MU Talk

Paypabak Writer 13:17 on 27/03/2015 Permalink Reply
Tags: blogging about second life ( 5 )   

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  Tiffany Mosienko 15:02 on 27/03/2015 Permalink | Reply

  Hi neighbor! I do have a question for you, Paypabak. How do you manage identity across all these modalities? Is that important to you? I used to think SL was great because it had many media all together, kind of all-in-one. I’ve not done as much blogging over the years as you have (and now playing catch-up). But I’m interested to know how platform-hopping affects your sense of self. From an archival standpoint as well (clearly you’ve done some reflection with this post), how do you consider the multiplicity of self and place in virtual space?

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  Neeva 16:10 on 27/03/2015 Permalink | Reply

  Thanks for the blog post. I always enjoy reading your thoughts. It is also really convenient and appreciated when our bloggers post a link to their writing on MU talk.

  @Tiffany. really thought provoking comment. For me, just this year has seen Neeva-self leaping beyond SL with my own email. Then MU enticed me to add Flickr and visit Pearl and paypabak and your blogs, then avatar friends have got me on Gtalk and Slack. SL used to seem like the entire world to Neeva-self. Now it seems like one (beloved) dimension in Neeva’s wider multiverse.
  im still sorting out what that means to identity and the experience of being multiple.

  I have heard of a novel where the premise is the person’s avatar shows up at her front door in RL with suitcases and moves in. How would your avatar be as a housemate? Would he or she get along with your real life self? How would they be the same or different?

  PS: I do read italics paypabak. 🙂

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  Pearl Grey 17:06 on 27/03/2015 Permalink | Reply

  Yeah, I read the italics too. 🙂

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  Paypabak Writer 18:32 on 27/03/2015 Permalink | Reply

  Oh, I’m in trouble now!! (Italics is not a safe haven!)

  Great question, Tiffany, and I love your response, Pearl! I definitely have this sense of digiphrenia (I am fearfully attracted to this: http://www.rushkoff.com/present-shock/) managing these identities but that’s part of what I meant by it keeps one honest. Managing fantasy identities over all of these platforms either cracks you up or it forces you into a wholeness that sustains you.

  I absolutely adore Vaneeesa Blaylock! Talk about your Mistress of Multiple Identities! Every week she has a different name, and that is the unscratched surface. I keep telling myself, “I must resist, I must resist!” She’s like the effing Borg with her invitations to this or that shiny new social platform! (Pearl mentions Slack, so help me, God!) If I met that woman in first life and she is anything like her avatar, she would dazzle and wear me out in ten minutes. On a good day, reinforced with coffee and properly dressed. I blame her for this present predicament of being Blogger-in-Residence at MU. (The use of “blame” in the previous sentence is equivalent to “thank, or to give credit.”)

  As I try to relate in my post, with Flickr, Plurk, Second Life and Tumblr, I manage well enough fairly well-defined avenues for expressing myself with media with which I feel comfortable and which fulfill my desire to share my aesthetics and Slife. Medici U is certainly another platform within the Second Life platform where my play/work as an avatar is challenged. It’s another metagame within what I feel is the ultimate in metagames.

  Is it worth it? As we say on Tumblr, Fuck Yeah! How have I been writing so long and not had such wonderful responses in quantity and quality as I have experienced in the short time MU has been open? I am drinking of other amazing bloggers’ nectar and finding sustenance to overflowing. MU may disappear after June 30, but it will resonate in the depths of my heart for a long, long time.