Second Life and body image: Where all the avatars are above average?
It’s a slow morning so far for e-books, but if you want an idea of what competition books will get from VR worlds, check out a fascinating post in a Second Life blog on physical appearance and SL vs. Real Life.
Hmm. So what would a Jane Austen avatar look like—given all the less-than-complementary remarks in the New York Times?
April 30th, 2007 at 10:03 am
If the future of the Internet is 3D Virtual Reality, where web users may visit a web site as an avatar in a 3D environment (rather than viewing a static 2-D page like this blog), the issue of self-appearance is something that will become an interesting social issue.
The article cited by David points out not only the downside of the pressure on a person to create a “perfect” avatar, but the upside as well. One sees very few fat avatars in SL, so this reinforces society’s RL message to eat healthy and exercise. Of course, even this message gets garbled up at times (e.g., leading to eating disorders).
We do live in interesting times…