Why are we hiding behind our AVATARS? I have revealed myself and this is why...

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Avatars? I don't even believe in meat bodies. We are all skeletons.

Wow. This latest fad diet REALLY worked!

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Wow. This latest fad diet REALLY worked!

 

Nope. Nope. You've still got a little meat in the rib cage area that needs to go. 🤭

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Wow. This latest fad diet REALLY worked!

Speaking as one of the senior doctors of the Deadend Memorial Hospital, I have to say from your X-rays that the bottom has fallen through your pelvic-floor.

[Polenth Yue]

On 3/1/2021 at 10:34 PM, Luna Bliss said:

I can imagine most anyone feeling insecure about any of the above attributes. We tend to evaluate attractive people in a more positive light, like them better, and assign more negative feelings to less attractive people...especially initially.

I stopped using an author headshot because the judgements interfered with selling books. People assumed I was a bad person from my face.

Which leads to why I find it weird to think someone is hiding their true self by not having a photo or using an avatar that looks identical to them. My true self isn't what I look like. It's my personality. It's who I am as a person. I could wake up as a cockroach tomorrow and still be the same person.

That said, it's not like I'm secretive if people want to find stuff. My real name is right there in my profile. You can hear me on YouTube. You can find photos once you have my name. It's just you'd have to have some idea of who I was before you'd think to go looking, so it's not the first thing you'd see. You're likely to think I'm an okay looking person if you already know me.

[Rowan Amore]

14 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

I stopped using an author headshot because the judgements interfered with selling books. People assumed I was a bad person from my face.

Which leads to why I find it weird to think someone is hiding their true self by not having a photo or using an avatar that looks identical to them. My true self isn't what I look like. It's my personality. It's who I am as a person. I could wake up as a cockroach tomorrow and still be the same person.

That said, it's not like I'm secretive if people want to find stuff. My real name is right there in my profile. You can hear me on YouTube. You can find photos once you have my name. It's just you'd have to have some idea of who I was before you'd think to go looking, so it's not the first thing you'd see. You're likely to think I'm an okay looking person if you already know me.

You mean you're not really a tiny mushroom!  I'm shocked! 😃

[Polenth Yue]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

You mean you're not really a tiny mushroom!  I'm shocked! 😃

I'm a lighter shade of purple... sorry to disappoint.

[Silent Mistwalker]

53 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

I stopped using an author headshot because the judgements interfered with selling books. People assumed I was a bad person from my face.

Which leads to why I find it weird to think someone is hiding their true self by not having a photo or using an avatar that looks identical to them. My true self isn't what I look like. It's my personality. It's who I am as a person. I could wake up as a cockroach tomorrow and still be the same person.

That said, it's not like I'm secretive if people want to find stuff. My real name is right there in my profile. You can hear me on YouTube. You can find photos once you have my name. It's just you'd have to have some idea of who I was before you'd think to go looking, so it's not the first thing you'd see. You're likely to think I'm an okay looking person if you already know me.

 

Did someone just invite me to go shroom huntin? 

 

[Maryanne Solo]

Here's a game I have played in RL for about 10+ years now...

Go to retailer, (electrical goods, music/studio shop, PC bits, etc etc).
Decide on purchase, (after exhaustive online research), go to counter with salesperson....
"Ok what is your mobile phone number"
Ummm I dunno it off by heart, nor do I care, either way you're not getting it...😝 (phone in hand).
"But we need it to identify you for warranty purposes"
You mean you're selling crapola products? 😳 WOW geez!
"Nonono definately not. Ok then how about your landline number?"
Umm its a silent number and I don't give it out and I couldn't be bothered remembering it either....
"Look we HAVE to have your personal details!"
Erm... no you don't.
"ahhh yes we do"
I'm sorry I do have IT qualifications and I am the one in control of my personal data, not you.
Therefore shall I take it as no sale? ok then... bbye!.  (start to walk away)...
"but... but... but... How about a cash sale?"
AHA! Now you're talking.

I have NEVER given in to any of them. EVER.

[PixelBerry]

I used to have my rl picture in my profile years ago, but some someone decided it was a good idea to take my rl picture and someone elses and make a offensive meme out of it and post in a public group, and yes that someone was my bff back then, and I had no idea it was them because they used an alt to do it, mind you I didn't do anything towards them. So after that I decided to just stop having my rl picture on my profile, I have also had my fair share of crazy people who can use pretty much anything against you if they don't get what they want, so having any sort of rl stuff in your profile is in my opinion a bad idea. But I'm very open to voicing and like to voice with people.

Edited March 4, 2021 by PixelBerry

[Luna Bliss]

14 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

I stopped using an author headshot because the judgements interfered with selling books. People assumed I was a bad person from my face.

