You know, when I first started into Second Life, I would have never have expected to engage in psychological or sociological analysis of its environment. But a couple of recent comments, as well as a few personal experiences have really inspired me to do so.
I wanted to reproduce my replies here, in case I should, someday, get future readership.
I mean, my thoughts on Second Life in terms of the psychological framework go further than this. I have begun to see it as a sort of magnifying lens of what is in our individual and collective psyches. That is it not an escape from who or what you are, but an amplification of it. But that is a whole other post for another day.
Today I wanted to share this:
People hate noobs/Second Life as High School/Linden Corporate Environment
Fair enough. The "We don't care about our first time visitors who walk through our door" is a business model. It is not the one I would generally recommend, because it does not do well to combat general attrition. But it is still a model.
But hey, at least there will be less lag... maybe?
And yes, Second Life is a lot like high school. It is, essentially, a popularity contest after all. I do not see the people who create great things celebrated as much as those who are just very good at social dynamics. And there is a great article that illustrates some of the social dynamics at play in the high school popularity and why nerds are hated. The only difference is that Second Life that people are not actively persecuted – at least, not as far as I have seen yet. And they are not required to be there.
And so they take the advice given to them “If you don’t like it, then leave,” and apply it. There are many, many locations – both on and offline – which are new player and new visitor friendly. After all, high school is not really an appropriate model for doing things once a person is, in fact, out of high school.
In addition, being a freshman in college, for instance, is a vastly different world then being a freshman in high school. In college, you tend to have collections of organizations going out of their way to recruit new membership. Rush week, for instance, is all about getting people involved in Fraternities and Sororities. I suppose we could have vampires running around and biting people as a recruitment tool since that would definitely get people involved in something at least, but... oh... oh yes, we don’t like that sort of behavior in Second Life.
Thus you are stuck with an environment in which the only thing left – as [was] pointed out in another comment – is sex, dancing and shopping.
What [was] point[ed] out about Linden is very reveling. The corporate environment has a powerful shaping impact on customer relations. And that is what we are, customers. But from the descriptions I’ve gotten ... it sounds as though we are not seen as customers or clients, but as bothers, nuisance and hassles. It makes me wonder why Linden even continues to keep Second Life operating at all, if that is the case.
Life has no goals, why should Second Life?
Actually, I disagree with the sentiment that life does not have built in goals. Offline life does have a lot of goals inherent in it. We are not dumped into this world without anything to strive for. It is just that they change, evolve and grow over time. We can pursue them or not as our desires or wiring or conditioning – depending which personality model or models you subscribe to - dictate.
And our goals are shaped and modified by the complexity of our experiences and understandings of the world.
When we first come into this world, our goals are, for the most part, to eat, to sleep, to poop and to cry – not always necessarily in that order. As we get older, our goals are generally dictated to us by our parents and then society at large. Factors such as how we are raised, physical or developmental issues, or other life events and development go into the structure by which we view the expected goals placed upon us. Are we inspired to be “good kids” and work to get good grades? Do we rebel and choose to strike our own course of action? Do we run into difficulties and setbacks which leave us disenchanted and apathetic?
From there, those experiences go on to shape our more “adult” oriented goals – procuring food, shelter, sex, security, family, self-esteem, creativity and so forth. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is pretty much the accepted heuristic model for how we, as human beings, prioritize our activities, and essentially our goals.
So, where does that leave us in terms of Second Live?
Well, other than sex, most of the Physiological Needs are taken care of. And even then, the sex that occurs in Second Life is more of the Love and Belonging type sex rather than the physiological type. Safety is not really an issue, except the financial – thus my own struggle and stress with wanting to find Second Life employment. I don’t want free stuff. I don’t want handouts. I want to earn my stuff.
So, in Second Life, that leaves Love and Belonging, Esteem and Self-Actualization. Most people in this world have an offline life dominated by pursuit of the first three needs – Physiological, Safety, and Love and Belonging. If they have not had the time or opportunity to develop the skills needed to develop the higher to, what is going to happen when we drop them in a world where the base two no longer matter? They are going to focus on the one they know how to do. Thus, the dancing, the shopping and the sex. All of that is middle tier stuff.
Even the most die-hard Humanist or Existentialist psychologist will agree that our early life experiences matter. They do shape how we will go on to interact with life and the world. As well as how we will define and pursue our goals. In Second Life, our first days, our first couple of weeks, our first month or two is our developmental, early life experience. How we are taught to behave then will continue to play out over and over in the course of our future interactions on Second Life. If the “powers that be” or the “parental units” or the “social dictates” or the whatever the heck there is out there do not provide any sort of structure, the vast majority of people either run amok or stick with the contained, safe boxes they are used to in the offline world.
And let us talk about that running amok for a moment.
Griefers. I had an interesting conversation with someone about them. My take on Griefers is that, for the most part, they are people who are otherwise bored and have not found ways to otherwise get attention or interaction. Ignore a child, or even an adult, long enough and they will act up. Particularly if it is an area with little to no structure. If they then act up and get attention, even “negative attention,” will encourage them to engage in that behavior again. Getting someone to complain or be upset about inappropriate behavior is at least more entertaining than starting around watching a bunch of silent mannequins who are off in their own special, private worlds.
No comments:
Post a Comment