Clarkson Integrator

Issue date: 2/18/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Kansas City Star/MCT In this photograph, electronic likenesses of Second Life characters called "avatars," created by Bill and Diana Sowers, can be seen in this online screen grab. Many others have made this leap into the digital world.

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 cufflinks. But a mouse click makes it possible for Carter Mnemonic's maker to indulge in a little bling 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.

Worldwide, at least 9 million 3-D avatars exist in Second Life, 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, many of whom cultivate multiple characters a healing priest one night, a shape-shifting druid the next.

"An avatar is your embodiment in virtual worlds and virtual game spaces," explained Matthew Falk, an Indiana University researcher of what he and others call "synthetic worlds."

"That ability to create an idealized self, or a desired self, is very appealing."

"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.

Sometimes, the characters possess none of the traits of the creators, save for the ability to make their peers LOL. (Advisory: Readers who don't yet know what LOL means may wish to stop here and LOBR, let overworked brain rest.)

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."

In a darkened classroom in Warrensburg, Mo., about 20 college students got animated.

Their avatars started out blandly human. Then again, they were only 15 minutes old.

"You'll learn," Carter told his students. With time and practice, these "newbies" will stretch out.

On this day, however, freshman Marlana Davis just didn't get it.

"I'd just rather go out in the real world, you know?" she said. "Socialize with real people, my real friends ... in places that really exist.

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