Tom Boellstorff (2008) Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, Princeton University Press, 316pp.

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OVERVIEW

 

Tom Boellstorff grew up playing video games. This undoubtedly gave him an interest in virtual worlds, and he became a member (or better “a resident”) of Second Life (SL, as avatar Tom Bukowski). An anthropologist, he’d done research and published a book on his ethnographic studies in Indonesia. He decided to apply the same ethnographic methods to online life and interviews in the subcultures of Second Life.

 

Coming of Age in Second Life explores what it means to be human and how humans construct subcultures and identities in the virtual world. This involves justifying the application of anthropological tools to online life. It includes a history of virtual reality and description of this anthropologist’s online methodology. Human beings have always craved a virtual life, as cave paintings and ancient myths attest. In classical times, Plato, in his parable of the cave, implied our whole “actual world” is virtual; we are all shadows of ultimate reality. For Plato, no tree approaches true treeness, the essence of tree, as no dog is ultimate dog, or any drawn triangle a perfect triangle. One meaning of virtual, the author points out, is almost—an in: “…virtually the same thing.” So, for Plato, we are all something less than the perfect ideal. That seems to imply our actual or real world is all virtual. Inspired by, and in reaction to, Plato, Aristotle brought his teacher’s idealism down to earth and provided “science” with greater legitimacy and certainty. Modern empiricists have tended to limit reality to our experience—calling the supernatural and transcendent reality into question. Reality is limited to what our senses supply to our reasoning or perceiving ability. We, therefore mediate or construct meaning, culture and identities out of our experience; through culture, and specifically language, we come to understand our selves and others. This book raises the issue as to whether we construct culture and submit to cultures shaping of each one of us within the bounds of some norms, or completely randomly on our own. It raises the questions” “What is reality?” and “What constitutes the authentic human being?” (p.249)

 

Boellstorff treats online life in virtual worlds with serious dignity. He doesn’t deny a difference between our actual, face-to-face world and online “fantasy” worlds, but he makes the boundary permeable and gives greater legitimacy and importance to online relationships and activities than most of us would. Furthermore, studying the creation of subcultures and identities online, provides him with new insights about how we are re-constructing cultures and identities in the actual or “real” world.

 

While some see virtual worlds as marking the emergence of the posthuman through terms like homo cyber, I argue that the forms of selfhood and sociality characterizing virtual world are profoundly human. But while the emergence of virtual worlds “does not necessary mean the end of the human… we need to see human as re-configured and organized differently” (Nayar 2004:21).

 

This is one meaning of the phrase “virtually human”—in virtual worlds we are not quite human. The relationship between the virtual and the human is not a “post” relationship where one term displaces another; it is a relationship of coconstitution…. In this book I argue that it is in being virtual that we are human (author’s emphasis). Virtual worlds reconfigure selfhood and sociality, but this is only possible because they rework the virtuality that characterizes human being in the actual world. (p.29)

 

Human beings, according to this thinking, have not been given their unique personhoods by nature or by God, but are ever constructing and reconstructing themselves and their cultures. The author points out that this has always been so. Although some think the cultural revolution from “oral-to-written” transformed selfhood and society, he disagrees.

 

… as speaking did not disappear with the emergence of text, so the actual world will not become irrelevant as it becomes possible to live parts of our lives online. At hand is not a Virtual Age that sweeps the actual aside, but an Age of Techne  in which there is continuity and change. There is continuity because humans are virtual whenever they engage in techne [human production of any kind including language, self-identity, subcultures, buildings]: “the virtual is essential to the real” (Poster 2001:127).

 

Since humans are always crafting themselves through culture, they have always been virtual (Clark 2003). The virtual is the anthropological (author’s emphasis). This makes it possible to study virtual worlds with the same flexible, underdetermined ethnographic tools used to study human cultures in actual worlds.  (237)

 

Drawing on research by others, this anthropologist reports that “persons involved in virtual worlds (and other forms of online interaction, from email to blogs) can experience forms of ‘disinhibition’…. However, ‘being disinhibited’ is not same as being uninhibited. [Virtual world residents] experience a redefinition of social inhibitions; they do not experience the annihilation of them’ (Reid 1999:112).”

