Second Life Friendship and Communication
It all started when I read an NPR story about how your avatar becomes what you are not, and fulfills the gaps your real life personality may have. I began to think about how I feel a lot more comfortable typing certain things than saying them aloud to people, even over voice in Second Life. The next thought came to me when I made a new friend in Second Life. I saw that she typed properly, so I walked forward and greeted her. We turned out to be a lot alike, and now we've been hanging out. Only just now did I think that it would be significantly more difficult to do that in real life, and realized it was because Second Life, even if you are identical to your avatar, and act the same way in-world and in real life, acts as a sort of "mask" to your current personal insecurities and boundaries, and therefore gives you the courage to move forward and take steps, figuratively and literally, into communities you would never approach in real life, or say things that you would never say to somebody's face, simply because your avatar is what you aren't, and the other person doesn't know that. As long as they think that that's you, you can both masquerade as who you aren't, and not know that's what you're doing. This is just a note saying that, whoever your friends in Second Life seem like they are, they probably aren't.
-Lane