Which leads to why I find it weird to think someone is hiding their true self by not having a photo or using an avatar that looks identical to them. My true self isn't what I look like. It's my personality. It's who I am as a person. I could wake up as a cockroach tomorrow and still be the same person.

It's unfortunate that your publisher didn't feel your face represented whatever image they wanted to portray....a mismatch (at least for them). I remember from perceptual psychology that humans assign all sorts of traits to people according to various facial structures (like face symmetry or balance, the way lips upturn or downturn, and the like). They would judge a character to be, for example, more criminal, kinder, or more trustworthy according to these facial traits. I've often wondered what my own face portrays upon initial contact with another person.

Fortunately, these judgements fade into the background as we get to know a person and discover how they really are, but not much can be done when first meeting another except to be aware that first impressions are not always correct -- often these judgements we make are at a subconscious level and we don't even know why we suspect a person is a certain way when first meeting them.

[Wili Clip]

Until about a month ago I was more or less blind to social media. I had facebook and Instagram but haven't used it much. Then I read article on businessinsider from Andreesen's podcast with 23 year old marketing CEO.

https://www.businessinsider.com/a16z-podcast-how-to-design-for-market-to-gen-z-2021-1

It completely opened my eyes and made me start to pay attention to social media trends. I realized that that even in this aspect the old ways of doing things will die and the new ways will take over... It does not matter if the old agrees with it or not. This is just how life is. Things are always changing. Those who are stuck in their old ways will never progress through ever changing world.

Research stats from 1st paragraph:

Gen Z — those born between 1995 and 2010 — now makes up 35% of the population and represent $143 billion dollars in spending power.

Young people are the new consumers and the world is being re-shaped to follow their values and world view because companies with their brands are in pursuit of this fast growing digital market of human attention.

The new way of marketing is very different and because of generational differences its not going to be recepted well by older people who are stuck in older patterns of understanding or thinking about how the world functions. Yes there are such things as generational reality bubbles.

As I became aware of it I created a tik tok account and started learning to create content for social media and to learn how to express through it. I don't want to be stuck in past and old mental frameworks.

On overall the new way of doing things and how young people establish their brands and social recognition is through finding ways how to add value to their followers and consumers of their products or services. Most successful are those who manage to find ways to share content that a lot of people find useful and are thankful for it. Content producers are followed because they provide some real value.

Lots of content on social media is therefore educational and useful. Funny things stand out the most and from outside to many people it looks like social media is a joke and waste of time but actually a lot of real value is created and shared that is very useful to a lot of people. The number of likes and followers give incentive to content creators to learn to create even more useful content and of more quality. 

This is how it works and the new way of marketing, the most effective and at the same time beneficial for society is by providing genuine and useful content to a lot of people. People follow and like other people because of what they are doing, what they stand for, what they represent to them or what they know or have some special skills. Great people behind brands that dedicate themselves to goals of achieving social good and who want to benefit and change society in a good way create movements.

My personal reason why I came out and am prepared to tell or show the world who I am, how I am, what am I doing in SL and what I want to achieve is because I want to be able to have a positive impact on society.

Now I am just a human having same problems as most and I don't think I am better from others and I am not a narcissist. I maybe do put much more time and effort in things but that is not a bad thing. Everyone is different. I have accepted who I am and everything that I do and my own ways of doing things (which are sometimes very different to what people are used to but that is not necessarily a bad thing and is only problem for people who have problems accepting people who think and do things in different ways). What I want to do is to find ways how to benefit society. I am a humanist, experimentalist, inovator and I like being me and myself and I like being and feeling free to crate whatever I feel most that I want to create.

Exposing myself has helped me feeling more free and motivate me to find more ways to spend my time and energy in pursuit of social good. It is helping me self-realise. This personal freedom from opinions and potential negative reception and hatred from others is helping me be free from it and tapping into creativity and ways of self expression that I otherwise wouldn't and couldn't be able to.

So I say to everyone to whom this is importan.

Don't be afraid to be yourself because you are afraid what others will think. This your basic human right to express yourself in a way it feels most natural to yourself and to your body/biology. 

There will always be people who just generally like to hate something and those type of people will always find something about anyone to hate. But that is their problem, not yours.

Don't compare yourself to others. You don't have to as everyone is different and that is ok and is good.

 

Edited March 6, 2021 by Wili Clip

[Silent Mistwalker]

It doesn't really matter to me if others want to participate in the popularity contests of life. I choose not to.

I'd like, while my matter still exists, for my energy to have a more positive effect on humanity's future. Or, at least, a less negative one.

Edit. I take that back, it does matter to me, but, I can't force people to not participate. They have to make that choice for themselves. 

