After recently watching the 2009 film Surrogates , I realised how pervasive the idea of avatars are becoming in pop culture.
Surrogates is a film about engineered avatars that can be used to live life for users that drive them through their thought processes. Watch the trailer above and you will see that despite being science-fiction by nature this film does prompt one to wonder how avatar use will evolve in time to come.
Even though most movies that revolve around the idea of avatars adopt a dystopian view on their use, there is a real influence on our culture by this form of identity or representation.
Avatars define how we represent our digital selves in cyber-space. To function in an online environment a user needs to be identifiable and it is in the constructing of one’s virtual identity and then interacting under the mask of this identity which could be a closer representation of one’s own identity, an ideal self or a crude façade.
The identity medium of an avatar allows some users to brazenly connect with people online that they would never be able to approach in a face-to-face situation. In the movie Surrogates, and others like AI, Avatar and others we let people see only what we want them to see, a strong theme in Surrogates and how it affects the nature of interaction and subsequent decline of real-life socialisation.
If you happen to be a digital laggard you may resent any suggestion that avatars are becoming a more important part of our daily interactions. However, all you have to do though is look at the various modes of communication we use to see that we are all actively using avatars whether we know it or not.
Yahoo Messenger provides an avatar based profile where users can create a animated profile avatar that can look any way you want it to. With limited hairstyles, basic skin tones and a range of other physical characteristics to choose from you are bound to finish up with a fit and well groomed avatar that will be appealing to those wanting to add new contacts into their messenger for online socialising.
Less obvious avatar use
A different and less obvious form of avatar use would be that of a Facebook profile. A user’s ‘Friends’ can hide certain information data if they choose if not chose not to make it available to the rest of the users their social network. This is one of the ways that a user consciously or subconsciously creates constructs an online personality or avatar.
By offering say a highly detailed yet meticulous set of profile information with a focus on ‘place of work’ or ‘education’ other users are more than likely going to get the impression that the said user is career focused and professional.
If a profile is satirically set up humorously with odd puns in areas like ‘religious views’ or ‘favourite quotes’ other users may get the impression that you are care-free and easy to talk to. For example my friends and I use certain lingo for concepts such as ‘lurking’ on Facebook which we call “creeping”. My religious views are noted as “creeping to the max” and therefore my friends know that I do not take the information like this -that I share privately with them- very seriously.
The creation of profiles in networks such as Facebook results in a new way of cultural interaction due to avatar creation. The choice of how a user sets up a page and chooses certain profile photographs leads to the subtle building of an online personality which may result controlled perceptions of one’s social existence through an identity game.
These constructed identities may however offer a fast paced online social life which could be both positive –new opportunities to network and learn- or negative –a decline in traditional face-to-face interaction and loss in traditional or cultural ways of forming an identity in a society- depending on how one chooses to use their avatar.
Avatar impact
Tools for creating avatars are already available online and with a LOT of technology advancements in the future our use of avatars could become more extreme. Advancements such as increased use of virtual exploration through networking games like Second Life and virtual equivalents of real life spots like super markets and shopping malls resulting ‘coffee dates’ in chat rooms or even more home deliveries after a user browses and purchases products virtually in such areas as opposed to real every day interaction at these places.
However, in this post I was more concerned with the fact that we as online users are becoming more and more reliant on our virtual personalities already. One has to wonder that if with the evident growing use of avatars if our cultural forms die away because of it; and if so if we’ll turn to virtual living through avatars completely because it is just so convenient to ‘live online’ through our avatar life style.
