Everything I Am

sophrosyne_sl posted an entry in her blog that had me thinking once more about the nature of who I am in this world.

Soph's stance is one that the mainstream media isn't really sure what to do with. She maintains that she does not have a "Real Life"--that her fleshy self is a different individual than her avatar self. (She actually splits it three ways--Soph herself, the body that operates the keyboard, and the "Other Personality" who timeshares the body with her.)

On the other end of the spectrum are those who use SL as a communications medium, and therefore see avatars as extensions of the RL self. These are the people who get dreadfully put out when they find out that the hot babe they've been chatting up is actually being operated by a dude.

My place on the spectrum lies somewhere in between. Perhaps a little closer to Soph's end of it, but not completely.

On one level, I honestly don't want to know who the man behind the curtain is, so to speak. I definitely don't want to know if the person doesn't want to be known. But, at the same time, I've had really great conversations with people where Real Life details came out--memories of childhood recipes, venting about jobs and gaining insights into relationships. I can't bring myself to abandon that and cut RL out of the equation permanently.

I do, however, tend to be a bit hedgy about who I reveal what to. This isn't even necessarily a Second Life thing--the blog for my fleshy self (there's a link to it in my profile, if you're genuinely curious about The Real Me) is mostly public, but certain entries are friendslocked or filtered so that only a specific list of people can read them. I learned quite some time ago not to leave too much of myself hanging out on the Internet, because people can find you and sucker punch you right where it hurts if you do.

In other words, being a relatively private person in Real Life (well, relative to most Internet exhibitionists, I suppose--Googling my real name turns up nothing about me until page six, but Googling my various screen names gets me in one) it's understandable that I'd be just as private a person in Second Life. Though my secret ambition is to become a more, shall we say, public person and I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve my two lives if that comes to pass.

Perhaps my veering towards Soph's end of the spectrum is more a question of protecting my Real Life rather than emphasizing my Second Life. So there may be less separation between avatar and self than I realize.