This article jokes about how voice chat is ruining cybersex on PlayStation Home. Reminds me of an outcry a while back by transgendered folk in Second Life. Second Life was adding voice chat to the game, and transgendered folk were against it, because the inclusion of voice chat would destroy their ability to pass for the opposite sex. This points to the fickle and porous boundary between cyberspace and meatspace, which Boellstorff treats in his book, Coming of Age in Second Life.
Tag Archive for 'Second Life'
It was very strange to visit Second Life, since they didn’t have voice capabilities built into the game when I last used it. I found several people using it as a conference call, and it was exciting to hear their voices and listen to their accents. It was also exciting to hear life bleed over into the game, such as when I could hear one woman talking to her kid in the background, speaking in an English accent, while she tried to help him with his “Batman game.”
One girl was complaining about a boy that wanted to make her his girlfriend. Something about taking heat from others based on what he would have written in his profile. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to be her boyfriend in Second Life or real life, but I figured it out when someone asked if he wanted to be her boyfriend in real life, and she said that she wasn’t about to discuss that, because that is the problem — people wanting to bring real life into Second Life. She did, however, mention that, as a “builder geek,” she is constantly looking at objects in the real world and wondering how many prims it would take to build them. Others joked about how their real lives were great — Second Life just made them better.
Besides that it was interesting to see that it was a common occurrence for them to have cross-language encounters, judging from their reaction to someone nearby speaking in another language.
Ah, one other thing. When I was hanging out with these people in Second Life the “builder geek” said that she liked my outfit — red shirt and black pants — and I explained that I had brought it over from real life.
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