CarlaS02 Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Hi everyone,I hope this isn't posting in the wrong section, but I am researching how fashion is used to shape online identities in games like SL for a university paper.I would love to hear your thoughts, please send me a message or email me at carla.seipp@mail.com if you would be interested in doing a short interview. I can keep you anonymous if you like, not an issue.If you could get in touch with me asap (deadline issues) that would be awesome. Thanks so much and looking forward to hearing from you!Carla Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Not only is this the wrong section, but there is not a section on this forum for "please do my homework for me". You likely deserve whatever grade you get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Hi Carla, Welcome to the SL Forums! There are many people here who would undoubtedly be delighted to help you, alongside the requisite selection of cranky "Hey-Kids!-Get-Off-My-Lawn" types. I think the sentiment you are hearing above comes, in part, from concerns that your research is going to be based entirely upon interviews, and that you have not taken the time to explore and learn about Second Life first-hand. A search for your avatar name comes up with nothing, which suggests that you have only very recently created it. Have you been in-world at all yet? Or gone beyond the welcome areas? Have you checked out any in-world stores, to get a sense of the selection, as well as the mechanics, of "fashion" in Second Life? You'll get a much friendlier and more helpful response if you can provide us with more details about what this project is, what you are looking for, and what other things you are doing to research it beside asking for interviews. You should also remember that Google is your friend: there has been a TON written on SL fashion, and on the subject of virtual identity, some of it in academic journals, but much of it freely available online. And because I'm not above shilling for my own blog, you can start off here: http://laskyaclaren.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/why-is-your-avatar-so-sexy-choice-and-the-two-cultures/ I look forward to hearing more about how you are going about this! :-) PS. The boots that you see in my profile on this page are "Engineer Boots" from the in-world store *COCO*. They are made of sculpted prims, and are my favourite boots. I have lots of boots. I like boots. :-) PPS. Avoid calling Second Life a "game." It really annoys some people, and it suggests that you don't know the platform very well yet. Call it a "virtual world" or "digital sandbox," or something to distinguish it from platforms like World of Warcraft. Second Life is for most a leisuretime pursuit, but it's not a "game" in the sense that MMORPGs are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syo Emerald Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Lasky, you have been here for less than six months on the forum, but look down on people telling the OP to make their homework by themselves? If you would have been here longer, you would react in the same way, becasue we regularly are seen as labrats by tons of students all over the world, who throw their sometimes badly written surveys and fast written questions at us. None of them cares to invest time into SL, some have never been inworld ever and just created an account to just post their stuff and then never care about it again. So no, this person as probably not even seen the landing point for new avatars. :catwink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Lolno. Response was due to OP's complete lack of interest in SL before noticing their rapidly approaching deadline. Willing to bet that they won't even check back to this thread, let alone log in. Please see past history of noob-requests/surveys like this. Just another person who thinks we're an easily-accessed pile of lab-rats, waiting to be sociologicised. ETA: Was a student myself, but I managed to get survey information without posting a useless, scattershot post into a general forum without any prior research except signing up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Syo Emerald wrote: Lasky, you have been here for less than six months on the forum, but look down on people telling the OP to make their homework by themselves? If you would have been here longer, you would react in the same way, becasue we regularly are seen as labrats by tons of students all over the world, who throw their sometimes badly written surveys and fast written questions at us. None of them cares to invest time into SL, some have never been inworld ever and just created an account to just post their stuff and then never care about it again. So no, this person as probably not even seen the landing point for new avatars. :catwink: Hi Syo, There's absolutely no reason why you should know this (although quite a few around here do), but, despite this avatar's age, I have been in Second Life for approaching 6 years, and was a regular poster here, and on the old Resident's Answers forum. In fact, I have many thousands of postings under my (collective) belt, and more than a few threads. I actually have a great deal of experience answering student surveys (and am moreover a university teacher myself, albeit one who doesn't use SL for education), and somewhat over 5 years ago even posted a set of guidelines for student postings to the forums on the SLED list. So this isn't really coming out of left field. But I do appreciate your concern and your views. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Freya Mokusei wrote: Lolno. Response was due to OP's complete lack of interest in SL before noticing their rapidly approaching deadline. Willing to bet that they won't even check back to this thread, let alone log in. Please see past history of noob-requests/surveys like this. Just another person who thinks we're an easily-accessed pile of lab-rats, waiting to be sociologicised. That is entirely possible. I posted something similar a month or so ago on another student thread -- he or she simply yanked it, rather than going to the effort of responding to my suggestions. I have no more objections, myself, to research being conducted in Second Life than I do to it being undertaken in RL. It's all potentially interesting and useful stuff, and as students are now spending a huge amount of time online in various venues, I think that courses that address issues such as online identity (which is really part of digital literacy) are potentially very useful. But I do entirely get your "lab rat" thing. I even blogged about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Completely not against people using Second Life for research, education, blahblah, even surverys (heck, surveys used to be a micro-economy in SL). Problem is lame-o's who turn up, provide little-to-no information and ask redundant, ill-informed questions having had no background in what SL is or does. Like that person the other week who was asking if people take special precautions to feed their avatars healthy food, or to prevent them from getting sick. Not only is it done without any regard for its subjects or their environment, but typically any data they get back from such an untargeted request is so nonsensical that any university professor would laugh them out of the room. Presumably you know this, also. This type of thing isn't any kind of actual research or education. It's a waste of forum-space. OP could get more insights by spending 30 minutes at Ahern than asking here. Freya out~! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Freya Mokusei wrote: Completely not against people using Second Life for research, education, blahblah, even surverys (heck, surveys used to be a micro-economy in SL). Problem is lame-o's who turn up, provide little-to-no information and ask redundant, ill-informed questions having had no background in what SL is or does. Like that person the other week who was asking if people take special precautions to feed their avatars healthy food, or to prevent them from getting sick. Not only is it done without any regard for its subjects or their environment, but typically any data they get back from such an untargeted request is so nonsensical that any university professor would laugh them out of the room. This type of thing isn't any kind of actual research or education. It's lazy people trying to waste our time. Freya out~! Again, I don't disagree -- except that frankly I am as apt to blame the instructor as I am the students, which is why I tend to try to be a little gentle with them. A professor wouldn't think of sending a student out to do real world research without providing background and guidelines on things like safety and ethics, but my sense is that many profs are quite willing to send them into SL without any preparation whatsoever. While I'm sure that many students do leave this to the last moment, are lazy, etc., etc., etc., I prefer myself to give them the benefit of the doubt. If, having been given some guidance, they don't respond to it, then they confirm that it is, in fact, their own fault. But I have seen some who have benefitted from that guidance. We'll see if this one does. (Also: it's not just students who are lazy or inept posting here. I've seen a number of academic researchers post absolutely embarrassing requests for information here.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Mokusei Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 LaskyaClaren wrote: (Also: it's not just students who are lazy or inept posting here. I've seen a number of academic researchers post absolutely embarrassing requests for information here.) I never mentioned age or experience, I think that was something you read into my posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Freya Mokusei wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: (Also: it's not just students who are lazy or inept posting here. I've seen a number of academic researchers post absolutely embarrassing requests for information here.) I never mentioned age or experience, I think that was something you read into my posts. Quite possibly so, and if so I apologize. I think I was responding to your comment about university professors laughing them out of the room; I know more than a few of those who deserve to be laughed out themselves. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pussycat Catnap Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Freya Mokusei wrote: Completely not against people using Second Life for research, education, blahblah, even surverys (heck, surveys used to be a micro-economy in SL). Yeah. If you want to do research, log in - explore for a bit. Gain some context. Then start talking to people. If you land on Mars and you see a little green guy in a Roman helmet and the first thing you do is hand him a form to fill out on his sex life and fashion choices... your attempt to make contact is not going to go over so well. The problem with all these random scatter-shot surveys from people who appear to have no investment or connection in SL is they come off as feeling like the person has no respect for the communities here, no grasp of what this place is, no interest in being involved, and an expectation that we exist to serve their needs. Oh and professors... yeah we've all seen some bad ones. I found after going up through the ranks from local community college all the way to a doctorate with a nationally very highly ranked university (top 10 in the field I was in) that the closer the professors are to working professional the better they are. The closer they are to research - the more abyssmal they are at teaching... and often even at researching... - The best professors seem to be 'working stiffs' who show up in the evening classes after putting in a 9-5 day job somewhere in the same field. And where they teach is usually inverse to how highly rated the institution is (but not always - my final doctorate had a mix of working stiffs and academics, the academics get prestige and I even see them as talking heads on the news often, but the good classes came from the ones who'd show up a little late from traffic after getting out of work, and get no respect despite knowing so much more...). That kind of holds in examining SL. You won't "get it" until you actually go an get it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coby Foden Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 CarlaS02 wrote: If you could get in touch with me asap (deadline issues) that would be awesome. My beginning fee for any interview is 250 USD for the first hour. This will be the charge even if whole hour was not used. Additional half hours will be 125 USD each, even if the whole half hour was not used. $(°.°)$ :smileyhappy: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Pussycat Catnap wrote: Yeah. If you want to do research, log in - explore for a bit. Gain some context. Then start talking to people. If you land on Mars and you see a little green guy in a Roman helmet and the first thing you do is hand him a form to fill out on his sex life and fashion choices... your attempt to make contact is not going to go over so well. I dress very fashionably.......for a Martian that is. As far as my non-existent sex life goes, we don't undertsand why Earth females are so afraid of us. It's the male of our Species that carries the baby so there is no need to fear some alien popping out of your belly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tex Monday Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 LaskyaClaren wrote: Hi Carla, Welcome to the SL Forums! There are many people here who would undoubtedly be delighted to help you, alongside the requisite selection of cranky "Hey-Kids!