 

Boellstorff continues:  “Such disinhibition can have positive aspects, from kindness and altruism… to friendships and relationships experienced. During the time of my fieldwork, it was also widely recognized that disinhibitation could have negative effects; as one Second Life resident put it, ‘people think they can shoot and run…. When residents acted to [hurt or] disrupt the experience of others, this was most often known as ‘griefing.’ One resident defined griefing to a newbie as ‘deliberately doing something that interferes with others users’ Second Life experience’.” (187)

 

Ethnographic research does not yield hard, quantitative data or conclusions, but there are interesting findings here in the words of those interviewed online—avatar to avatar. It seems clear from reading these reports that a main motivation or expectancy for those who become residents of SL (Second Life) or other virtual sites is to find friends and intimacy. But, “Intimacy is predicated on language’s ability to mediate selfhood…” (151)

 

Identity and personhood are important aspects of this study. In SL, residents become their alter egos, or whoever they want to be. They may change their gender, their ethnicity, their age. Some become children again; some even animals (furriers). Many residents have more than one avatars—although seldom do they have more than one online actively. How different is someone’s online self from the offline or real self?

 

The gap between virtual and actual self could reverberate into everyday practices of identification and interaction. One resident noted how ‘the SL me and the RL (Real Life) me are two totally different people. I may appear strong in my online presence, but in RL, I’m so weak it isn’t even funny.’ Another concurred by stating that ‘the personality I exude in SL is almost completely 180 degrees from what I show in public in RL.’ A third resident concluded that ‘Second Life is a chance to be someone else beside yourself, which you can’t really do in RL unless you want to live a double life.’ (120)

 

Yet in another situation and conversation, there was some dissent:

 

‘I don’t think ultimately anyone succeeds in concealing who they are.’

‘My appearance may change, but you’re still talking to ME, my personality.’

‘I would imagine that the majority of people who play here put in more of their personality than they’d like to admit.’ (121)

 

Consistent with his continued emphasis, the author downplays the “givenness” of our physical embodiment, drawing attention to clothing, tattoos and plastic surgery. “In many virtual worlds, including Second Life, embodiment was highly elastic, bringing notions of choice to the fore.”

 

The cultural paradox was that as one resident phrased it, “being in SL means never having to be judged as the sum total of your appearance,” yet as another resident noted, in Second Life “you can be how you are, not your [actual-world] body.”…. In many virtual worlds “some users have even come to identify their avatar as ‘more them’ than their corporeal body” (Taylor 2002:54).

 

The ability of virtual worlds to allow disabled persons to be embodied has been noted from the earliest days of text-only chat rooms (e.g., Damer 1997:132; Van Gelder 1991:366)…. Most persons with disabilities embodied themselves in a manner indistinguishable from other residents, but a few created embodiments that referenced their actual-world disabilities, for instance using a wheelchair. (136)

 

Residents with short-term or newly acquired disabilities often claimed that Second Life could provide a venue for emotional support and information-sharing (e.g. about breast cancer). It could even help in the process of healing. For example, many residents contended that hand-eye coordination needed to function in Second Life sped recovery from a stroke…. One stroke survivor put it, “you lose your role and sense of control in real life; in Second Life you can take bits of you that work and forge a new one.”

Residents with more permanent physical disabilities also found new possibilities in Second Life’s potential to allow them to experience different forms of embodiment: “there is the advantage of not being body-bound, being able to be yourself”… or flying, dancing, skydiving, swimming. (Others worried) “one of the first things people will do when computers get faster is voice-chat and person-to-person video… which will make disabilities more visible again.” (137)

 

In general the culture of Second Life is a tolerant one. But it began at a time when users were mostly white. So, its racism, where present, is disguised—with only a few outbreaks of explicit or violent racism—quickly condemned, and then banned by residents and owners, Linden Lab.

