Helendale,” will be performed in late November at the Royal Opera House in London as a mixed reality event streamed live to and from Second Life.
Dusan… I heart you.
Know this. I have been encouraging this particular artist to leave Second Life for about a year now. It is and has been what she has needed for a very long time.
What upsets me is the loss of history, and as I explained to NPIRLers, when your work is truly great, it becomes a piece of history, and therefore belongs to all of us, not just you. If you are going to leave, and some need to, please don’t delete your masterpieces. Give a copy of each to someone you trust. That’s all.
Right now I feel happy for my friend. This artist needed to get away and found the way to do it. But I’m also very sad.
About a week ago, I talked poor Nebulosus Severine into using up one of his groups to join me in a new group I created called “15 minutes to health.” Unfortunately, the cool name for it, “15 minutes,” was already taken. When I get the bandwidth, I’d like to start helping leading content creators creep their way back to health, to a better perspective, one minute at a time. Would anyone care to join me?
Great post Dusan! While I am with you that it can be very hard to make the decision to leave and then carry through with it, I’m not sure anyone was asking her to stay, as much as asking her not to make a compulsive snap judgement that unnecessarily erases so much of what she did and created while she was here.
I have to agree with Bettina that her work was a significant piece of virtual history that is now gone. What if we lost significant whole collections of art from artists in the past?
While I understand the burden to maintain another self can be too much, I think the real “benefit of this virtuality” is not just that we can delete everything on a whim, but that our legacy, and history can live even if our virtual or real selves do not.
Regardless.. I wish her all the best and admire her courage! Hopefully though this is the last we’ll see of Eshi, it won’t be the last we see of her (RL) art.
[...] Creative Destruction: Deleting Avatar Accounts in Virtual Worlds – Dusan [...]
I have a very talented friend who left. He returned 8 months later, however, but his work was all gone, the pieces his friends had were ‘no trans’. He started again from scratch but couldn’t quite get over the fact that his past work was basically unavailable to him.
I would advice anyone leaving ‘for good’ that things change…box your stuff up, full perms, and, as Bettina said, give it to a friend.
‘Forever’ is a long time and things (e.g.your attitude) can change.
There needs to be a way to bequeath original work when you leave.
Moreover it is not just when the original creator leaves. It’s scary to think how much art is in the hands of residents where the creator has left and there is no way for the residents to put the art into trust, donate it to the community, or transfer it to anyone else. Some of our creative history must vanish, irretrievably, every month.
Dusan, please forgive me for adding my links here, but they explain far better than I could in a response here.
“SL is killing me” http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/04/sl-is-killing-me.html My plea to the great creators of the NPIRL group included something along these lines: “Walk away from your account for days, weeks, months or forever, but don’t kill the account, or at least leave a copy of your content with someone you trust.”
@Alberik: I do have a suggestion for a “maintenance program” regarding the preservation of your work: Will your Work Day: Don’t let your virtual creations die with you http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/05/dont-let-your-virtual-creations-die.html
MS sidekick data loss and the soon to be unable to avoid “google cloud”
Who backs up the backers? let the comic book geeks figure that one out.
The “culture” of digital IS to have no history.
Theres Beta and Obsolete.
Artists leave the art world everyday for a million different reasons. But art goes on. It goes on because those who advance it CAN’T stop doing it. When one loses ones reasons for doing what one does, it is best that one pursue other interests. This carries no moral weight one way or the other in my opinion.
That said, it is an overtly hostile act to destroy already created art. Whether one’s personal reasoning makes reasonably argued sense or not. The destruction is a form of punishment of the ‘appreciators’ of the art and a statement or assertion of ownership and property rights that couldn’t care less about others.
As an example: I must say that years later, I personally am still very pissed off at the photographer Brett Weston for his decision to have all of his negatives, MOST of which had never been printed, destroyed upon his death. That was an overtly hostile act against those who invested their time in him.
So to my point: leaving the art world is one thing. Destroying all evidence of ever having existed is another thing altogether. It speaks of personal inner demons or built up resentment or hostility or a need for revenge. It is not a thing to be admired in my opinion.
As to virtual personae: one gets in trouble when one sees avatar as a separate independent entity and not as simply another part of self, separately realized. A myth which has its own existence is hard to live up to and cannot change as easily as a can be done with something seen already as just a small part of self.
It is my recommendation to view avatar as part of you rather than separate from you as a key to your mental health.
My two cents here.