Edited March 6, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[Luna Bliss]

49 minutes ago, Wili Clip said:

Gen Z — those born between 1995 and 2010 — now makes up 35% of the population and represent $143 billion dollars in spending power.

Young people are the new consumers and the world is being re-shaped to follow their values and world view because companies with their brands are in pursuit of this fast growing digital market of human attention.

The new way of marketing is very different and because of generational differences its not going to be recepted well by older people who are stuck in older patterns of understanding or thinking about how the world functions. Yes there are such things as generational reality bubbles.

Do you know the percentage of SL residents who are in this age group?  Or more importantly, do you believe SL will appeal to them in the future, or could be made more appealing to them?

[Wili Clip]

48 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

It doesn't really matter to me if others want to participate in the popularity contests of life. I choose not to.

I'd like, while my matter still exists, for my energy to have a more positive effect on humanity's future. Or, at least, a less negative one.

Edit. I take that back, it does matter to me, but, I can't force people to not participate. They have to make that choice for themselves. 

Life doesn't need to be popularity contest. Just be yourself. It is your life you live it as you want and you don't need to feel pressure to be like others. Its only like popularity contest really if you compare yourself with others. Be the best version of yourself just for yourself... not for others.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Wili Clip

[Wili Clip]

15 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Do you know the percentage of SL residents who are in this age group?  Or more importantly, do you believe SL will appeal to them in the future, or could be made more appealing to them?

It could appeal to them but LL would need to implement more social media tools / features and other tools to make communication easier and more fun.

I created a feature request/suggestion in Second Life Jira and wrote some arguments how it would benefit Second Life's adoption with younger people.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-230143

Edited March 6, 2021 by Wili Clip

[Luna Bliss]

10 minutes ago, Wili Clip said:

Just be yourself. It is your life you live it as you want and you don't need to feel pressure to be like others.

Unfortunately it's not quite so simple. Usually unresolved issues must be dealt with before one can just tell oneself to "just be yourself" and make this permanently stick. One has to learn self-love first, and before self-love can be learned one has to come to terms with places in themselves that were not loved in the past. Face the pain and anger.

[Rowan Amore]

Seems most of the people in the forums aren't in your target group.  

[ItHadToComeToThis]

32 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Unfortunately it's not quite so simple. Usually unresolved issues must be dealt with before one can just tell oneself to "just be yourself" and make this permanently stick. One has to learn self-love first, and before self-love can be learned one has to come to terms with places in themselves that were not loved in the past. Face the pain and anger.

Absolutely agree with you. Second Life isn’t just a fun virtual world for people to log in and start creating. For some, it’s an escape from reality. An opportunity to live life in a way they might not have otherwise. A severely disabled person with no friends in RL can walk and find comfort in their large social group in SL. Transgender people can live their authentic gender free from persecution. People with mental health problems can find an escape from the monotony of their RL issues. You can  be a rich b***c with a mansion with very little money or vagrant with a million dollars. Start a business with practically nothing but the upload fee and so so much more.

I think demanding that people not hide who they are and reveal themselves to the world shows a certain level of naivety and arrogance by the OP who seems to be hell bent on dictating to others how they should or should not live their lives be it SL or RL and seems to have a real case lately of “loving to hear themselves speak syndrome” and “desperation to stay relevant syndrome”.

Edited March 6, 2021 by ItHadToComeToThis

[Wili Clip]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Unfortunately it's not quite so simple. Usually unresolved issues must be dealt with before one can just tell oneself to "just be yourself" and make this permanently stick. One has to learn self-love first, and before self-love can be learned one has to come to terms with places in themselves that were not loved in the past. Face the pain and anger.

I think that as we're part of the society and we go through different organizations through life (kindergarten, school...) that we are socially conditioned to do and view things certain ways. Everyone's experience is different even within the same organizations (smallest is family)  and also the experience is different in different countries, across different cultures.

Social conditioning - the sociological process of training individuals in a society to respond in a manner generally approved by the society in general and peer groups within society. The concept is stronger than that of socialization, which is the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologies.

Often people are socially conditioned by their peer groups or from corporate marketing and advertising. Mostly people are unaware of it.

The effect of feeling the peer pressure is one of the strongest reason for self behavior modification or reasons one has fears preventing them to truly be able to self express. Everyone is afraid of being unpopular within their respective groups that they identify themselves with because of risk of being excluded.

It can be hard to break through or see past the social conditioning. It takes basic understanding that things are changing all the time. Some people are unable to see past the framework or "reality box" that they were raised in.

Our environment is changing much faster than most people are able to modify their world view patterns for.

