Is it really that odd that online avatars don’t necessarily look or act like the people controlling them? Isn’t that exactly what the Dramaturgical Perspective is about? There seems to be an awful lot of significance in people using imagination when the tools are available. In many ways the “Real World” is a lot more fake than any MUD, people wear makeup, get botox injections, and have plastic surgery done to lie about who they are and how they look. Online nobody really cares if you are who you appear to be, it is almost assumed that you aren’t. in my travels in SecondLife I once spoke with an owner of one of SL’s strip clubs, he said flat out that he didn’t care if his dancers were male or female, the income is the same either way.
On the topic of race on the internet; I personally don’t think it plays much of a role in how people are treated online, but I’m a white male, and am therefore not reminded of race daily. As we have said in class, there are other groups that are hated more than racial groups, like noobs, and Leroy Jenkins.
(Ironically all of the YouTube videos about noob hatred are very badly produced, making THEM noobs by E-Media standards.)
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