Second Life allows the option for people to be able to do and become things that they are not in real life. For the Gender or Race switch project, I changed my avatar from an African American male to a Caucasian female. At the beginning of the assignment, I changed my gender and race using the skin that was already placed in the inventory. To get different clothes I went to the Milky 9 Store to find a new outfit for my new look. With my avatar's look she got new hair, a blouse, and a skirt, and this is where my avatar began to be treated differently.

Before                                                                     After

Once I was finished changing my look, I walked up to a female avatar and asked, "How does my outfit look?" Rather than answering the question, she turned around and pushed my avatar. This has never happened before, because typically the group of people that are in Milky 9 are very friendly and helpful. When my avatar was still a man, I would also ask for help from people in Milky 9 and it was never a problem.

In order to interact with a lot of avatars, I decided to go to one of the main welcome areas in Second Life. When my avatar got there, I noticed that there were a number of avatars there just sitting around and just talking. So I made my avatar sit next to a woman because I wanted to test whether my experience in Milky 9 happens a lot to women or was it just that one instance. I asked her about some good places to go to in Second Life and she was extremely helpful. She gave me lots of landmarks to different music clubs and places just to hang out. In addition, she recommended that I just stay in a lot of welcome areas if I want to meet a lot of people. This particular event just makes me think that most people in Second Life are nice, but some (like the female avatar in Milky 9) are just mean and maybe they don't like other females or maybe they don't like new people in Second Life. 

After my conversation with the female avatar in the welcome area, a male avatar came and sat next to my avatar and began to chat. He told me about a lot of the books that he has enjoyed reading and I told him about many of the books that I have read. We had a very long conversation about a wide array of things, from books, to travel, to various schools and many other things. This was a very good conversation. I honestly believe that this avatar just wanted to have conversation and didn't have any ulterior motives for having this conversation. I'm led to this claim because he was very new to Second Life and had no friends, so I think he just was happy that someone was holding a good conversation with him. In my experiences, I've found that many avatars don't talk to younger avatars and this has happened to me many times. 

On another day, I went back to the same welcome area and just walked around and observed the avatars and the people there. I saw an African American avatar standing off by himself so I decided to talk to him. My avatar walked to him and he talked to me first. When my avatar was an African American man, I was always the one to initiate conversations. He said that he was having trouble with his microphone so I helped him with that and he seemed really excited about it. I didn't think that this was odd because it took me a while to figure out how to use the microphone too. So I continued walking around and observing other avatars and I noticed that everywhere I went, that same avatar was right behind me. He told me that he wanted to go somewhere else because he didn't like what the people on voice chat were talking about and that his computer was lagging a little bit. He kept trying to get me to voice chat with him, so I just told him that I had to sign off. This experience was very different than any other occurrence in Second Life. I have never had someone follow me and try to lure me away so that we could be alone. Also, I've never had someone try so incessantly to voice chat with me. Had he been a new avatar I would have just passed it off as him just trying different features that Second Life has to offer, but his profile says that his account was created in 2008. So it just seems strange to me that he would be so determined to talk to me in a less crowded area and that he wanted to voice chat with me.

I believe that my last experience is the most telling. I went back to the same welcome area, and I saw a male avatar sitting off by himself. So I sat down with him and he says, "hi jozi." I replied, "hi. how are you," and he replies, "better now ty." So I asked, "was there something wrong before?" So he replies, "yup lack of a pretty girl sitting beside me." This really caught me by surprise because I wasn't expecting to get "hit on" by a man in Second Life. We continued our conversation and he complemented my avatar a lot and was just very flirtatious.  We talked about things he likes to do. He said that he liked to dance, especially when he is with a girl and they are dancing "slow and romantic."  He then tells me that he has a girlfriend in Second Life and that he didn't want to mislead me. I find this to be rather strange too because that had not happened to me before either. So at the end of our conversation he allowed me to take a picture with him, and told me that he would like to take me dancing some time and he said that he would "keep his hands to himself." This is the most telling experience in Second Life because I certainly never expect to have someone be so forthright towards me. 

My experience in this project leads me to think that women in Second Life are treated differently than males. As a male avatar, my avatar didn't conduct attention like my female avatar does. My female avatar was the center of attention for many male avatars. Unfortunately, I didn't tackle the question about race, but I certainly believe that sex in Second Life matters completely because of the attention that is received.

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