We’d really like to talk to someone who spends a great deal of time in the universe and would love to have an interview on our site. If you’re interested, please contact me back at riknight36@aol.com. We’d love to hear somebody’s story. Thanks and take care.

Rich

It could very well happen, I think, because you have to remember that you are falling in love with the persona that the typist is projecting into the virtual world — that persona may be very much like the typist, or somewhat like the typist in bits and different in other bits, or rather completely different from the typist (although that is rare, it takes quite a skilled roleplayer or actor to pull off a persistent, convincing alternate persona over the long term without significant elements of their typist’s persona bleeding in). But it’s quite possible that the aspects of the typist that she is projecting into the virtual world, and which are the ones you may find attractive, are not the *only* aspects of the typist in the material world, or perhaps not the most prominent aspects either.

Whether this matters to you depends entirely on whether you are willing/interested in having a virtual love affair with a projected persona (without diving in too much into their material world selves), or whether it seems pointless to you unless you know for sure what the other typist is “really” like in the material world. That’s a fundamental philosophical disagreement that divides SL’s community across the board on virtually all issues, really.

Skilled journalism here. Including that in the piece was a clever slap delivered by the writer without being overtly moralistic, delivering the message and allowing the readers to judge.

I thought Queenie came across as a hypocrite, talking about love one minute and spruiking outside strip joints the next. As for keeping quiet about people who might marry a different partner in SL, well, what can you say? If my wife was so smitten with some other guy in SL I’d be thinking there was something very wrong with our marriage. A big thumbs down for Queenie Moriarty.

Wonder if she marries people in RL too? I have to admit I don’t understand virtual love or how it can be separated from love in RL. For example, is it possible for two people who loathe each other in RL to fall in love and get hitched in SL?

Maybe they just don’t go to you Queenie? I’m not Furry but my mate is, to further blow RL norms out of the water he is also my brother and my collared pet. I have quite a few other human friends with Fur mates too.

“I am in love with Alle in SL and I am making a committment to her happiness here. It gives me fulfilment and allows me to play with the nurturing side of my soul. It’s like a good movie, except that it’s interactive.”

with this:

“I’ve always thought that internet relationships which involve more than friendship are pure drama. The easiest way to understand our relationship is that our avatars are in love and the real people in front of the screen just like to talk to each other and share SL experiences.”

Not quite the same perspective there, it seems to me.

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I’ve spent quite a bit of time reflecting on these issues myself since becoming involved in virtual worlds a few years ago. My own view is that what happens in virtual worlds is “real” in the sense that you are really there emotionally and mentally. The key to the experience is how you choose to “really be there”. You can choose to be there as a “gamer”, with one eye on the television, a hand on your cellphone and just messing about — and undoubtedly there are many people who participate in SL as well in this kind of fashion. There’s nothing wrong with that at all – -it’s just a personal choice of how to experience the world based on what you want to get from it. However, you can just as easily choose to “really be there” in a more focused and concentrated sense, and doubtless many SL residents choose this mode of presence as well.

What I think, however, is that the “mode of presence” that you choose determines the way you look at the kinds of issues discussed in this article. For the more “casual” participant, the idea of falling in love and marrying etc in a virtual world seems at best silly and pointless and at worst pathetic and indicative of a social disorder — precisely because these people do not view SL that way. For the more “focused” participant, who takes SL more “seriously” to one degree or another, there is a dichotomy as well between those who choose to have virtual relationships and those who do not, again based on personal preference — but the “no” people in this group tend to be more understanding of the people in the group who do choose to have relationships.

My own personal experience, based on the way that *I* choose to interact in SL, is that the relationships I form there are very much real in mental and emotional terms — they are simply not real in material terms. Because I let my mind and my emotions be present in SL, I experience that mental and emotional connection — no material connection is needed (for me) to experience connections on these levels with the persona that the other typist is projecting into the virtual world. I entertain no illusions about this being a relationship with the other typist directly, however — and that doesn’t concern me. Why? Because I, like the highlighted couple, have no interest in importing SL relationships into my material world life. I have a satisfying and engaging material world life, and I prefer my material world relationships to be ones that have started there and had their formative stages take place there, rather than trying to transplant something that grew up in the very different virtual environment into the challenges of the material world. (Similarly, I do the same thing in the opposite direction: I have no interest in importing by material world friendships and relationships into SL, either.)

So while I draw a strict boundary between SL and my material world life (the biggest spillover might be the occasional email with one or two SL acquaintances who are particularly close), I don’t think this means at all that the love I experience in some of my SL relationships is not “real”, or that it is a cute word for “friendship”. I know the difference between how I feel about a friend, and how I feel about a lover, thank you very much, and simply saying that it isn’t “love” but merely “friendship in a wedding dress” seems pretty pointless to me if you recognize the feeling as such — unless you are a very strict roleplaying actor, and have no more feelings in the mind and heart of your typist than an actor does in playing her role (bearing in mind, of course, that actors are falling in love with their colleagues on the set quite often ….). Having said that, you do have to exercise a lot of care in what you choose to do with your online feelings — simply importing them into your material world life as suggested towards the end of the article can be disastrously disruptive for no real material world benefit at the end of the day.

So in summary, to each her own on these issues. It very much is a question of perspective, and how you decide to approach SL, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this kind of thing, it seems to me.