Daily Shot

I won't be doing this with any sort of regularity - it will be as whim holds me - but I thought it might be fun to take a simple snapshot of something I'm doing and what I'm wearing on a given day and posting it. Unlike my more formal photoshoots, where I'm highlighting a place and an outfit, this is more impulsive and singular and I'm not going to be trying to write down what I was wearing.



I was busy today roleplaying, managing to avoid any number of domestic chores I could have, and likely should have, been doing. But it was fun, and I've been stressed, so spending a day doing whatever I wanted to seemed like a good idea.

I am a short avatar in Second Life, though. I aimed for the height of 5'4" and, well.... most of the time I come up to peoples' waists. It's pretty funny.

P.S. I'm the blond.

Irony

Irony is someone castigating people for using a nom de internet while doing so themselves.

I think my favorite piece was from the "staying safe" page - which gives some good advice, but also reveals something rather, shall we say, revealing about the mindset of this person who isn't revealing their real identity while demanding others do so. "Many of these people are not functioning members of society."

And, of course, the "sex offender" bugaboo comes soon after. Just for once, I'd love to see something original. It remains true that children are at far more risk of pedophilia from someone who knows them, who is a friend of the family, and who has regular physical access to them in order to initiate the disgusting process of grooming them for abuse. All of this freaking out over people on the internet... is beginning to ring a little hollow.

So, yes, be suspicious on the internet - by all means. Be suspicious of people with slightly odd names, and people with incredibly normal ones. Be suspicious of people in the analog world, too, though. Just because you can see someone's face doesn't mean you can trust them.

Two sided

It's interesting how quickly time spent changes, even while the amount of time remains fixed. Sometimes it seems like I'm always bouncing after a long list of things I want to accomplish, and a longer list of things I have to accomplish.

One thing I've noticed on SL is how singular so many people appear to be, at least in their profile. Go to a philosophy discussion and everyone's an intellectual; go to a club and people are seeking good music or good romance; go to a BDSM discussion and people focus on their approach to power dynamics. The only place I honestly understand this sort of singularity is in roleplaying Sims, where all too often the person in front of you is not the main identity of the person behind the screen but rather one of many faces, specially tuned for a type of character.

I know I have a couple of accounts like that, where a few I'm close to know the names and their connection to me, but few others might even guess, much less know.

Online, identity can become such a fluid thing. It's a lovely place to play out the darker or lighter places in our soul, to take on other roles and see them play out to their fullest extent.

And sometimes, when I go to these different places and see these people who fit those places so well, I wonder if - like in roleplaying - these are faces made just for these events, to ideally fit. Not the full extent of a person, with all the variations and conflicts inherent in being a fully formed person, but facets of to return only the light we want others to see.