 

It must be acknowledged that many come to the Internet and to Second Life for sexual contact and excitement. “Just as many residents of Second Life said that  inworld friendships could be more real than actual-world friendships, so many found sex online deeply meaningful.” (160) With a few isolated exceptions, residents of SL have friends; they may also have partners. Since these are declared, residents have only one partner at a time.

 

Strip clubs, lap dancing, prostitution, sexual orgies and BDSM communities are possible and present. (SL has divided its territory into PG and M (for adult or mature) areas.) “’Age-play’ (with youthful or child avatars) and ‘domination play… referred to transgressive forms of online sexuality.” (160) 

 

One paragraph of this book might well have been expanded—telling of the eventual boredom of virtual life, a point emphatically made in many YouTube spoofs. This author does admit:

 

Throughout my research I was struck by the banality of Second Life. Exotica could certainly be found, from castles in the sky to alts, furries, and gender transformations. Yet everyday Second Life was also mundane creativity, conversation, intimacy, shopping, entertainment, even tedium. As one resident put it, “that’s the dirty secret of virtual worlds; all people end up doing is replicating their real lives.” (239)

 

For some readers, this may not portend great hope for the future of humanity. Boellstorff concludes his book emphasizing the blurring of virtual and real life, with the idea that virtual life may be real, an evolving reality, a window showing what we may become:

 

Rather than inaugurating the posthuman, virtual worlds make us “even more human.”  (Levy 2001:216, Boellstorff, 238)

 

… anthropology has concluded that there are many forms of human being—many ways to live a human life. In a sense there are many actual worlds, and now many virtual worlds as well. In this book I have examined one such virtual world for what it can teach us about being virtual human…. (248)

 

The basic assumptions and conclusions of this anthropologist are shaped by purposeful omission of normative information from nature or God. Culture reveals no intentionality or design. Culture, human nature and identity are in a complete state of flux—with no clear origin or destination.

 

This distinction between conscious intention and emergent (human) crafting is important because the concept of “design” continues to distort understandings of culture in virtual worlds…. Design presumes intentionality and is linked to Christian-inflected ideologies of creationist capitalism, as exemplified by the phrase “intelligent design,” often used in popular culture to signify an opposition to evolutionary theory. “Design” is a structuralist concept presuming a distinction between creation and implementation…  (245)

 

REVIEWERS CONCLUSION

It seems clear to me that current post-modern anthropology is about how human beings are living—and perhaps a superficial “why”. Because it rejects any sense of “normative” from nature, or that which is transcendent to nature, it cannot really approach the ultimate questions of the what’s, why’s, and how’s of human life, the meaning and purpose or our existence.

 

We have here important information about emerging subcultures. From this we can learn helpful information and perhaps become aware of some important cautions. But we can’t get to the critical questions of the meaning and ethical norms of life.

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

 

1.     What was your interest in this book review? Were you able to pick up on its main themes and insights? What criticisms do you have regarding the article itself?

2.     What most impressed you in reading this, and what do you consider most worthy of discussion? What specific issues or questions would you like to see discussed?

3.     Are you able to summarize some of the reasons people spend so much time (and money) in a virtual world? Can you list some benefits and possible dangers of deep virtual world involvement?

4.     What is your personal reaction to postmodern thought that dismisses revelation or universal principles of knowing, being and living? Do you think there can be constructive dialogue between subjective relativists and those who believe in objective reality and truth?

 

IMPLICATIONS

 

1.     The area of Virtual worlds is only a small portion of cyberspace and Internet use. Children and adults seem to be into various virtual worlds (MMOW’s) than adolescents. Still, it is a significant and fruitful area of investigation, revealing telling insights about our current lives.

2.     This book, and other culture studies, reveal the assumptions and thinking of those who are studying and making human culture all around us. We have much to learn from them.

3.     The polarities between modern and postmodern, traditional and progressive, liberal and conservative, ought not to be overemphasized. In fact, honest and respectful dialogue about culture and its effects on young people is urgently needed.

4.     We all need to consider the benefits and possible dangers of living in a virtual environment. Matters of time-limits, dubious connections in real life, integrity of personal roles and identities, even possible addiction, need to be discussed.

Dean Borgman   c. CYS