Digital Identity - Where is the "Me" in My Character?
In my last post, I talked about balancing reality and abstraction when choosing a me-like avatar to use in Virtual Environments. But what about the way we’re represented in all digital interactions, not just VR? To help identify some of these trends, it’s necessary to start tallying up all of my virtual socialization - whether it’s Zoom, a chat app, or some other tool that connects us, well, virtually! For the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a calendar of my social interactions in virtual space, and reflecting on those events in various ways. Some quick thoughts to get you thinking about your interactions:
What is my appearance to others? A webcam? An avatar? Username?
How present did I feel in that environment? Did I feel ‘there’ and engaged, or the inverse?
How does this compare to socializing in “real life”?
So now that we’ve primed a bit, here’s my Social Calendar.
I really need to color code these
My first thought? That’s a lot of time weekly in “virtual interactions”. Roughly 20-25 hours in total.
My second: Theres actually a ton of different ‘modes’ of presentation here.
At first glance, even a Zoom meeting seems trivial when asking the question “How much of ‘me’ is in that representation”. Dig a little deeper and we can see some variation in the ‘Zoom call’ right off the bat: Is it with friends? For my job? For a class? Now let’s compound it further: Is my camera on? Have I chosen to use a ‘virtual background’ or static image, or does everyone see into my apartment? Any and all of these factors can play a hand in my self-presentation - and look, I know “acting differently at work and around friends” isn’t an exactly original realization - but rather than dig deeply into those specifics, I want to use those as a conceptual springboard for what I thought was the most salient question this week:
How much of “Ourselves” is present in digital interactions? Does it matter?
I want to look at three particular ‘social events’ to address this. My Wednesday night Overwatch match with my 3-year-running “Phi Mu Alpha Overwatch League”, myself playing the same game with a similar crowd the following Saturday, and an afternoon’s game of Dungeons and Dragons. These three all took place in their respective applications, but the digital interaction of “hanging out” was done via Discord, a voice and text communications platform.
Am I me, or am I my character?
Looking at the examples of the ‘competitive’ and ‘casual’ Overwatch games, I think there’s a nuanced phenomena at play. Even with the same group, playing the same game, at similar times of night, communicating via the same chat app, there’s a noted difference in how we interact. When I’m just ‘relaxing’ and playing the game for fun, it’s like any group of friends hanging out: we talk about nothing, everything, or something in between. While “roles” can be temporarily imposed, rotating character selections every few minutes keeps our dynamic from becoming cemented around our “jobs” in the game, and conversation stays primarily about us as individuals. (Well, it at least keeps us from taking those jobs too seriously).
My friends: “Dude, you’re supposed to be healing us”
Me (in a sagely voice): ”One does not need to heal if the enemy dies first”
Conversely, in our bowling-league-of-the-21st-century, the dynamic is drastically different. I’m not “Dan”, but rather a DPS player with an identified set of strengths and weaknesses who’s trying to both fulfill my team’s expectations of me and subvert my opponents’. While I’m still “hanging out”, I’m being constantly evaluated - by myself and the other 11 players - on my performance. The difference between these two is subtle at first glance - same game, same friends, etc - but the timbre of the interaction changes how much I interact as “me”, and how much I interact as my particular hero. Nonetheless, sinking myself into the role of my avatar doesn’t preclude me from feeling like I’m socializing, or meaning-making - it’s just a different mode of socializing.
Make-Believe Monsters or Meaningful Memories?
My character ‘Quinn’, a kind, protective, and often-near-death fellow, illustrated by Sara Eskandari
When I spend an afternoon playing D&D, on one hand, the camera and mic show me, entirely. However, through a combination of strange decisions colloquially known as “Acting”, I do my best to embody my “avatar”. With their background and motivations in my head, it’s my job to try and interact with the world through their eyes, for better or worse. The fantasy of this imagined world is helped by online tools, nice art, background music, and more, but it never escapes the simple fact that it’s my friends and I playing make-believe.
However, for those 3-4 hours, through these often-silly and sometimes-serious tales, despite playing the part of “another person” in the majority of conversations, I still find myself fostering a meaningful relationship with the other people around the table.
The importance of the Voice
The common thread between these examples is that they all make strong use of Discord’s fairly-great voice chat lobbies. Even when playing D&D (mostly speaking in an affected character voice), there’s still a closeness that the simple act of talking to each other provides. I’ll properly address this in its own post, but I couldn’t entirely gloss over the impact hearing each other’s voices has in all of these scenarios.
Blurring the lines of Identity
Though I may not be a small blue man capable of calling the powers of their deity to protect their allies or an enlightened robot who fights cowboys and super-soldiers, there is some part of me that inevitably becomes embodied in these avatars. The situations they experience, be it harrowing challenge or heroic triumph, become memories stories that took place with the dearest of friends. When in ‘the zone’, I can effortlessly respond to situations as my character without second thought. I’m not just myself anymore, but I’ve become my character(s). The inverse is also true: the other’s aren’t just playing with or against my character, it’s that they’re interacting with my embodied self in this virtual world.
In pursuit of any semblance of ‘self’ and interacting via digital means, and especially as we trend towards interacting more in Virtual Reality, it seems clear that there is tremendous underlying potential in our ability to become invested - or even projected - into our avatars, and connected to those around us. If we can connect well enough that we create stories, memories, and community by virtue of simply interacting, and others are capable of - abstracted identity or not - interacting with the you that is the driving force behind a given avatar, that strikes me as being quite a successful social environment.