Assignment #2

I created my avatar not essentially to look exactly like me, but more to reflect on my passions. I put my hair and eye color, and then I dressed my avatar up in a dress that Princess Belle wears in Beauty and the Beast. I did that to reflect on my passion for all things Disney, and Disneyland itself. I grew up in California and have been going to Disneyland throughout my life and became quite passionate about it. I gave my avatar books as well which is reflecting on my passion for literature. I am an English major so literature is a rather important part of my life. The background is a mountain and you can see a ski lift on it. I wanted to make that my background because of my love for Colorado, the mountains, and snowboarding. It has been a rather important part of my life even before I moved out to Colorado. Every winter ever since I can remember I would come out to Colorado to ski or snowboard with my family. It is a huge aspect of my life that I am passionate about. So I rather enjoyed making this avatar and incorporating all those aspects of my life. At first I was just going to make an avatar that looked exactly like myself, but I decided it would be more meaningful to create an avatar that was somewhat silly but with more depth and thought.

I analyzed my friend Carolyn’s avatar which is at her blog website, http://engl3116carolynhdz.blogspot.com/. Carolyn’s avatar seems to be rather plain in comparison to mine. This could mean that she did not want to be as crazy about her avatar as I was, or maybe she just preferred for it to be simple. I have known Carolyn for a few years now and this avatar might look slightly like herself since it has brown hair and she has brown hair, but the clothing and everything else does not quite compare with how she looks in real life. It is kind of interesting that before I chose to go kind of crazy with my avatar, I was debating using the same shirt for my avatar that Carolyn used. Great minds think alike right? =]

In David Bell’s reading of “Identities in Cyberculture” he talks a lot about how people can express themselves through the internet. He says, “The self can be defined by the homepage. They encourage a reflexive presentation and narrativization of the self. The homepage creates a chance for authors to reveal things about themselves that they might not have before.” Many people use the internet as a way to open up more then they would in the real world. In the internet, no one really does know who you are in real life. People can change how they act, talk, etc. People changing in these ways can be good, but can also be bad. Some people might just live by the person they are on the internet and forget the actual person they are in real life. On the other side, someone might be a very shy person in real life, but on the internet might open up about themselves in ways that they never thought possible. In another quote from the reading Bell states that, “Online life is text- based and this means that participants do have choice in terms of their self-presentations. Who we are is defined by who we are not.” This is another great example to strengthen my point on how people can act in a different way on the interent then in real life. There is the choice to be able to act in this manner that makes it rather appealing to many people.  In the case of my avatar, I revealed some aspects of my life that some people might not know. I might open up about these passions with friends, but it was rather easy to make this avatar knowing that people either on the internet, or just in our class were viewing it. I was not thinking about how maybe my best friend might see it, or maybe this person I do not particularly like might see it. This aided in my decision to make the avatar the way I did.