Bryan Mnemonic can fly. His suit never wrinkles, and his chiseled body never bruises — not even if he crashes into trees.
Bryan Carter wishes he could afford Mnemonic’s diamond cuff links. But a mouse click makes it possible for Carter — Mnemonic’s maker — to indulge a little in the virtual world.
Pixel by pixel, Carter created an online alter ego, an avatar mostly in his own image. True, Mnemonic’s goatee lacks the gray hairs in Carter’s. The waist is tighter, the biceps beefier. Understand that where avatars dwell — and there are millions of them — vanity alterations are expected.
Some avatars dance. Some educate or perform concerts, perhaps in the form of an ogre or a large squirrel. Some have sex or annihilate armies of other avatars.
They are whatever you wish to be in a cyber-land that doesn’t exist, yet does.
“Life beyond reality … where imagination knows no bounds,” announces a video clip for Second Life, an online site that Carter recently introduced to his English students at the University of Central Missouri. “So vast, so versatile, so exhilarating!”
And to the uninitiated, so very weird. The uninitiated, however, shrink by the hour.
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“An avatar is your embodiment in virtual worlds and virtual game spaces,” Matthew Falk, an Indiana University researcher, said of what he and others call “synthetic worlds.”
In Second Life, “I had a good friend walking around as a giant taco for a while,” Falk said. “And he’s a normal guy! Like, wife-and-four-kids normal.”
People may develop profound feelings for their avatars, said Donna Russell, an instructor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who won a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to develop Second Life as a teaching tool.
Russell recalled one gamer who, after signing waivers to take part in a research project, wanted her avatar to sign off too.
“In the minds of some,” Russell said, “that avatar is a different person” from themselves.
Avatar and creator also have been known to psychologically morph into one. Last year, a Belgian woman phoned authorities to report a rape. The victim was her avatar in the virtual world.
Between people and their avatars, gender reversal is nothing. Ethnicity, too, is a matter of choice. Children with physical disabilities can heave boulders.
“It’s not the avatars that make the network. It’s the people behind those avatars,” said Jeff Arant, 27, the founder of MadGamerNetwork .com.
Students at the University of Kansas School of Medicine learn how to prepare someone for surgery by logging onto Second Life and transporting to the hospital’s “island,” where an avatar patient awaits on a gurney.
Librarians Bill and Diana Sowers — a.k.a. Rocky Vallejo and the vivacious Cindy Elkhart — built an island they named “Rachelville” that emphasizes children’s literature. The girl whose image and artwork adorn the site is their daughter, who died of leukemia seven years ago.
“It’s been a great experience for us,” said Bill Sowers, 54.
“I don’t walk around in a cowboy hat in real life, but it works for Rocky. There’s a little more of a strut to him.”
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Otherworldly lives
Avatar, in Hindu philosophy, refers to the embodiment of a higher being in earthly form, usually as a human or animal. On the Internet, the meaning gets reversed as humans assume otherworldly forms. Worldwide, at least 9 million 3-D avatars exist in the Second Life site, buying islands, racing cars, raising pets and attending church (or strip clubs). The fantasy role-playing game World of Warcraft boasts more than 10 million subscribers.