Identity and Performance

In response to our readings on Identity, the content in the articles posed the intentions of Performance behind virtual identity and how people use online domains, such as Second Life, as means to reinforce a sense of self and self-assurance that cannot be attained in RL (real life). As an ignorant critic, one would assess online living, as opposed to living in the real world, as weird and imaginative compared to the interpersonal realm of sociology. However, the articles addressed how some people use MUDs as therepeutic escapes to fix the entaglements of their past, or present state. The descriptions of the people used as examples to support the readings illustrated that the past has been the sole cause of the present, which then causes the experimentation of online identity to be remedy. In these cases, a "real" mother-daughter relationship, deemed as torn and unattended, is reinforced in the "real" daughter's role as mother and her disconnected relationship with her daughter in the "virtual" world, which enables the "real" daughter to find understanding as a mother to prevent and mend a disconnected relationship that she wishes for with her real mother.
In other cases in the study of virtual identity, we also see the performance behind wanting to understand gender roles by transforming identity online. This is also a way in which people who cannot express gender stereotypical roles in real life, but can use online gender as outlet(s) of self-expression. For example, a man who is raised to be strong and competitive may be perceived wrong if he displayed acts of kindness. Since stereotypology considers different roles for different genders, acts of kindness can be percieved as feminine. Transforming oneself online to become female to express those acts of kindness gives the "by-nature" competitive man self-reinforcement and liberation that real life can limit.
With respect to the unlimitations in virtual life that can help one's limitations in real life, online identity poses the questions of "what online unlimitations go too far or are too wrong in regards to helping the real limitations?" Virtual identity in Tinysex (online sex) allows for one's fantasies to be simulated and pose concern for marriage partners who can attest to the acts done by their spouse as either part-fantasy or adultery. Yet, further research and diagnosis has not been fully imposed, due to the question of "what's at the heart of such acts as virtual-sex affair?" Is infidelity in the head or the body? To complement these questions with the cases of online Identity and Performance in our readings, the virtual-body is the mind of the real body.