Endings are so bittersweet. The time has come to say goodbye to Hank Hoover and Smallworlds. Of course, I could continue this experience if I wanted to but I've determined that it is just not for me. Real life is far too busy to get away with mingling amongst pretend people in an imaginary world.
At the beginning of this experiment, I set out to see what it would be like to live out the experiences of someone completely different from my real self. I chose an avatar whose gender was opposite my own and whose age exceeded mine by about two decades.
From the start, it was very clear that females in Smallworlds interacted with avatars very differently than males did. First of all, there were more females than males in Smallworlds and they seemed fairly comfortable speaking to avatars of the same gender. Males, on the other hand, seemed to mostly seek the company of female avatars. So, as a male in Smallworlds, I got used to communicating mostly with female avatars as male avatars tended to ignore my advances.
With this said, I am not sure that I really achieved my goal of understanding what it was like to be someone else. I was never able to lose myself in this virtual world because I was always aware that I was playing a game. I suppose some people are able to leave their real bodies behind and use their mind to completely immerse themselves in the virtual experience, but I was not one of them.
Furthermore, I am someone who is strongly tied to my female identity. I enjoy frilly clothes, chick flicks and girl talk. Someone else may not be as intimately tied to their gender and may have an easier time losing their real self in the virtual world. If, for instance, someone born in a female body feels more comfortable being identified as a man, and this person enters a virtual world assuming the identity of a man, it may be far easier for her/him to connect to their virtual experience than it was for me to connect to mine. I think my ability to adapt (or not adapt) to Smallworlds was strongly linked to my vantage point.
For the most part, I do not think I was treated differently because of my avatar's age. Although Hank had grey hair and crow's feet, I'm not sure Hank's age was as obvious as I had intended it to be. At the same time, there were a few times that I approached characters that completely ignored me and for all I know, they could have been ignoring me because of my age. That's the thing about discrimination; it's hard to tell exactly why someone doesn't like you. Since our identities are an intricate web of characteristics, it's difficult to find the cause of discrimination. Hank was a white, middle-aged, skinny, straight, grey-haired man. All of those characteristics made up his identity and it is possible that other characters in Smallworlds chose not to interact with him based on any one of those characteristics. This identity web transcends to the real world as it is not always possible to determine why someone else doesn't like you (unless they flat out tell you).
Overall, I thought it was neat to experience a virtual world as I would have never thought of trying this on my own time if it weren't for this assignment. It has definitely been a conversation topic amongst me and my friends. I have not mentioned this tid-bit up until now, but I modeled my character, Hank, after my boss. My co-workers (and even my boss) got a kick out of it. Well, this is it! So-long Smallworlds and Comm 418, it's been real.
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