Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Of Men and Avatars

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Of Men and Avatars

    I thought this was a bit interesting and leads me to wonder why we choose the avatar that we do. Mine, is as I have explained on another thread of myself albeit a fairly long time ago. I chose this since I believe the window to the soul is through the eyes. My eyes are prominent in the avatar.



    Men Are Not Men
    By Annalee Newitz, AlterNet
    Posted on February 26, 2007, Printed on February 27, 2007
    AlterNet: Men Are Not Men

    A couple weeks ago I gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about how journalists often misreport the results of gender research because they have a lot of preconceived notions about men and women. Most of these notions come from popular culture, and since journalists are in the pop culture biz, none of this should be a big surprise.

    Still, sometimes a story is so egregiously reported -- and based on such flimsy research -- that it takes my breath away. Such was the case with a recent Associated Press story about how a Stanford graduate student had proven that men in online virtual worlds behave just like men in real life.

    The story focused on a study by Nick Yee, who entered the virtual world Second Life (SL) to examine the behavior of avatars, or online representations of people. SL is an experimental virtual world where many avatars don't have a gender. Many SL avatars are animals or fairies or geometric objects.

    Nevertheless, Yee wanted to prove that men in SL act the same way psychologists say they do in real life. A few studies have shown that two men talking, on average, stand farther away from each other than women do. Yee postulated that you would see similar behaviors among male avatars in SL. By recording the interactions between several male and female avatars in various combinations, he and his research crew determined that male avatars do indeed tend to stand farther away from other male avatars than female avatars do.

    Thus, the AP headline crowing "Virtual Men Also Keep Distance." Ah yes, everybody loves it when science confirms their stereotypes. Even the New York Times jumped on the bandwagon, covering the study uncritically, as if it made perfect sense that men would always be men, even in a virtual space.

    I was, however, extremely skeptical. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, SL is already unlike the real world in that people can pick their gender (or lack thereof). My avatar in SL is a Hapa boy with blue hair. In real life, I am a white girl with brown hair. If I were truly reflecting my alleged real-life behavior, my avatar should act like a woman since I am a woman in real life.

    I wrote to Yee and asked what he thought. He replied, "We are suggesting that male avatars, regardless of whether they are being controlled by male or female users, follow the social norms of men. This point isn't elaborated in the paper because we didn't have the right kind of data to prove this one way or another." Too bad that the AP thought he did have the data to prove that and reported it as such.

    What Yee really discovered is that avatars don't reflect social norms at all: women are acting male and vice-versa. This, I can tell you from experience, would not be viewed as the social norm in real life. Moreover, Yee admits in his scientific paper that he and his researchers basically had to guess at the genders of the avatars they met, since it's hard to tell with many avatars. Are you getting the picture here? It's a classic example of researchers imposing their preconceptions onto a culture that doesn't conform to their norms.

    Upon encountering a society of many genders, where nongendering is part of the norm, Yee and his crew still attempted to figure out a way to find "real world" gendered behavior. It's like Margaret Mead's work, only worse because we should know better.

    Basically all Yee did was go into a virtual world whose gender norms were hard to understand, and try to find ways that it reflected gender norms he did understand. He imposed his own notion of male and female onto avatars who are often neither. And he topped it off by trying to map real-life body language onto the clunky movements of digital representations. Are you surprised that Yee found exactly what he wanted to prove? No, I'm not either.

    Annalee Newitz ([email protected]) is a surly media nerd who doesn't appreciate anthropologists coming around and trying to make her world just like theirs.

    © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
    View this story online at: AlterNet: Men Are Not Men
    Welcome, you step into a forum of the flash bang, chew toy hell, and shove it down your throat brutal honesty. OoE

  • #2
    Here, I sometimes think that some would like their avatars to strangle me.
    ----------------------------------
    ("I was raised not to hit a girl but seeing how you are dressed like a man, I suppose it is okay."--Local cattle baron thug thinking he is about to hit a "time traveling" Prue, (w,stte), Charmed "The Good, The Bad, & The Cursed")

    Comment


    • #3
      Factually speaking men standing farther apart than women is more of a western cultural bias than a gender bias. If you were to travel to Asia you would find hetro men walking down the street holding hands, something you would not likely see in most western cities.
      Buy the ticket, take the ride.

      Comment


      • #4
        And Americans stand FAR apart from each other when talking face to face. Europeans and Asians are literally in your face. I believe that has to do with how huge our country is and how much space we have in everyday life. My friend's wife, who grew up in Minnesota where there are only like 7 people in the entire state, was extremely uncomfortable when she went to China.
        "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by gunnut View Post
          And Americans stand FAR apart from each other when talking face to face. Europeans and Asians are literally in your face. I believe that has to do with how huge our country is and how much space we have in everyday life. My friend's wife, who grew up in Minnesota where there are only like 7 people in the entire state, was extremely uncomfortable when she went to China.

          There are actually twelve.
          Buy the ticket, take the ride.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by tim52 View Post
            There are actually twelve.
            There's a tourist season?
            "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

            Comment


            • #7
              *shrug* I merely happen to like Mentok The Mindtaker, whose bizarre personality is so much like mine: The manic showmanship that can instantly transform into an almost bored and apathetic attitude. :)
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • #8
                oh crap. i don't exist.
                There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

                Comment


                • #9
                  Mine's a photo her indoors took of me before my morning shave and cup of coffee.
                  In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                  Leibniz

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    My Avatar is of a 12 year old boy that happens to be channeling the collective power of his past lives so he can kill a couple thousand enemy soldiers.

                    What does that say about me?
                    "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Mine is a Ralph McQuarrie production painting depicting the early stages of Lucas's original Star Wars script - Luke Skywalker is saber fighting Darth Vader on the blockade runner in the beginning of the film.

                      -dale

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by GVChamp View Post
                        My Avatar is of a 12 year old boy that happens to be channeling the collective power of his past lives so he can kill a couple thousand enemy soldiers.
                        And mine is of that same boy, in his cheerful, joking around normal self. he kicks pretty good butt without channeling his past lives.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Gun Grape View Post
                          And mine is of that same boy, in his cheerful, joking around normal self. he kicks pretty good butt without channeling his past lives.
                          You're just jealous because I have a cooler Avatar avatar.
                          "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Mine is a symbolic representation of my regimental beginnings that I can use without using too much bandwidth or fear of copyright violations. Further, with the right attitude, it doesn't necessarily look like a boy unlike most of the avatars that are available.
                            -------------------------------------------
                            ("I thought it looked quite nice when I saw it on the Princess. The arms are a bit long, but I can always take them in."--Romana II commenting on her new body, (wtte), Dr. Who "The Destiny of the Daleks")

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              mine is the logo of the band Rage Against The Machine
                              "Why stand on a silent platform?, fight the war, f*ck the norm!"
                              die, no0b

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X