Avatars
What is an avatar? A Hindu god incarnate, properly speaking. On the Internet, they're cartoon characters that you can accessorize. Think of them as on-screen Barbies. They're child-like, but--shocker, shocker--America's adults are finding them irresistible. Now the "experts" are explaining why they're so popular, but avoiding the real explanation, which was provided awhile back by Theodore Dalrymple:
A life devoted to instant gratification produces permanent infantilization . . . In our society, the telescoping of the generations is already happening: the knowledge, tastes, and social accomplishments of thirteen-year-olds are often the same as those of twenty-eight-year-olds. Adolescents are precociously adult; adults are permanently adolescent.
Excerpt from WaPo article.
People spend more of their lives online -- the average American Internet user spends 80 hours a month online at work and 30 hours at home, according to Nielsen-NetRatings -- and Web-based interactions are evolving to look less like word-based messaging and more like facsimiles of physical existence. Tens of millions of Internet users have online doppelgangers they design to act as their proxy online -- communicating, shopping and socializing on their behalf and expressing themselves through humanoid gestures, voices and facial expressions.
People meet and develop real relationships through their avatars, speaking to one another through instant-messaging systems, expressing joy by making their characters dance and expressing love by instructing their avatars to kiss. Some meet, date and even marry solely online -- without ever expecting to meet their mate in person. . . .
Users invest in them, literally, spending real money in exchange for fake currency that allows them to clothe, house and accessorize their avatars. Eventually, experts say, avatars may become the primary way computer users recognize one another online, whether they are using instant messaging or surfing the Web.
"People become attached to their online identity. They care about being consistent so that people can trust them," said Ralph Schroeder, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University who studies the sociology of online behavior. "This issue of trust comes up again and again."
Aside: I realize I've used that Dalrymple quote three times now, but it's a great quote and contemporary life warrants its repeat use. I've had many other opportunities to use it, but declined, figuring I'm writing for adults, not fifth graders who need things repeated to them ten times.
