{"id":4657,"date":"2015-02-10T19:01:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T19:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4657"},"modified":"2015-02-10T19:01:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T19:01:37","slug":"the-guardian-talk-about-the-second-life-penis-virtual-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4657","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian Talk About The Second Life Penis & Virtual Romance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic has posted an interesting article over at The Guardian :\u00a0Virtual love: is your Valentine an avatar?<\/a>\u00a0The article looks at the rise of digital romance and\u00a0looks at virtual boyfriend and girlfriend apps, the website Tinder, the issue of cybersex briefly and even has a mention of Second Life. I don’t know much about those virtual boyfriend and girlfriend apps and the first I head of Tinder was via a recent story regarding some major websites being down for a short period of time recently, Tinder was mentioned. When I asked some of the folk at work about it after that news story there was much mirth and very little belief that I had never heard of Tinder!<\/p>\n

The article itself links to a website that has advice for lovemaking in virtual worlds such as Second Life :<\/p>\n

Virtual communities, such as Second Life, recreate all aspects of the relationship cycle, including pregnancy and birth. In fact, there are now multiple guides on how to have sex in a virtual world, which perhaps suggests that physical skills are not necessarily transferable to our avatars. One salient difference is that most avatars are not equipped with genitals. As an expert notes: \u201cThe first thing you need to do, get yourself a penis\/vagina. Here\u2019s a piece of advice: Second Life is a visual medium. Hence it does have a certain importance that you choose a penis that actually looks realistic and is in-line with the colour of your skin.\u201d Other suggestions include upgrading looks \u2013 because \u201cwith the prefab [Second Life] avatar you will find it very difficult to get laid\u201d \u2013 and making an effort to role-play a seductive or erotic situation. Indeed, directness and bluntness is as discouraged as in the analogue world.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The website it links to even goes into the murky world of the talking penis. I’m really not a big fan of the Second Life penis, indeed I don’t find it very realistic at all. There would be a world full of pain if you had to walk around with one of those all day outside of Second Life. Obviously there are some advantages, the detachable nature of the appendage would have uses and of course your partner could hide it when they were miffed at you, but realism isn’t something I’d associate with that accessory.<\/p>\n

A more interesting aspect of Second Life and virtual world relationships comes near the end of the article.<\/p>\n

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Finally, it is likely that virtual relationships fulfil the same psychological needs fulfilled by real-world or physical relationships, though the boundaries between these categories are increasingly hard to define. A recent scientific study<\/a> on Second Life users \u2013 conducted in the actual virtual community \u2013 found that most residents saw cybersex as a form of \u201cself-therapy, a source of instant pleasures, liberation from social norms, a tool for self-expression, and exploration and novelty\u201d, and that it enabled them to experience \u201cclose emotional bonds\u201d and \u201cintense, meaningful, and erotic\u201d feelings. The study also revealed that virtual relationships surpass analogue ones by a three-to-one ratio, not least because they are more likely to enable quick, superficial and ephemeral interactions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s plenty of potential for some deep discussion here, but I’ll leave that for people more adept at it than me. The fact that it seems virtual relationships don’t last as long as real life relationships isn’t surprising. The factors of distance, the lack of a tactile relationship and the fact that eventually people get bored within a virtual world make a virtual relationship very challenging. This isn’t to say they don’t work, many virtual relationships make the leap from one side of the virtual wall to the the real world side of the wall. There are advantages to virtual relationships and the fact that people can slowly bond and talk is certainly high amongst them.<\/p>\n

The author of The Guardian article also makes a claim that I’m not sure adds up :<\/p>\n

This makes Valentine\u2019s Day a more expensive affair online than offline (for a list of Second Life Valentine\u2019s presents, see here<\/a>).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The link takes you to a blog post on the Second Life website about Valentine’s day but the cost of those virtual items is likely to be far less expensive than a romantic dinner for two, especially with Valentine’s Day this year falling on a weekend!<\/p>\n

Where will love and romance head in the future? I have no idea, Woody Allen’s Sleeper is always in the back of my mind when I think of futuristic love, so is Barbarella. Neither are comforting thoughts. However virtual worlds do have a place in the land of love, so enjoy it if you want to, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.<\/p>\n

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