A bit about me.. I'm in 4th year Graphic Design, but I tend to enjoy stepping out of the graphic world~ into fashion.. interiors.. I have vague dreams of opening a cafe on the roof of a skyscraper in some large and poluted city ..and I will personally design everything in it~ everything from the floorplan to the coffee cups...
On the topic of virtual communities.. I did not say much last week, basically because it was my first day of school after an eventful summer and it was 8:30 in the morning.. it was like jet-lag, except... more like.. holiday-lag. But no worries I'm prepared this time.
I spend a lot of time online, I have been accused of being able to type faster than I can speak. I find this to be kind of true, in fact I've noticed that I would say a lot more when I'm typing than I would if I'm speaking to someone face to face. I'll say that I have participated in many virtual communities.. various roleplaying worlds, discussion forums, MMORPGS. I have a sort of web persona that I've developed over the year and I would consistantly use it everywhere I go (Rainilla.. derived from Vanilla Rain.. which was derived from a nickname in Chinese.. yeah long story.) I have always been facinated (and quite bothered at the same time) at how seriously some people take things when they're online. I've gotten into arguements online before, and I would argue the crap out of it simply because I enjoy a good debate.. but if things get really ugly and I can see that it's not worth the effort, I'm perfectly willing to say "ok whatever" and back off. This isn't the attitude I see in many people though, very often people will never drop something.. they would fight to the end even if it means wasting hours arguing about it and reacting in completely unbelievable ways. This is why I'm drawn to this course, I have a passion for pyschology (it'd be my second career choice), I like to analysis people. One of the things I hope to do in this course is to look at why people behave the way they do behind an avatar, and why some people would take incidents in a virtual world so seriously. I've once heard of a case where a woman is trying to sue someone for a 'virtual rape' in Second Life, I didn't get much details on this but apparently she is quite tramatized.. and I can't quite figure out why someone could be tramatized by polygons performing pages of the kamasutra on the screen, nor can I even comprehend how a 'rape' is possible in Second Life because I'm quite sure you can get up and fly away with a couple buttons? or teleport? or turn the program off? Worse case scenario turn the computer off or even pull the plug? And if for some crazy reason you panic and completely lost control of your computer... you could just get up and walk away in real life?
Alright, enough rambling (see? I talk a lot more when I'm typing~).. see you all in the morning.
Yes. My avatar looks exactly like me.
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