There is a repeating pattern of older people always complaining over how things are changing but most are unaware that in their own youth the older people at that time were complaining the same.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Wili Clip

[Wili Clip]

17 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

I think demanding that people not hide who they are and reveal themselves to the world shows a certain level of naivety and arrogance by the OP who seems to be hell bent on dictating to others how they should or should not live their lives be it SL or RL

Oh boy... I thought we're way past that already. We already established that I wasn't trying, am not trying and will never be trying to dictate to others how they should or should not live their lives be it SL or RL.

I have my own life that I am dealing with and through my life I try things and learn and when I get some kind of experience I like to inform other people how the experience is for me and how things feel to me.

Not everyone will agree with me and other people have different experience about things. And that is perfectly fine. Some people when they don't agree with someone or can't accept that other people have different views about things they automatically grow hatred or negative feelings towards them. It is sad that its like that with some people.

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Wili Clip said:

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Unfortunately it's not quite so simple. Usually unresolved issues must be dealt with before one can just tell oneself to "just be yourself" and make this permanently stick. One has to learn self-love first, and before self-love can be learned one has to come to terms with places in themselves that were not loved in the past. Face the pain and anger.

I think that as we're part of the society and we go through different organizations through life (kindergarten, school...) that we are socially conditioned to do and view things certain ways. Everyone's experience is different even within the same organizations (smallest is family)  and also the experience is different in different countries, across different cultures.

Social conditioning - the sociological process of training individuals in a society to respond in a manner generally approved by the society in general and peer groups within society. The concept is stronger than that of socialization, which is the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologies.

Often people are socially conditioned by their peer groups or from corporate marketing and advertising. Mostly people are unaware of it.

The effect of feeling the peer pressure is one of the strongest reason for self behavior modification or reasons one has fears preventing them to truly be able to self express. Everyone is afraid of being unpopular within their respective groups that they identify themselves with because of risk of being excluded.

It can be hard to break through or see past the social conditioning. It takes basic understanding that things are changing all the time. Some people are unable to see past the framework or "reality box" that they were raised in.

Our environment is changing much faster than most people are able to modify their world view patterns for.

There is a repeating pattern of older people always complaining over how things are changing but most are unaware that in their own youth the older people at that time were complaining the same.

I agree that peer pressure can limit our self-expression -- but those allowing peer pressure to control self-expression to a great degree are usually those who did not receive the support they needed in earlier life needed to develop a healthy and whole self. Emerging from childhood with a healthy self enables an individual to better withstand the external pressures from peers in later life which you speak to. If you love yourself you are not so dependent on what other think of you, as you don't need their love and approval to feel okay about yourself, so you will be less likely to succumb to the pressure to conform.

This is all caused by the damage from growing up without unconditional love, when instead love is given by caregivers only if we conform to their wishes (conditional love) These are the people you see who have a low tolerance for others who don't agree with them. For them, love is conditional -- it depends on others agreeing with them because that was their experience growing up. If others don't agree with them it can provoke a crisis. Fortunately, psychotherapy or other affirmative relationships can enable people to heal and overcome this dynamic, but it is for the most part a subconscious process both in childhood and later in life.

I'm not saying we necessarily get to a point where we don't need love, approval, or affirmation from others -- it's a matter of degree really, or a matter of what we will sacrifice in order to receive this love. It's only a problem if the need is too great.
Also, I'm not excluding other factors that can influence whether we are able to tolerate others being different from ourselves, such as one's mood on any given day.

What you are advocating is more of a cognitive-behavioral approach to change (like affirmations), which can work for some (and apparently is working for you). But for people who have deeper issues to resolve its use is limited.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Silent Mistwalker]

2 hours ago, Wili Clip said:

Life doesn't need to be popularity contest. Just be yourself. It is your life you live it as you want and you don't need to feel pressure to be like others. Its only like popularity contest really if you compare yourself with others. Be the best version of yourself just for yourself... not for others.

Did you even read what I wrote? I'm not some 20 something kid just getting started in life.

[Wili Clip]

2 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Did you even read what I wrote? I'm not some 20 something kid just getting started in life.

Older people are not immune from it either when and if they compare themselves with other people in their age group. And we can not escape this as we're social being and sociality is deeply engraved in all of us on a biological level. We associate ourselves with other humans all the time - knowingly or unknowingly. We can maybe only control it on a conscious level to some extent how much we let it affect us and our life.

[Silent Mistwalker]

4 minutes ago, Wili Clip said:

Older people are not immune from it either when and if they compare themselves with other people in their age group. And we can not escape this as we're social being and sociality is deeply engraved in all of us on a biological level. We associate ourselves with other humans all the time - knowingly or unknowingly. We can maybe only control it on a conscious level to some extent how much we let it affect us and our life.

Dude. It's in my post. I don't do popularity contests of any kind. Let that sink in for a moment.

[Rowan Amore]

I stopped worrying about what other people thought about me long ago.  Maybe when you grow up, you'll stop worrying, too.