Anthropocentrism in Second Life

Ton Zylstra writes about an interesting Second Life experiment, wherein he removed his avatar's human shape in order to present as... a glowing orb:

As you might expect, people treated him differently.  He lost the expectation of speech, for one. 

At a different level, I wonder about this as a case of going against SL's expectations about bodies and body types.  When we see a school of fish in a river, for example, do we check to see if there's a player's av in there?

Comments

[Ton Zijlstra]

Hi Bryan,
actually it is not entirely possible to loose the humanoid form in SL. My orb for instance has at its heart still a small human body (with a black skin to make it less visible). When I walk instead of flying, you will still see tiny black legs under me. :) The orb itself is worn much like piece of clothing. The 'real'avatar, as small humunculus, is inside the orb. And if you have SL set to depict avatar names you will immediately notice that you are dealing with a person, not an object.

[Ace Albion]

I think that's a good point- I have always had names showing, so it never occured to me that a glowing ball or a cube, or a collection of abstract blocks, as long as it had an orange name over it, *wasn't* a person. The only difference in interactions I saw with these avatars around the groups I hung out with, was they'd be complemented on their flexi/shiny/spikey/glowy prims rather than their shoes or hair.

If there were no names visible, I guess I would expect something abstract and objectlike not to talk.

Ton- you can get an Animation Override pose somewhere that scrunches your humanoid av into a hideous broken boned ball of meat that will hide easily inside an orb. Orbs and cubes are quite popular, I know two of each from personal acquaintance.

[Alan]

Or see the gigantuan avs such as Tasrill Sieyes, who everyone at our event thought was an in-animate statue -- see middle photo at
http://www.nmc.org/sl/2006/10/20/fashion-parade/

And DanCoyore Antonelli really pushes the avatar form with his ZeroG SkyDancers:
http://www.nmc.org/sl/2006/11/30/skydance/

[jeremy hunsinger]

tas actually gets rid of the human form pretty well. But really, who uses visual cues to talk to anyone.. I use radar and without it, i would not know who is really there to talk to because i usually keep my draw down to 64m

[Ace Albion]

Tasrill is a good friend of mine in SL, which might explain why I am not unused to checking for orange names above random looking prims :)

[Andy Havens]

I've spent some time in SL wearing a total "large feline" avatar (basically a black panther) that came with a set of quadruped motion animations as well as all the snap-on parts necessary to look all catty. This was not a furry avatar at all; it looked, as much as anything I've seen in SL, like an actual animal -- not an anthropomorphized animal or a costume animal... but an actual jungle cat.

The reactions have been pretty interesting. I get a lot of simple IMs of "Nice avie!" which is cool, but... I bought it for around L$1,000... so compared to comments r.e. avatars I've built or modded or dressed on my own, well... that's not something I was particularly after. What has been more interesting to me has been that in quite a few situations I've received almost none of the usual "Hi, hello," greetings or attention that you often get upon entering an area. It's almost as if there's an understanding that, "dressed" as an animal, one wants to be treated as one until a signal as given otherwise.

[Ton Zijlstra]

Hi Andy, that is an interesting observation. In the past few days, exploring SL more in my glowing orb form, I notice that people ask me a lot if I use the non-human avatar to eavesdrop on people. There seems to be an implicit assumption that if you don't have a humanoid shape you are actively hiding your human shape. Sounds like a parallel observation to yours.

[DON OUTLANDER]

IT APPEARS I HAVE A WHITE LITTLE TRANSPARENT ORB ON MY HEAD. IT REALLY WORRIES ME.. ALSO, I'VE HAD AN APPEARANCE CHANGE, MY SHAPE AND CLOTHES CHANGED WITHOUT MY AUTHORITY... i DID NOT DO THAT MYSELF! I BECAME A WOMAN, WHILE I AM A MAN!!!

IT WORRIES ME, BECAUSE IM FAIRLY NEW IN SL, AND I DONT KNOW WHAT KIND OF SCRIPTS ARE IN THESE FREEBEES I GET....

PLEASE, EXPERT, HELP ME

DON OUTLANDER.