My name is Raul Crimson
For almost four years i’ve been Raul Crimson, and i will be Raul Crimson for a long time (i hope). And i know this may sound kinda silly, but i’m sad about that Display Names thing Linden Lab is working on (read more in their blogpost).
I understand this feature may be useful for a lot of people, but at the same time i’m not happy about how Linden Lab is planning to implement the feature:
- Your actual name will become your username with a period between, so Raul Crimson will be raul.crimson.
- Anybody can use any Display name and change it once a week, so anybody can be Raul Crimson as display name and the option that Linden Lab offers me if someone uses my display name is… change mine to another one.
- “Real” Usernames will be hidden by default.
There is something i find… funny. In the Wiki about this new feature says you can keep your actual name… but also anybody can take your actual name too. That’s what i don’t like at all.
Names are something related to identity, Raul Crimson is a way to identify me and i feel it only identifies me, not anyone, only me. The only thing i say is, ok, go with this feature, i’m all for new things and i’m sure a lot of people would find this useful and interesting, but please, make the direct transcriptions of usernames (like Raul Crimson to raul.crimson) only available to the username owner, so only me can be Raul Crimson.
So… what do you think about this new feature?
So what?
Does your avatar look like your RL one? Well, maybe that’s not the question… for me it should be some like: Is important if your SL avatar looks or is like your RL one?
I’m not only talking about physical appearance, also the question is about gender, ethnic group, clothing style, etc… For some people and for some unknown reasons all this seems to be very important.
Gender seems to be the big question anyway. Prok AKA “The Ineffable” seems to be really interested and worried about Vint Falken RLgender, the reason Prok is so interested about it just is over my imagination, the only possibility i have in mind is that Prok likes Vint or something…
Anyway, i wonder if all this together is so important. Personally i don’t have much problems to share my RLappearance, most of my friends saw pictures of my RLversion, even met with some of them in RL. Is not i have problems with my RLme, is just i prefer to have some privacy and share that only with some people who are important to me.
Why some people seems to get upset if your SLavatar has not the same appearance than your RL one? That is more than stupid, that would be like getting upset because people using furry avatars in SL are not cats in RL. For a lot of people, SL is a way to enjoy the possibility of being different, of being what you want or even hate to be. Is a world were everyone can be as beauty as he/she wants, is all that SO important?
Even if you want only to have SLex with someone, is the RLgender important? I may agree is important in the case you want to “export” that sexual relationship to RL, but if you only are “playing” with someone exclusively in SL, then you are not liking what is that person in RL (mainly because you don’t know his/her appearance), what you like is an avatar and the way he/she speaks. I think most of the bimbo-giant-boobs-oily-skin-a-bit-too-flirty girls in SL are men in RL Playing with stereotypes, possibly some of the bimbo-giant-boobs-oily-skin-a-bit-too-flirty girls in SL are men in RL, i know some of the gay guys in SL are women in RL… so what?
After all that time in Second Life i really thought we all were quite over this question but it seems i was wrong.
Avatar Identity
From L-R:, originally uploaded by Torley.
Last friday, my friend Menno Ophelia was so kind to tell me about a panel that was going on about Avatar Identity at the Orange Island.
Torley Linden and Karl Herber also posted about it. The transcriptions of the panels here, in the Orange Island blog.
Some thoughts about that… one, Orange is using his island for something more that a empty merchandising space, at least they organize interesting activities… two, after the panel “Avatar as a personal brand” with Torley Linden, Celebrity Trollop and Saeya Nyanda as speakers and Haver Cole as moderator i was a bit scared.
Above, Torley Linden and Haver Cole during the panel.
For the name of the panel you can imagine what was about, the avatars as branding in the sense that some avatars are the “image” of corporations or businesses in Second Life, Torley as a representative of Linden Lab, Saeya as the image of her own business and Celebrity as the image of fashion blog and magazine.
Some concepts of the panel were really interesting, specially for content creators, some advices from Torley about your avatar as your image (really good advices). Torley said that Lindens are a exemple for some people as models of avatars, Khamudy Mannonen and me had to disagree, specially about Philip (this man needs a hairdresser NOW!). 
After some minutes someone started to talk about avatars as a “registered trademark”, well, were talking about the possibility of register an avatar as a trademark and that was the scary thing.
Right now you can have full rights over your creations, i mean shape, clothes, skin, animations, and attachments if you created all (i think that’s the right way) but you don’t have rights over your avatar in itself, just over the parts you created of it. It sounded to me really weird, like some person in Real Life asking for register his image. My avatar is a extension of myself, a representation of what i want to show and tell about me. Register that, for me, is like registering your way to wear a jacket, or the way you drink a Bloody Mary. So, for a moment, i felt all the “corporation concept of life” around: All can be sold, all can be registered, all is a business…
For me not all can be sold or registered, not all is business, i don’t think business is over ethics, i think ethics is over all. After listening all that, Kham and me decided to wear a group tag saying: “Not a brand myself”.
All the images in this post are by Torley Linden, shared under a license Creative Commons 2.0
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