"Flâneur" is a word understood intuitively by the French to mean "stroller, idler, walker." He has been portrayed in the past as a well-dressed man, strolling leisurely through the Parisian arcades of the nineteenth century--a shopper with no intention to buy, an intellectual parasite of the arcade. Traditionally the traits that mark the flâneur are wealth, education, and idleness. He strolls to pass the time that his wealth affords him, treating the people who pass and the objects he sees as texts for his own pleasure.
- http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/flaneur.html
As an extension of this definition, a postmodern flâneur could be defined as the online world – browsing the Internet for information or goods. After going through the online world of Second Life, it is obvious that it can be defined as a “postmodern flâneur” as well.
Once my account was set up, and I had downloaded the program, it took me to a part of the Second Life world for a tutorial. It walked me through the steps of how to control my character’s movements and how to change the looks of my character, or avatar as they were calling it. The funny thing about “avatars” is that in most other cases that I’ve known of or had avatars, they were still, small, square image; not moving, interacting characters. As I was walking and flying around (because in Second Life, that is possible), another character came up to me and started talking. Normally, in a video game, it is only a computer-generated character you are interacting with; in Second Life, you are interacting with any human who has internet capabilities. There are so many warnings out there now about not talking to strangers in the online world, much the same as warning about strangers in the real world. A key difference, though, is that online strangers have the capabilities to hack into your computer, which stores tons of personal information that you might not have in any other location. So, I decided not to “talk with” the person who came up to me.
After walking around for a while, I decided to try and leave this learning stage of the Second Life world. It took me a while to figure out, but I finally “teleported” to another location. There was a lot I wanted to try and do, but because I lacked the knowledge of how to do things, I felt limited. I also didn’t want to get involved in a role-play sort of thing or sent on a mission anywhere. This seems to make it similar to a window-shopping experience in that you do not have to get involved. A user in Second Life can merely be a passive player in the game. It seems like a lot of time has to be invested if you want to accomplish anything in the game.
While the world is quite extensive, there are still glitches in the graphics. When I was trying to get into a place that seemed like a mall, I tried flying in, but then the walls closed in front of me and wouldn’t let me through. And when I was changing the looks of my character, it wouldn’t always do it correctly. I changed the type of shoe my character was wearing and it ended up looking like she had huge holes in her shoes because her feet were sticking out. These sort of things wouldn’t happen in the real world.
One of the major differences between walking though a fake world and through the real one is that there are no smells in the fake world. I remember reading something in a psychology class junior year that our sense of smell is the only one that goes directly to the cortex of the brain, bypassing the thalamus. This allows us to link smells more directly with memories and emotions. Just yesterday as I was walking to the football game, I thought of camping because it smelled like rain and fires. My friends experienced a similar sensation. In the world of Real Life, there aren’t any smells to trigger memories.
No comments:
Post a Comment