Sunday, May 3, 2009

New Comic: Look Into My Avatar Soul?

Body Language

5 comments:

Jacek said...

Rather insightful, and nice visual work (style and layout/composition).

I agree that the "emotional bandwidth" (as they say) of virtual interaction is drastically less than that of physical interaction. But happily, I have also found that one can usually get a good picture of the person's "true soul" over time through repeated low-bandwidth interaction. This is can be true even if the person is deliberately trying to deceive you.

sororNishi said...

yes, I find, somewhat to my surprise that I am more intuitive than in RL in my dealings with people. Maybe in RL we get too much information to process it accurately, whereas in SL we get not quite enough and so have to rely on "older" forms of "knowing".
The unconscious is "the mother of consciousness" and therefore older.

Vidal Tripsa said...

The pickier side to me could argue on so many details here, but I do generally agree. ;)

I know that you intend such a hypothesis to be read in an entirely factual manner, but nevertheless I feel a need to say I have been touched by whatever it is we can see here, so a lack of 'soul sight' should perhaps not be taken negatively. Probably not all that positively, either, for the sake of balance.

As a small aside, just out of curiosity, Botgirl.. will there come a time when your poor character might find a happy situation in-world? he seems to get angry quite a lot. ^_^

Botgirl Questi said...

Jacek: Thanks! I agree that it is possible over time to get a sense for another person through virtual interaction. That said, my own limited experience seems to indicate that people can initially be on their "best behavior" in the relatively limited contact of virtual interaction and then suddenly express a new and often more emotionally charged personality down the road. This is also true in physical world relationships, but like I depicted in the post, there is a better chance to pick up signs such as body language, etc.

Soror: I agree with you about unconscious knowing, but I think it comes through information picked up through the senses. It's easy to mistake our own conceptions for some sort of "objective reality" about other people.

Vidal: I didn't intend to imply that you can't have authentic and deep relationships with those you know only through virtual world interaction. My intended point (in this post plus the last one) was that the visual representation of an avatar, including the animation overides, etc., are not a good realtime reflection of the sentient being.

As for your curiosity...

My character (like me) is mostly trying to make sense of the world, express that journey through various art forms, and stimulate thinking. I can't remember feeling angry about anything related to Botgirl's journey. I've felt sad about the pain others have expressed. I've been frustrated by how hard it is to communicate well. I've worked myself to near exhaustion a few times. But mostly it's very satisfying.

Dale Innis said...

Or as this imaginary fox here puts it, you can look into someone's soul pretty well in SL; it just ain't through the eyeballs...

:)