Gender/Sexuality

I have been exploring my virtual world more, but still have no clue how to use it to its full potential. I walk around with nothing to do, so I wish that there were some sort of objective. I'm not even sure WHERE I am in this virtual world. To my surprise, the first day of exploration landed me with handful of friends. The people I interacted with were pretty friendly and fairly new to Second Life, aside from one guy. He criticized me a little bit for not knowing how to change my appearance, which I struggled with the entire time. For some reason, the avatar I'm currently operating with isn't the one I initially selected (*shrugs*). I wanted my avatar to reflect my true appearance as much as possible, but I think that idea has gone out the window.
On the topic of gender, though, the majority of the friends I have made on Second Life were initiated by male avatars. I didn't encounter any sexual advances or anything of that nature, but I wonder if my sex played a part in why they requested my friendship.
Something interesting that I saw during my time on Second Life one evening was the fact that there was a lot of sexual images present. I stumbled upon what looked like a shopping gallery/plaza or some sort, but there were no people in sight. It was composed of several "store fronts" or rooms with pictures of women hanging up. One, as I recall, was named "Hood Girls" and showed several African American women wearing urban and provocative clothing. Another room had mostly Caucasian women in it dressed in lingerie. o_O. I'm not for sure what the purpose of these rooms was, but it was kind of random and disturbing. I did not see one room with men half naked, unfortunately (*smile*). This brings me back to one of our class discussions about women being objects of sexual desire in a patriarchal society. Not only that, but in terms of gender, the depiction of women in one light creates a false ideal of what it means to be a woman.
Virtual worlds exist as a way to escape from the real world, but some of the same ideologies are represented in Second Life as they are in real life. Is there a way to break down some of these hegemonic ideals within a virtual world or do we just accept it for what it is?

Race

Yesterday I spent quite some time exploring my virtual world and realized that in terms of race, Second Life lacks variety. The individuals that I have encountered appear to be Caucasian, with the exception of two people. It was interesting to see the options when initially selecting an avatar. There were several Caucasian men and women to choose from, but only one avatar of African American heritage. Although you can customize and change features on your character, exclusion is definitely at work, in my opinion. There are so many steps that you have to go through when you modify your appearance, that it becomes frustrating in some ways. My guess would be that most users stick with the generic avatars while simply altering clothing.
Honestly, it was a little discouraging, and somewhat of a hassle to make my avatar resemble my real life appearance. When I signed up for Second Life, I selected the African American woman, but I may have had a glitch in my computer system because once I began exploring the world I was Caucasian. I scrambled to change my physical features because I felt as though I was being deceitful. I mentioned in a previous post that I gained quite a few friends within the first 20 minutes or so. I can't help but to wonder if my race had anything to do with how friendly people were to me. In addition, I thought about the possibility of the other users representing a race not true to their own in this virtual world.
Would you ever consider being a completely different race in a virtual world? If so, what race would it be and why? Do you think your behavior as that particular race would be affected by stereotypical ideologies?

Identity, it's an amenity...

Amenity [uh-men-i-tee]; noun, plural -ities: any feature that provides comfort, convenience, or pleasure.

When you consider any form of identification, the most important information is the first and last name. What do you put at the top of your essays, tests and quizzes? Your name. What is the first line of information on your driver’s license or on your mail? Your name. The first day of class, we were asked to give our opinion on what identity is and to share how we identified ourselves. I believe that identity begins with one’s name. When you introduce yourself to another person, you’re not likely to state your ethnic background or run off a list of physical characteristics and personality traits.

As I set up my Second Life account, I spent an excessive amount of time deciding what name to use simply because a name says, or can say, a lot about a person. Have you ever had someone say to you, “Oh, you don’t look like a (insert your name here), you look more like a (insert completely other random name here).” What does that even mean? And what do you say, “Uh, thanks”? I am so used to being Candace that it was difficult to give myself a new name. I felt as though I should create a name that had meaning, but I didn’t want to use my real one in a virtual world. In an attempt to be creative, I named myself Aasiya. This is a name that I have always wanted to name my daughter, if I had one, because it means flourishing, thriving and prosperous. What struck me as odd was the inability to create your own last name. This is where I got slightly frustrated, because most of the provided last names were awkward and unusual. After about an hour, I finally decided to go with something that sounded interesting: Ezarael. The reason for my frustration streamed from the fact that not only was it time consuming to keep refreshing the page, but also I felt “forced” into an identity that I did not choose for myself. In a virtual world, where one is encouraged to be free to create another self, what is the purpose of restricting the selection of a last name?

For the sake of discussion, I propose these questions: What is your definition of identity and what does your name mean, if anything, to you? Why is a name so important? And, if you were given either a test, information sheet, etc. with a space that read, “Identity:__________” at the top of the page, what would be the first thing you put?

Nevermind!!!

I decided to go with the Second Life virtual world. The whole chatting and flirting with strangers thing kind of turned me off, which is the main purpose of TowerChat #thanksbutnothanks (I'm a twitter addict...sue me). And now, for the shameless plug: Follow me on twitter @Choose_Control if you like!

See, told ya'll I was random ;)

Welcome

Greetings, Earthlings! Welcome to TheBomb.comm...I'll try to make it interesting. If I fail...oh well, sh*t happens. I'm fairly new to the whole blogging scene, but I believe that my randomness and gift of gab well help me fit right in. These things are all about opinionated and/or emotional beings expressing their ideas to anyone who cares (or doesn't) anyway, right?

In other news, the virtual worlds that I have considered joining would be either Second Life or TowerChat. The realism in Second Life was intriguing and I'm interested to see just how zoned out I will be as a result of my participation. o_O <------this is a side eye for those of you who aren't familiar. For TowerChat, I think it would be interesting to explore the interactions of the avatars in a romantic sense; taking into account the "identities" used in the virtual world and observing which race, gender and/or sexuality is most prevalent. I wanted a more adult audience that correlated to my age group as well as interests.

I'm very indecisive at times, so if you're reading this: What virtual world should I choose??