Prompt
Step 1: Describe yourself. How are you in real life, what is your favorite hobby, and how do you spend your free time?
Step 2: Describe yourself in an online sense. How do you present yourself to people, what sites do you go to, and how do you spend your free time in the online world?
Avatars are a way for us to express ourselves and our identities, both who we are and what we see ourselves as (or want to present ourselves as). To what extent do you agree or disagree with this? To what degree do you change your avatar to reflect your mood and emotion?
Explore the connection between your avatar and your identity.
Step 2: Describe yourself in an online sense. How do you present yourself to people, what sites do you go to, and how do you spend your free time in the online world?
Avatars are a way for us to express ourselves and our identities, both who we are and what we see ourselves as (or want to present ourselves as). To what extent do you agree or disagree with this? To what degree do you change your avatar to reflect your mood and emotion?
Explore the connection between your avatar and your identity.
Step 1: People who know me only online have trouble believing me, but in the real world, I am shy!
I'm also usually cheerful, semi-optimistic, quick to laugh, but rather quiet, and often lost in thought. I tend to analyze incessantly, automatically, and unconsciously, perhaps organizing my thoughts the way I tend to organize my things... they're always getting tossed about again and need to be set in order. I'm honest always, see beauty in little things, and seek peace rather than thrills. I mock trends and anyone who endeavors to be trendy, preferring to go with what I like and not caring overmuch if it's in 'style' currently or not. I don't like to be alone all the time, but I also need time to myself now and then to recharge. The larger the social situation, the more likely it is to drain me and make me feel in need of 'down time' to recover.
I've also got an innate desire to 'help'. It might be more accurately described as, "I want to have a positive influence on people and situations around me." To that end, I also embraced the fact that language is just another set of symbols used for expression. Meaning is not universal. I'm always trying to understand others better, help them to understand me better, and when I can... help them understand one another better.
I got teased a lot as a kid by a certain grandfather about not wanting to try new things too, so as an adult I generally will push myself to be open to try out new things and see if I like them or not. I adopt the YNK philosophy. "You Never Know" This was how I discovered I like curry. <3
It's really hard to say what my favorite hobby is. I'm not really big on having a single favorite in any category. I like a lot of things, and I like variety in my days and so I tend to mix and match depending on my mood. I read, frequently and voraciously... mostly science fiction and fantasy, but I also delve into mysteries, fairytales, and anything else I find that looks interesting at the time. Music is an essential to my life, so I also am almost always listening to something or other. Aside from these, video games, WoW, Gaia, and watching anime and other movies on DVD kind of trade off every so often as prime hobbies.
When I get the chance, I prefer hanging out with my friends to indulging in my hobbies solo, but I don't get to do this as often as I'd like since most of my friends live at least an hour away from my location. There was a time I was out nearly every weekend hanging out, but work and life got in the way of that. I still get out as much as I can. I used to be home by myself all the time for many years, so even though socializing can be stressful for me, I cherish the time spent with friends and make sure to make time for it as often as I can match up schedules with them. We've got a ping pong table here in the house too. I try to make time for ping pong frequently!
Step 2: I'm not really much different online than I am in the real world. The main difference would be that I'm a little less shy. The prime reason for this would likely be that online, I don't have to deal with people face to face, and since I'm typing instead of speaking... I can take time to think about what I'm going to say so that I don't feel quite so 'on the spot'. I am, therefore, more likely to speak up... when in the real world I might remain quiet. That's a difference I'm working on whittling down though. I'd like to be a bit more outspoken in the real world too.
The amusing part is, even when I go somewhere intending to simply blend into the background and look around a little without participating over much, my urge to help people, sort out misunderstandings (or attempt to), and organize things often gets the better of me.
My first online community was technically AIM. I made a profile, and amazingly... all sorts of people came to talk to me. Of course, most of these were horny idiots looking for a female to cyber, so eventually I deleted the profile. I did manage though, to pick up a few people who continued to talk to me, mostly to tell me their problems and get encouragement or a non-judgmental listener.
Next, when I decided to try out role-playing, came Furcadia. I went there at the recommendation of someone I knew through AIM, wanting to learn how to RP and try it out. I accomplished my goal within a couple of months, and two months later had an RP guild handed to me to run. About eight months after that, I ended up nearly running the Guardian volunteer group for a while. Unfortunately, as a Guardian, I got too close a look at the 'Furry' community, and found some things that I really didn't like. My son was getting older then too, and I wanted to spend less time on the computer, so Furc slowly faded out.
Nowadays, you'll find me mainly here on Gaia... where I joined to get my younger brother to stop asking me whether or not I had a profile, and fell into the same pattern. I was an Omnimoderator before my account was a year old. xD;; Oye. I dropped modding, a decision which I don't regret, and I try to spend more time on offline things nowadays than online - in line with my goal of not turning back into a hermit.
Still, I'm definitely a web-junkie and you'll find me here on Gaia, on MySpace once in a while, on Twitter, and now then on my Live Journal. These days I mostly come to stay connected, find more people to connect with, and look for ways to express myself and to 'help' where I can.
Do I agree with the statement about avatars? I do, and wholeheartedly. My avatar on Gaia is very much a representation of myself, my mood, and who I am. My reluctance to do certain things with her (such as change her base hairstyle or eyes, have her go about in 'underwear', etc.) is directly related to my refusal to do these things to my real body in the real world.
I change her outfit frequently, and it always reflects my mood at the time. An evil looking Kava definitely means that the real life me is feeling out of sorts and frustrated or upset about something. Every outfit comes directly out of my mood of the moment, within the restrictions of the items that I have and the things that I refuse to do.
Once in a while though, the mood isn't clear because the mood was more, "let's try something new!" than any other specific emotion. *chuckles*
Even the enormous inventory that I've managed to amass over the last few years is a reflection of the real me, the way I value variety over placing ultimate importance on one thing, and my refusal to sell everything to quest for Ports... which is the item I'd quest for if I quested, is a reflection of how I'd prefer to go to a thrift shop and get two complete outfits for $40 than go buy something brand new at a store.
My efforts on Gaia to be more social, and do things like the Clothing Challenge to get more involved with other people and interact with them are also a reflection of my real life effort to be more social and less shy and withdrawn.
I also tend to keep in mind what someone is going to think when they look at my avatar. I avoid outfits that give an impression to me of something that's not within my personality.
I think my avatar is a WYSIWYG avatar.
(Except that my wardrobe isn't nearly as exotic... yet. xD; )I want to end with a quote from a song... the lyrics aren't directly about avatars and such, but I think they apply to the subject of avatars as much as to people in general, with a twist that favors my own philosophy of trying to be accepting of what's different and trying to understand what doesn't... at first glance, make sense. Avatars -are- a representation of our identity, who we are and/or who we want to be, and that's the beauty of Gaia's extremely versatile avatar system... there can literally be as many different avatars as there are users.
"Sometimes beauty isn't recognized when it contrasts with what you feel inside. Who's to say that darkened clouds must lead to rain? Who's to say the problem should just go away? Who's to point a finger at what's not understood? Because.. we're all mad in our own way, colors paint the grey away. Different people all the same, each reveals a meaning." Natasha Bedingfield - We're All Mad
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