In virtual worlds people often act very differently than they do in real life. Chloë discusses Coming of Age in Second Life by Tom Boellstorff in which the author explains how in his experiences he came across many such cases. One of the woman he interacted with used the avatar of a young girl in the game world. When he conversed with her, however, he found that “in the actual world she was a mother with two children” (Boellstorff 109). Because she was pretending to be someone else on the game, some may be led to believe that her online persona is “fake”, but Boellstorff suggests that this identity of a child is just an underlying piece of her personality that cannot be revealed in the real world because of cultural norms. This tends to happen often in virtual worlds, because online avatars are anonymous, so no one that users encounter in the real world will ever know who they are or what they do in the online one, and vice versa. Their personas online thus have no “true” consequences. 

    The virtual persona can influence the real one. Theresa discusses this phenomenon in "What is Self?". In fact, there are some cases where a user's persona in the virtual world becomes more real to them than who they are in the real world. In these situations, sometimes the person will make changes in their actual lives to make them happier. Pavia, a person with a female avatar who Boellstorff encounters online in Second Life, is a person who enjoyed their online personality more than their real one. As Boellstorff talked to Pavia, he discovered that Pavia was actually a transexual male using a female avatar. To Boellstorff, the most interesting part of the experience was how Pavia found out about his transsexuality. When he created the persona of Pavia he “created something new in [him]self that [he] never realized was there before” (Boellstorff 138). As Pavia interacted with the virtual world his virtual identity began to emerge in his non-virtual life. “Pavia started coming out in the real world. [he] became her, she became [him]” (Boellstorff 138).

    The stories that Boellstorff encountered such as those of the mother and Pavia illustrate that personalities used in virtual environments can actually be a projection of what the person thinks is their true personality. Sometimes, as in the case of Pavia, it can even cause a person to come to the realization that some parts of their personality in the real world are false and they can alter their real life personality so it becomes more similar to what they feel is their true personality, or that which they use in the virtual environment.


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