7/9-7/15 Post 3: Second Life

This article, "Second Life," was interesting to say the least. I found numerous things though provoking and intriguing but I will touch upon a few. The first being the introduction to the article. I though it was great. It gave the readers an explanation and some examples about Second Life. It also gave readers a good tidbit about gender roles and avatars. A quote that struck out to me was, "As virtual spaces have been popularized, they have been both celebrated as an opportunity for liberation from conventional gender roles and criticized as white–male shaped spaces, filled with pornography, sexualization, and increased commodification," (6-7). This quote makes perfect sense though it is contradicting itself. This brings up another concept that people who participated in Second Life were "feeling pressure to fit in," (11). The virtual space was designed not to feel pressure and escape judgment, criticism, ridicule, etc. Virtual spaces were meant as an escape from real life yet people created it to be just that. The next thing I found interesting was the concept about autoenthrography. An interesting concept because it's about a connection between the individual and society through personal connection projected in Second Life. The last thing that I'd like to mention is what disturbed me about this. That is, female body parts were being sold in the virtual space. This is shown on page 14 in Figure 2. To me this is definitely stereotyping.