7.17.2013 M. Elizabeth Bomhower

A creationist view of developing a new method of creating avatars and/or
profiles that don’t replicate/reproduce the existing "community" and "identity" power structures, but rather, complicates our understanding of
these issues…..I have given this very much thought. And while I'm not as tech-savvy as I would like, to be able to roll out a website that can actually perform all the things that I'm thinking (I don't even know if that's possible - and if so, it would likely have programmers and coders coming after me with pitchforks and torches!)...Ultimately...this is where I've kind of found myself....

GAH! – even if we allow self-defined categories, they’ll still be
unintentionally representative of the structures we are already beholden too! And if, even if I tried to determine "categories" with
nebulous terms – such as introvert/extrovert, etc. – these, too, will ultimately also
become a means of “profiling” the user's identities – such as males are generally more extroverted, so assumptions will be made, despite my efforts –
this categorization once again feeds into the hierarchies we have been socialized to.

So, what if I allowed the user to choose any image online as their
avatar and I will use my programmers to make them animations capable of
interacting with other avatars? This would limit their “pigeonholing”  by me. Or – better and it’ll avoid
any ensuing copyright issues – is to have the user specify what they’d like to have their
avatar’s appearance to be like… such as drop-down menus that ask things such as, “human or
furry,” (and whatever other personal preferences there may be) and then like, “male or female or unspecific,” and from there, can offer a variety
of “furries” (diff animals and anthro combinations), and then for the human
selections: “hair color, eye color, size/shape/frame,” etc. Then, perhaps, it can be more
specific with the attribute selections – such as “big eyes, small eyes, noses, lips,
etc.” could then go into clothing/attire choices. In envisioning a platform which grants more agency to the individual user, I also recognize that this would be a
monstrous coding scenario, but it seems the only way to truly let the individual’s
preferences have greater sway. Of course, there'd be beta tests and stuff,
which we could use to customize even further.

Yet - and perhaps I'm just being jaded - it seems that no matter how altruistic and truly open my intentions are, once the "cat is out of the bag" and the individuals begin "terraforming" and populating this world, I have the sinking suspicion that cliques are inevitably going to form and all the things I tried to anticipate and prevent, will ultimately happen. I have a hard time troubling these formations of identity because I have the sense that because we - as users - have been socialized to accept our patterns of community-building, that in VR, it still fails to offer any true transcendence. Gah!