My husband has been Feldar for 10 years, and I was kittykat813 for 7. I purposefully in the last year changed usenames to have a new online identity. Its my professional name.

I understand what you say about the potential for different looks in SL. I made a flash vid for my myspace account to “show off” most of my avatars. http://www79.rockyou.com/show_my_gallery.php?instanceid=31065912&refid=31065912

Hi,

I’m trying to leave you a comment on your podcast, but I’m getting
some error so I thought I’d just put it in an email…

I really loved the podcast! Honestly, I don’t often find them so
interesting, but yours was really good and I thought you raised a lot
of interesting points. One of the things it has me thinking about is
how blogging seems to be quite different from the other constructions
of identity that you mention - myspace, SL, etc. When I look at my
student’s myspace pages, a good portion of them are reserved to
putting on a front - showing how cool the student is, how sexy, etc.
Same thing is true about SL - it looks to me like the majority of the
avatars are of the Barbie and Ken variety as people attempt to don
their best renditions of people. But then, when I look at blogs that
they’ve written (and we’ve done blogging in my class) they reveal this
incredibly vulnerable side - almost the opposite of what you see on
myspace.

I’m not suggesting that blogging is somehow more “true” a
representation, rather than it’s just another kind of identity
creation; however, thus far I should say it’s the creation that most
interests me. I’ve read such utterly heartbreaking or touching things
in students’ blogs that they would never speak about or email about or
IM about.

All of this is sort of twisting into my ongoing interest in “pro-ana”
blogs which I think are one of the most powerful versions of on-line
identity creation (and so totally ignored in an academic setting
because of their controversial subject matter - so controversial, that
I feel the need to point out that I’m not really a supporter of them,
but I do find them fascinating - yeesh, I can’t believe I felt like I
had to say that, but there you go), but I feel like I’m rambling on
too much already!

Cheers,
Amy

As someone just starting to tinker with SL, I’m fascinated by the process of building my own virtual identity and how that impacts, enhances, challenges me in my rl work and collaborations with others.

You’ve set a great agenda for an ongoing discussion… looking forward to the next episode!