Paper short abstract:

An ethnographic study of virtual world philosophy simulations reveals that participants are concerned directly and indirectly with identity. Performance of self and evaluations of performative competence point to the constructed nature of identity in both "Second Life" and everyday "real" life.

Paper long abstract:

Authenticity is a pervasive preoccupation in virtual worlds. Says one person of his "first life": "What I do and how I look there, is much the same here." Says another, "1st Life? - bah! The graphics are good but . . . it requires too much roleplay." Such diverse approaches to the issue of identity and authenticity — from claims of and desires for seamless continuity between first and virtual life, to skeptical comments about the desirability of fidelity with "1st Life," to efforts at immersion in a new reality — suggest an uneasy relationship between real and virtual performances of self. Throughout the online virtual world of Second Life, people animate graphical characters in human, animal, abstract, or object form in such a way that requires negotiation and invites scrutiny. Frequent conversations about fidelity to real life identities are rarely noticed as remarkable "in-world"; however, they point to the constructed nature of identity that presents challenges to what is commonly assumed to be the whole and continuous identity that individuals inhabit in their everyday lives. Performance theory — including notions of expressive language, emergent performance of self in conjunction with assumption of roles, and evaluations of performative competence — clarifies the constructed nature of self in virtual worlds. The seams in identity revealed through extensive ethnographic study in the electronic medium, in turn, allow us to glimpse the emergent and social nature of self in everyday "real" life.