-Get-Off-My-Lawn" types. Hey...how did you know that's how I spend my spare time?? I said GIT!! DAMN KIDS!!!! eta: :matte-motes-sunglasses-3: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Tex Monday wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Hi Carla, Welcome to the SL Forums! There are many people here who would undoubtedly be delighted to help you, alongside the requisite selection of cranky "Hey-Kids!-Get-Off-My-Lawn" types. Hey...how did you know that's how I spend my spare time?? I said GIT!! DAMN KIDS!!!! eta: :matte-motes-sunglasses-3: Oh come on! Your lawn is just tumbleweeds anyway, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wooja Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Not another researcher sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security in their desperate attempts to work out who are the bad guys, and how their online persona might be used to identify them if they tried to board a Malaysian airplane using stolen passports! Wooja...justcheckthissite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlaS02 Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 Hi LaskyaClaren, Thanks so much for your warm welcome, I appreciated the fact that you didn't launch into hate-filled comments like some of the other users. This assignment is an ongoing project, so this isn't going to be my one and only post, it was more meant as a starting point. There are so many places I think this project could go - initially I just started off wanting to look at how people use fashion to create their digital personsa vs fashion in the real world. But I recently spoke to a friend who is more familiar with the community and found out that it can go into many different areas - from fashion creating communities, to gender construction to the psychology of creating a digital version of yourself. I haven't had the time to check out the community fully but will definitely do so, the last thing I want to do is be disrespectful to the SL community. Thanks so much for providing the link to your blog, I'll be sure to check it out! Regarding the game comment, gotcha. I have to admit I am not too familiar with the SL world, but that's in part what makes me really intrigued to discover it. Thank you for your help and understanding Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wooja Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 It isn't one community. Wooja...believethatitsactuallyamultiplicityofmutuallyantagonisticfactions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LaskyaClaren Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 CarlaS02 wrote: Hi LaskyaClaren, Thanks so much for your warm welcome, I appreciated the fact that you didn't launch into hate-filled comments like some of the other users. This assignment is an ongoing project, so this isn't going to be my one and only post, it was more meant as a starting point. There are so many places I think this project could go - initially I just started off wanting to look at how people use fashion to create their digital personsa vs fashion in the real world. But I recently spoke to a friend who is more familiar with the community and found out that it can go into many different areas - from fashion creating communities, to gender construction to the psychology of creating a digital version of yourself. I haven't had the time to check out the community fully but will definitely do so, the last thing I want to do is be disrespectful to the SL community. Thanks so much for providing the link to your blog, I'll be sure to check it out! Regarding the game comment, gotcha. I have to admit I am not too familiar with the SL world, but that's in part what makes me really intrigued to discover it. Thank you for your help and understanding Ah, you're beginning to get it, for sure! SL is enormously complicated, and "fashion" is a huge and really multi-faceted aspect of a great deal of the culture, from the economics of it to, as you note, identity creation. I'm only in-world irregularly, at least for the next month or so, but send me an IM at some point if you think I can be of help pointing you in some worthwhile directions. :-) PS. And although Wooja is partially facetious, he's also right: SL is really a complex system of overlapping (and yes, sometimes antagonistic) communities. Actually, one can spend years here and be surprised by the discovery of a new "community of interest." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wooja Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 LaskyaClaren wrote: Wooja is partially facetious Partially? PARTIALLY? PARTIALLY! Wooja...thinkimdesolateatsuchafailuretocommunicateeffectively ETA Can you think of another fairly common word that, like "facetious" contains the five English vowels in order. No googling! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Studio09 Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 CarlaS02 wrote: Hi everyone, I hope this isn't posting in the wrong section, but I am researching how fashion is used to shape online identities in games like SL for a university paper. ... This depends on your definition of fashion. I think it it is very limiting to only consider clothing because there is so much more to presenting an online identity. A lot depends on a person's reason for being in SL. If the avatar is for roleplay then the clothes, hairstyle, the actual shape and size of the avatar, their AO, their gestures and their style of communication must blend into that RP community. Excluding RP there are still many reasons a person may be in world and many places to explore. That will influence how a person presents their avatar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Wooja wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Wooja is partially facetious Partially? PARTIALLY? PARTIALLY! Wooja...thinkimdesolateatsuchafailuretocommunicateeffectively ETA Can you think of another fairly common word that, like "facetious" contains the five English vowels in order. No googling! arsenious? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlaS02 Posted April 1, 2014 Author Share Posted April 1, 2014 Interesting point, thank you for your comment and input! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vana Gears Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 Very, very belated, but quit the cranky and join the encourage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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