Do you give your avatars backstories?

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

I like to keep it real. My background story is that I AM THE FORMER NIGERIAN HEAD OF FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE (NIA) AND that I HAVE AN IMPORTANT BUSINESS PROPOSAL TO YOU. I NEED TO TRANSFER US$ 43,000,000 FROM MY ASSETS AS PER A NEW PRESIDENTIAL ANTI-CORRUPTION RULING… etc. etc. (true story)

[Clover Jinx]

8 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Do you find your SL avatar behaviours bleed over into RL? and do you ever dream of being your SL avatar in RL?

Yes and yes. One of the animations in my AO is hands on hips with my head tilted to one side and I often strike that pose in RL because it makes Rhonda's face light up.

[Rhonda Huntress]

@Clover JinxI never but the two together.  It was always just you.

[Aislin Ceawlin]

On 4/9/2017 at 0:22 PM, Crap Mariner said:

Over the past ten years, I've tinkered with my backstory a bit.

I'm a sentient clockwork automation, created by Dr. Milton Mariner's Mechanical Manservants and Farm Machinery for The Great Exhibition of 1851. My creator cut his hand on my chassis as he wound me up, and I mistook the first word I heard as my name.

He and his family died in a house fire. I was blamed for their deaths, and I fled.

Since then, I've gotten into a few scrapes and had a few upgrades. Parkes, Edison, Tesla, Marie Curie, Oppenheimer, Turing, Whitby, Shockley, Hopper... all have had a hand in my evolution.

That's the cleverest back story I've heard to date!! Love it!

[Aislin Ceawlin]

On 4/8/2017 at 4:05 PM, Madelaine McMasters said:

A few years ago, I listened to a radio program (TED radio hour or Radiolab probably) about memory. It was fascinating and I've been having great fun with what I learned in that show. As it happens, we don't just recall things. Every time we access a memory, we re-write it. And we re-write it with any additional information that surfaces during our recollection, regardless whether that information comes from within or without. The researcher in the program mentioned an experiment in which families were recruited to recall old stories of shared experiences. In each case, one member was pulled aside and instructed to "recall" something that didn't happen. Each time the members shared the story, the "plant" would gently interject the fake recollection. It would go something like this...

First visit:
Researcher: "Tell me a family story".
Sister: "I remember we all went to the county fair when I was little."
Brother: "Yep, you dropped your ice cream cone on the sidewalk and started crying".
Sister: "I was really upset!"
Brother: "Especially when that dog licked it off the pavement."
Sister: "I don't remember that."

Second visit:
Researcher: "Tell me more about the county fair."
Brother: "To take her mind off the dog eating her ice-cream, Dad took her on the Ferris wheel."
Sister: "That was so much fun!".

Third visit:
Researcher: "What kind of dog ate your ice-cream at the county fair?".
Sister: "I don't remember, but I sure was upset at him."

This is a very condensed version of what actually happened, but you get the idea. These experiments were also conducted on animals (different method of course) who'd been given drugs to suppress short term memory. Those animals who were drugged did not have their recollections modified by the introduction of false memories. I may be misremembering, but I think they actually gave memory suppressing drugs to the human subjects as well, and were unable to plant false recollections in those who'd taken it.

So that got me experimenting. Over the last few years, I have inserted things into the recollections of a few friends and family members. Sometimes it's as simple as introducing something small into my recollection of an experience I shared with them, but I've also been able to insert myself into recollections I've only heard from others. I've a friend who now backs me up when I recall things from a lunch we shared a dozen years ago, even though I wasn't there. She'd told me stories of that lunch and I was able to recall enough of it in subsequent conversations that she eventually apologized for forgetting I was there.

That our memories are malleable should come as no surprise to us. That I'm now actively and purposely playing with this should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well. And it should also come as no surprise that I'm doing it to myself. It works, and I have every confidence that, with sufficient practice, I'll be able to tell some pretty whopping lies and never get caught... because I'll believe I'm telling the truth.

Try it, I know you can do it.

;-).

