Episode 59 - Is Beth thick, thin or leaky?

Beth knows a Fox. He’s a delightful chap. He works in a nightclub, narffles when he laughs and talks very engagingly like a dog. He’s a mine of information on gay bars and strip clubs and flirts in a very gentlemanly manner. He is thick. Definitely thick.

Beth knows a Victorian Gentleman Adventurer. He is a dilettante, talks very precisely and properly and makes no bones about being in SL to explore and observe. He has valiantly resisted all of Beth’s painfully clumsy attempts at flirtation and may very well have a partner in RL or SL. Or he may have a female Operator who isn’t into that kind of thing. Beth doesn’t know. He doesn’t say. So Beth puts it down to him being thick.
And then there is the Vampire. He has a castle and responsibility for a ‘kingdom’ of vampires. Beth adores his home, especially the views from his ‘sundeck’ (which she finds hilarious in the circumstances) They talk quite formally most of the time, but he is a thoroughly modern Vampire with a wide screen TV and current political views, so there is probably a fair degree of spill-over from his Operator’s RL during the conversation. Beth would say he is thick, but with a charming bit of leakage.

Now, in complete contrast, we have one of Beth’s alts. She is involved with a RL business which has just set up an online ‘branch’ in SL. It’s not a SL business as such (they are not selling to SL avatars) but use a sim to bring in their own clients and put them through training courses. Brilliant! So Beth’s Operator has set up an avatar that looks like she does in ‘work mode’. Business Woman does not dress like a Victorian Librarian Transvestite, wear glasses or blunder around outside of this home sim having adventures. If you talk to her it will be exactly the same as if you called her at work in RL. There are links to her RL website, her photo, her name and everything. So Beth would say Business Woman is thin. Supermodel thin.

But what is Beth? Now, originally, Beth came into SL to find out about the possibility of marketing a novel to a SL audience. And joined writer’s groups, started a blog, helped edit someone else’s first draft and so on. Oh – and got completely distracted and addicted to SL in general, met and made friends with some wonderful people and had heaps of fun and adventures. Plus she’s fallen into a lot of water and walked into a lot of walls. But who is Beth? She isn’t Business Woman, that’s for sure. She IS a pretty cheeky and adolescent character a lot of the time. She’s a heck of a lot less shy than her Operator is in RL. So certain aspects of Beth’s Operator’s personality come through online. Others don’t. Beth doesn’t mention much about her Operator’s RL to anyone, even people she has been talking with for several months now. She would rather talk about things that are happening in SL. She CERTAINLY doesn’t want to hear about your crap day at work and see photos of your grandkids! So not completely thick. Definitely not thin. And on the reticent side of leaky. Perhaps.

What Beth definitely tries to be is honest. A good character should have (in the opinion of Beth’s Operator, the sad, wanna-be novelist) authenticity, integrity and consistency. Oh, but we can only wish that everyone was like that in RL and SL, eh! (Heck, we can only hope that the characters in Beth’s Operator’s novel are like that…) But most people in RL and SL have a good crack at it. Beth has developed her own personality, has her own interests, her own set of friends. Business Woman has a very different SL. There is another alt who only Role Plays. And then there is Seth. Ah yes! What news of Seth? Has he been out much? Yes, he has.

Seth has found a male friend from RL Moscow who is obviously involved in some sort of project and has asked Seth to explain what the heck is going on in some Kiwi TV ads. Knowing the ads in question and a fair bit about Kiwi culture, Seth has been happy to oblige. He has also found himself talking to female avatars, and his Operator has been pleasantly surprised at the response. It turns out that Seth is hyper-attentive, extremely polite, is genuinely interested in what people have to say and has a simple, non-sarcastic sense of humour that is really quite endearing. It transpires that he is a nice, well-brought up, polite South Auckland lad. Pretty well everything Beth, and her Operator, are not! So Seth’s Operator is finding vent to a whole new side of her RL personality. Some of Beth’s mates are now asking if they can maybe please hang out with Seth instead? She cannot for the life of her fathom out why! Can you?

So in his Operator’s opinion, Seth is a thick avatar. Age, gender, colour, nationality – all completely different from the Operator’s. But he doesn’t have a tail, dead-white skin or furry legs with hooves. He’s not obviously thick. In fact Seth looks quite ‘normal’. Hmmm. Other avatars might expect him to be thin and leaky. And is it just Beth, or have SL players with those kinds of expectations been breeding like bunnies in recent times? They seem to have a very particular agenda. And it does not seem to be thick avatar friendly. In fact – there appears to be a lot of these thin and leaky avatars who are actively thick avatar averse. Most unfriendly, in Beth’s opinion.

So has young Seth picked a bad time to hatch? Is this Brave New World actually full of dullards, one-dimensional people and ponderous ethics committees? Where Beth only has to worry about canals, corridors and snide comments about her attire, does Seth have to run the gauntlet of refugees from Facebook who view imagination, creativity and plain old-fashioned make-believe as a personal affront and rank deception and dishonesty? Yikes! Is this what SL is coming to? Medium-thickness, slightly leaky Beth has been out and about with her notebook. She has been asking the questions and snooping the profiles. And Seth has changed his 1st Life info to broadcast unequivocally “what happens in RL stays in RL”. Will that be enough to stave off an attack of the thin and leakies? Let’s find out after Beth turns her hand to sleuthing in Second Life …