If you could be anyone you wanted with a click of a button, who would you be? Would you switch genders, race, careers? This is the sort of freedom of expression on MMORPGs, or massive multiplayer online role playing games, like World of Warcraft and Second Life. In these games, users create avatars, or virtual people they sculpt for themselves to frolic in a virtual world. These characters can get married, buy, sell, and trade with other avatars, go to school, and even break the law. As Sege noted, these virtual worlds are even becoming political forums and advertising spaces for things in the “first life” or real world. The article notes that over a million people are logging in to these virtual lives.

I found the ideas posed in the article slightly disturbing. It is a necessary part of children’s development to experiment with role playing and imagination, but it seems that these MMORPGs are mainly used by adults. Take the man with shoulder length hair in the article. His avatar is a sexy, brunette in a short skirt. Or Jeff Lipsky, a white thirty something who masques as a black art gallery owner. As the article says, this speaks to the idea of presenting a different face depending on the social situation; people put on “work selves” and “home selves” and “neighbor selves.” It just seems that these services create a faceless system where people shed the responsibilities and decorum of face to face interaction. How can you trust anyone? And what could be so entertaining in virtual life, as opposed to “real life”? I also have a hard time with the fact that these MMORPGs are used as pedestals to talk politics, or cultural events like the Walk for Cancer. Why can’t these people participate in these events in real life? And Second Life as an educational tool? Yikes!