Posts Tagged ‘identity’

Gies and a Night at the theatre

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Tonight I have had the immense pleasure of watching John Barrowman in La Cage Aux Folles in the west end – which I have to say was fab-u-lous! But on the train home I began thinking about the themes in the play and Lieve Gies reading that I have been working my way through.

Gies discusses the conception of the Internet as a form of freedom from conventionality, and a means of exploring who we truly are in an environment where we need not expose our real ‘faces’ to ridicule or persecution. The characters in La Cage live an unconventional life;  George and Albin (played by John) are a long standing a homosexual couple and Albin is a transvestite drag queen of considerable talent (he has a fine set of lungs!!). Their lifestyle is brought into sharp focus when George’s son wants to bring home the bigoted parents of his fiance to ‘meet the family’.

In the play, the couple live their true lives in the insular world of the transvestite club – a virtual world. In the real world, the world their son inhabits, and the scenes outside of the club, they hide their true identites. Albin wears a suit, and George is decidedly more butch!

Gies states that:

” the Internet may offer a more ‘authentic’ communicative setting allowing users to overcome the inability to express their ‘true’ identity in the offline world.”

In the case of George and Albin, they manage to move outside the safe ‘virtual world’ of the club and demostrate their true identites in the real world.

John Barrowman

John Barrowman

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Posted in Week 9 | No Comments »

Lieve Gies and the line between fun and lies!

Friday, November 20th, 2009

I am still working my way through Lieve Gies “How Material are cyberbodies?” but felt the urge to reflect on one element of the piece that I have read so far.

Gies quotes Jewkes and Sharp (2003)  stating

“when it comes to constructing identity, the line is increasingly blurred between “playful” and fraudulent, inclusive and exploitative, accesssible and extremist, “deviant” and criminal’ pg 315

This is an interesting point and one that will surely become more important as we become increasingly posthuman and more and more become inhabitants in virtual worlds. Where is the line between fantasy and lies? The article mentions the story of an early Internet user who masqueraded as a disabled woman named Julie. She forged some close friendships with women on line but was eventually exposed as a male psychiatrist. Gies uses the word ‘fraudster’ to describe ‘Julie’ but I am not si sure that this is the correct term. Fantasist? Or research (as he was a psychiatrist?) or simply engaged in what he perceived to be some harmless fun where there would be no negative outcome and no victims? These women were obviously upset at being some convincingly duped, but I have not been able to determine if any money was stolen or any laws were broken. So how does this make him a fraudster? Am I a fraudster because one of my World of Warcraft characters is a 6 foot tall male orc and I am clearly not (either 6ft, male or an orc!!)

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Posted in Week 9 | No Comments »

A rape in cyberspace; Mr Bungle and LambdaMOO

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

During my reading of Bell & Community & Cyberculture, I read about the strange case involving LambdaMOO (an online dungeon) and a cyber perpetrator by the name of Mr Bungle, who, with an online voodoo doll and a piece of programming code, could take over the identities of other players and force them to perform offensive acts.

After some further investigation into this strange story I found that several users posted on the in game MOO mailing list about the emotional trauma caused by Mr Bungle’s actions. One user whose avatar was a victim, called his voodoo doll activities “a breach of civility” while, in real life, “post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face”. This made me question how deeply these people related to their online identites.

I once had my car stolen (bare with me because there is a point…) and after it was missing for a few hours it was located and returned by the police. Now I had really loved that car, but once I got it back it just wasn’t the same and a few months later we parted company. Later I was recounting the story to a male friend and his response was ‘ having you car stolen is a bit liked being raped’. Bless him – he was serious!

So my car was stolen and my love affair with it was over, but I had not been physically violated. There was no comparison between my experience and a real rape. Just like I feel that there is no comparison between what Mr Bungle did and an attack in the real world. What did suprise me was the very emotional response by the people who’s avatars where ‘attacked’. It seemed exteme. However, if we consider the power of this community, as the possibility that it has become a replacement for a ‘real life’ community, then this becomes more understandable.

“community has become a ‘lost object’, nostalgized and looked-for (or longed-for) in cyberspace” Bell, Community & Cyberculture pg 105

If this is the case, and these people are searching for utopia in cyberspace that they are missing in real life, then an attack of this nature could be incredibly disruptive. When I visit online worlds it is ‘just a game’ – if I get pwned (throughly beaten) it is not a big issue. However, my approach to cyberspace could be considered different to many.

“virtual culture is a cultural retreat from the world (Robins CR:91)” Bell, Community & Cyberculture pg 105

The next question is ‘is this healthy?’

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Posted in Week 6 | 7 Comments »

Some thoughts for #mscworlds that I couldn’t fit in a tweet!

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Virtual worlds

Is there a danger in the VR becoming so real we lose our identities within it? The Matrix clip suggests that this is possible, with Neo having to make a determined choice (taking the red pill) to see the world a it really is (dark and cold and mechanical). However in the World Builder there is a sense of the ‘unreality’ of the world created. It would not be possible to confuse an existence within that world with the real world. Perhaps that is why the female character has a sad expression at the end of the piece – she knows that it is never possible to truly recreate the real world and is therefore aware that she is not really there.

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Posted in Week 2 | No Comments »