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How the Virtual Influences the Real Self

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The history of the virtual begins with the start of human culture and has helped shaped selfhood and community. “Humans have always been virtual;” in Plato’s belief, the physical world is equivalent to the virtual (Boellstorff 33). However, the virtual today is more associated with machines and media, as it became popular in the late nineteenth century with the rise of electronic mass media. After the rise of mass media, visual capacities presented opportunities for transcendent experiences by introducing a secondary world with components from our lives. This allowed humans to interact with each other in a different sphere and create social connections that affected their real lives within this third space that encompasses both the real and virtual. Shreyas explores the connection between the real and the virtual here.

The simulation is a machine that is capable of continuously running on its own, but it needs human input, similar to the relationship of a watchman and observer. Humans are the source of creativity behind the machine and the possibility of hacking the game allows the opportunity for new social input, increasing the opportunities for people to communicate and form meaningful relationships with each other. In this way, users are able to gather and create networks with people of similar and/or different interests, thereby helping these users open their eyes to new discoveries about self and their passions.

For instance, in Turkle’s “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” Jarish dreams of designing his own video games. Individuals can also have the opportunity to find their "true self," as Justin suggests. Jarish holds the power to use “the dream machine that can make anything possible and the rule machine that makes everything that is crazy ultimately controllable” in order to “shift from one memory segment to another, and, [therefore, change] the whole world”(504, 503). The gamer hackers and modifiers that interact with the structure of the player world itself unleash the technology container that houses all these virtual possibilities through social dynamics, desire, and creativity. They have the ability to produce change. The modifiers generate a whole new social effect, restructure the game economy, and build the value of the user world made valuable through the establishment of connection between users. As they themselves contribute to the social effect that influences the consumers, they also experience a transformation of self as they create these second worlds for others. Intrigued by technology, these game hackers are linked by a shared fascination of virtual electronics, which contributes to the identification of the real self.

The social growth and possibility for change, as well as transformations in gender and sexuality become possible because of the social forces that exist in virtual reality. One such example we will consider is in the game Second Life, which Kayla discusses deeper how these possibilities can arise from playing in this virtual reality. To learn more about this virtual game and how the virtual and real are linked, refer to Zach's description here. The social component of the game allows people to change very broadly and also, at the specific level of playing with gender and discovering new possibilities for sexuality. A key example to illustrate this is in Boellstorff’s Coming of Age, where a male adult finds his true character to be a female named Pavia, and thus adopts a transsexual identity after acting as a woman in the simulation of Second Life. The very fact of social play in simulated worlds like Second Life directly provide the space and the possibility for someone like Pavia to experiment with different embodiments, just as a mother playing a child in Second Life also explores virtual embodiments in the game. This in turn influences the real as “Pavia [starts] coming out in the real world. [He] [becomes] her, she [becomes] [him]” (138). As such, portions of the virtual are shifted into the real. Sarah discusses another example of character creation (Justin) in Second Life. These instances of experimentation do not exist only in simulations, and Esther details on the social transformations in military play here.

There is a large part of social change in which people are able to discover themselves, but there exists also a particular opportunity to realize new sexuality possibilities, a portion and significant quality of self. This is shown by the difference between individual player worlds and the more social aspect of Second Life where Pavia is able to explore aspects of herself in the virtual space. The social allows for a greater acceptance of those who might choose to play in different bodies. The social is what keeps the connections and events that are happening within the virtual real. The social produces a version of self that returns to the real. As a result, the virtual provides new virtual possibilities in which multiple identities can flourish in ways that do not have the possibility to materialize in the real world.

Works Cited:

Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Print.

Turkle, Sherry. "Video Games and Computer Holding Power." The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. N. pag. Print.

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