I dont know why you bother with these people tho Prokofy. They arent clever enough to understand or value anything you say. They dont have the decency to be embarrassed by their own behavior. And absolutely nothing you say here will change that sadly.

I could just ignore it, because I really don’t like to discuss my RL and my SL and their conjunction. It’s a private matter, mainly. But I do think this attack is such a spectacularly hideous post, that I should try to rebut it, if only to help educate the unformed young minds that read this.

I guess it’s been oft said that while they have indigenous rights, and gay rights, and women’s rights and such, we’re a long way from having fat rights and ugly rights LOL. A very long way. And I could also point out that even though the world believes it has now virtuously accepted tolerance of “GLBT,” it’s the “T” in the “GBLT” that even the GLB don’t accept as much as you think they would.

Well, first I wouldn’t say I have spent my RL in a formless and ugly body at all. You don’t know me. It’s hardly a requirement to try to set everyone straight about my private life — I guess I’m entitled to my privacy? But I think I’ve done pretty well over the years. If I don’t look (as my favourite movie character Dolores Claiborne says) like I “ain’t gonna be doing no beauty pageants today,” well, so? Aren’t there enough beautiful people — and avatars — in the world for you to look as so you don’t have to fuss about me?

I don’t have any “issues” with my appearance in RL or SL — if I thought it was such a terrible thing, would I come to a RL conference where everyone — like yourself — would likely ridicule me? I’m thinking I’m a lot more comfortable with my appearance and level of social skills than you are! I don’t feel any sense of frustration, or feel that having avatars in a game is some kind of psychotic break and refusal to accept yourself. I think it’s just a second life. And that’s ok to have.

I made the point in my blogging and posts about SLCC that a lot of the people turned out to be fat or shapeless or skinny and short — except for a few obvious Beautiful People like Philip Linden himself, most of us are not going to be going to any beauty pageants anywhere soon except maybe the Star Wars bar. I didn’t single anyone out for personal or vicious attack about their appearance, I reported *the facts* about the demographic realities of this crowd. I said this helped explain what powers the search for beauty and adventure in Second Life. I don’t imply a put-down or judgement in that statement, because if anything, it’s a comment on the craven, commercialized tastes in beauty prevailing in our first world with its bombardment of media images and advertising, and the freedom with which something like Second Life gives you to script your own media experience and star in it yourself. Second Life and other virtual worlds you can control mean that no longer does Hollywood make the movie, and no longer do the people who buy the tickets dictate what movies Hollywood makes, YOU get to stage, script, and prop the movie and star in it yourself.

As for having the “guts and will power” to have a sex change in RL, again, I’m not really required to discuss my personal sex life but hmm, I dunno about that. Obviously, isn’t it just a lot easier and cheaper to have an avatar lol? I guess one of the reasons I tend to be formless and ugly is that I’ve been forced to have surgeries for illnesses (not to change my sex), and God, that’s painful and you don’t fully recover and can’t run around and be as chipper as you once were. I can’t imagine deliberately and voluntarily having surgery just to change your sex — and you know, while modern science does a good job going male to female, I don’t think they are particularly optimal going in the other direction but I may not be briefed on this.

I just wish to have a male avatar. I’m Prokofy, and Prokofy is male. Please call me “he”. It’s my choice. In SL, you get to chose. It’s sad that people have a very hard time respecting my choice, and have to ascribe to me all kinds of psychoses, frustrations, actings-out, mental imbalances, hatreds, paranoia, and lack of acceptance of my self merely because I wish to have a male avatar in a virtual world. I mean, really, why can’t I do that? I can’t help noting, as others have, that people don’t get half so worked up about males taking female avatars.

As I first learned in TSO, there is nothing hated more in our world, than the woman inside a man, or the man outside a woman.

I don’t think I’m particularly bitter or angry or paranoid, I think I’ve just very hardily sustained a protracted battle with a particularly vituperative, nasty, vicious, and cruel bunch of people such as yourself that wish to hang on to their power and prestige in a virtual world, and believe they are entitled to that privilege by virtue of their technical expertise and intelligence. But they don’t. Their inhumanity to man and their social Darwinism are among the many reasons why they shouldn’t be left to rule our world.

I don’t believe myself to be any victim, though I have been victimized — because I always fight back. And I didn’t kiss Philip’s feet. I’m glad he made his game, he seems like a fun guy, but I’m indifferent to him. I’m critical of many of the features of his world with political ramifications. It’s a great game. I spend time in and and spend money on it. I have a lot vested in it, but for many compelling reasons, only part of which have to do with my actual avatar and his personal adventures. And neither Philip, his game, or the Herald are vital to my existence on this planet.

I actually think the Metaverse is something a lot grander than me than the silly cartoonish notion of me as a male cartoon venting frustration. And it’s not the sum of parts of many people cartooning whatever they don’t have in first life and venting frustration.

I don’t tend to look at it in that negative and hysterical and judgemental way. I view the whole Metaverse thing as more about a dimension of human consciousness, perception, and interaction that is not available in first life. Traditionally, the other self, the essential I, the lucid dreaming, etc. were made available to people through either religious experiences or altered states of consciousness or intense physical endurance, but in our modern world, game companies have simulated these same experiences electronically in the Internet. We could judge whether they are good or bad or whether they did a good job of it, but one thing is for sure, they could not (any more than religious or political systems) change the evil part of human nature which your post so well exemplifies: hatred and judgement of a person not only for being different, but for standing up for what is right in the face of such arrogance and viciousness.