ETA: I should add that Mom heard the same radio program. And that's why, every now and then she looks at me and says "Stop doing that." What I find so amusing about this is that I'm not doing it when she tells me to stop. And therein lies the peril of declaring oneself the "Nefarious One".

Fascinating topic! My RL brother and I have distinctly different versions of a couple different events from our youth, and to this day we "argue" about whose version is the real one! I imagine the truth is a mixture of both! As for mixing up SL and RL, I've also looked at things in RL and wondered about the prim count, lol! 

[Madelaine McMasters]

On 4/21/2017 at 0:47 AM, Gabriele Graves said:

Related questions: Do you find your SL avatar behaviours bleed over into RL? and do you ever dream of being your SL avatar in RL?

There really is nothing other than my RL behavior. SL certainly allows me to entertain myself with more nonsense, but I've a history of doing that in RL, too. Long before I started setting people on fire in SL, I was crushing their heads between my fingertips in RL and dubbing conversations for between people I could see, but not hear. My long-ago SL partner and I would go to an outdoor movie theater across from Junkyard Blues, turn off our sound, and ad-lib the dialog for the old movies played there. My theater group friends roll their eyes when I describe all the things I imagine going wrong during upcoming performances, which often involves firetrucks and paramedics. SL and RL can be remarkably alike for me. I've been chatting online since 1987 and I'm certain that's helped shape my face-to-face interactions with people. But, the underlying character that permeates Maddy, Snugs and the rest is just me, and we're all insufferable.

We've had discussions here in the past about augmentation vs immersion. My thinking about this is evolving and I move so freely between those two camps that there's really only one for me. As a child, my daydreaming was probably richer than anything SL can offer. Not only did I imagine the kinds of cartoon humor SL affords, but I imagined and inhabited characters in my little worlds. It wasn't until arriving in SL that I found that unnecessary. There are more than enough wonderfully nutty people here to entertain me, and I hope I'm returning the favor.

Now, back to the OP and the idea of backstories...

It wasn't until joining a local community theater that I consciously adopted back stories for characters I was playing. It's a useful tool, helping bring color to the role quickly during rehearsal. But that's not my natural style of play. I prefer to react to the moment and draw from everything I know to figure it out on the spot. Several times over my years in SL, I've dropped into the middle of a role play sim and winged it. I had no knowledge of the canon and I imagine that if I'd encountered someone deeply into it, I'd have peeved them greatly. That's not happened, maybe because the one fantastic element forced on any SL RP canon is the possibility of "aliens" suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

Yesterday, Radiolab (I love that show) rebroadcast a show about improv comedy, and it reflects the way I approach story development...

http://www.radiolab.org/story/279566-radiolab-presents-tj-dave/

TJ & Dave are like high-wire artists, working entirely without a backstory... until they discover it together.

I love it.

[sweetgem Clemenceau]

On 21.4.2017 at 7:47 AM, Gabriele Graves said:

Related questions: Do you find your SL avatar behaviours bleed over into RL? and do you ever dream of being your SL avatar in RL?

1) Oh yes. They absolutely have done so. Both positive (I became more respectful and communicative) and negative: Several times I started chatting on yahoo while still In Character, so that my friends had to tell me "I wanted to talk with YOU, not with your roleplay character"

2) Yes, I do. During the past 9 years, I've often dreamed to be my SL avatar - even during my times offline because of RSI, and later on because of a hospital stay and long rehab.

[Derekmate]

This incarnation don't have one but my MLP unicorn has one. Not a lovely one, let just say he don't  believe that friendship is magic, More like power is good and there are things what you need to do to get this power. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

Lil shops and hunts, taking the occasional picture.  She doesn't need a backstory for that.

[Ren Toxx]

Mine doesn’t even have a frontstory.

[Talligurl]

On 4/6/2017 at 8:27 AM, Nikolai Warden said:

I agree that the only people who tend to create backstories for their avatars are role players.

Actually, I never thought about the backstory till I found a cool RP sim and thought maybe I would give it a try. I came up with the backstory to fit into the sim, and started the process of becoming a part of the RP, that never happened, and now the backstory is all that is left.