What It's Like To Pretend In The Metaverse
Alternate realities can help us with stress, and anxiety, and they're pretty bizarre too.
The Teardown
Wednesday :: February 9th, 2022
Metaverse is a wrapper term for 3D and virtual worlds recently in the news. The term is in a significant hype cycle and an even more substantial wave of skepticism. I don't believe that most people think non-physical alternate worlds with digitally-native components generate much utility for real people. There's some truth to that thinking. But it glosses over something I touched on in a prior newsletter: that a safe place to experiment and pretend is precisely what some people need. Let's dive into that again. But first, some brief follow-up from last week.
Feedback From Subscribers
My last post Is It Better To Look Stupid sparked lots of comments. One subscriber sent me a note about their experience with learning and attention disorders during their late teen years:
Growing up labeled or having ADD and Dyslexia from about 18 - 23, I remembered trying really hard to seem smart, and a super bright buddy told me “there’s nothing smart about seeming super serious.” A light bulb went off.
I know I have the rep of a goofy nice demeanor. There are people in our extensive circle that I felt like thought I was dumb, that’s ok, because 9 times out of 10 the goofiness actually seems to open a door. I’ll take those odds.
I completely agree. A lot of us are taught to hide our vulnerabilities when, in many cases, sharing those vulnerabilities would be the more helpful route.
What Is The Metaverse?
Not long ago, two things happened:
Mark Zuckerberg introduced most of the world to the metaverse
He created the legal entity name Meta, consisting of subsidiary businesses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others
Never mind what the metaverse is or isn't - should we even capitalize the term? The fundamental questions are endless. But here's my take on how to think about the metaverse: it is an extension of pretend play and games that we've known about for a long time. Wikipedia credits the 1992 novel Snow Crash with the first mention of the concept. However, two older analogs still exist today: The Sims and Second Life.
The Sims was first published in 2000, the brainchild of game designer Will Wright. The game allows real-life users to direct the daily lives of virtual people. The "Sims," as they're known, experience numerous emotions. They live in homes and exhibit varying motivation levels to improve their lives. Sim kids assault their parent's free time during weekends just like kids in real life.
Second Life was first released in 2003. The software wraps a 3D-like virtual world around an avatar of the user's choosing, allowing them to do any number of things that real people do in real life: walk, stand, visit and exit buildings, interact with other people, go to bars, own property, get married, and have sex. Yes. You read it right.
Both games empower users to pretend that their virtual counterparts are versions of themselves or perhaps entirely different people. In The Sims, you accomplish that goal by ensuring the Sim is aspirational just like you, or the opposite. You can also do vain things like put the Sim in a house that's bigger and more extravagant than your actual house or apartment. In that sense, the Sim is grandiose, whereas you might be a middle-aged, overweight accountant in a studio apartment.
Second Life uses a somewhat different and less directed route. Like The Sims, there isn't a specific game path. Unlike The Sims, you are the game path. You walk around the environment, interacting with users, wearing the virtual version of Ed Hardy's Affliction t-shirt collection, among many things. Your avatar doesn't really do anything unless you explicitly direct its actions. Second Life effectively augments or replaces real-life with virtual experiences with this control mechanism. That middle-aged accountant that hasn't kissed anyone in real life can be a hotshot in Second Life's various destinations.
My Own Metaverse Experience
Wrapping your head around the metaverse concept is easier when you expand the definition far beyond the hyped 3D virtual world analog I just described.
I spent lots of time in the metaverse. I was an early user of Facebook and MySpace and an early and stigmatized user of dating websites. The latter is interesting to note in retrospect because I was embarrassed to admit that I used them. Thus, talking about online dates in real life was partly a lie, somewhat an exercise of the imagination. What fascinating scenario could I describe to people to make them believe I didn’t use Match.com? But I also curated my Facebook and MySpace profile pictures to broadcast specific signals. Here's an example: have you ever made your profile picture on any social media website one in which you wore sunglasses, but you were indoors? I did! Why? There was some imaginative motivation, some desire to signal. It feels stupid to admit in retrospect. But it wasn’t random.
The current hyped metaverse worlds are just extensions of these older examples. Your 3D avatar extends and augments your personality. Take a look:
I hope you made a fun connection and looked deep inside my brain. I created this avatar in one of the many Metaverse platforms called Decentraland. The stock outfit was drab and decidedly first-time-in-3D-world-like. My current avatar is hip to the city's beat, given he's standing in front of some poorly lit graffiti. He looks sort of like me too.
I actively decided to change the clothes and the avatar's features. Why? Well, partly to help write, but honestly, because I wanted to. I wanted to explore these 3D worlds with a cool-looking avatar. Here's my Roblox avatar for a contrasting view:
I am decidedly uglier in the Roblox metaverse. I didn't change the avatar because I was relatively unfamiliar with how to do it. But it's easy to presume that I would repeat my seemingly illogical fashion redesign within any metaverse because each is its own world. Subjectivity, opinion, and judgment still matter even when something is purely digital.
By this point, you might be thinking: this is really stupid, Chris. You might be right, depending on your viewpoint anyway. Yet these quasi-imaginary pretend worlds definitely matter for some people. A post titled I’m 25 And Still Play Pretend hit the point on the nose:
And I feel kind of pathetic even typing that, but whatever.
There was this /r/Science thread about young children talking to imaginary friends, and, shit. I still do that. It's evolved over the years from "shadow, the giant wolf that i go on adventures with and could totally come rescue me from school!!" to a series of personas that I assume, with full backstories and surrounding characters/worlds associated with them that I 'interact' with. But the fact remains that I'm a grown-ass woman with a girlfriend and a full time job... who walks around talking to herself at night if she's bored or stressed.
I don't really know if it's even that weird. It feels like something I ought to be deeply ashamed of, and for a long time I was convinced it'd go away ("yeah, I'm still doing this at 19, but maybe next year I will grow out of it") but it just kept being fun and good stress relief, so that never happened. I do it more if I'm stressed or depressed (I deal with GAD and depression; sometimes it's nice to pretend I'm someone who has a legitimate reason to feel what I'm only feeling because my brain's wired stupid) but sometimes I'll do it even if I'm just bored. Sometimes books, video games, tv, writing, drawing, or whatever aren't appealing, but running around in my own little invented worlds is.
Two things stood out to me:
The person was partially ashamed to write the post
Pretend is a way for this person to alleviate feelings of anxiety and stress
What I think this person is saying, indirectly, is that they’re legitimately interested in pretending. It’s part of their core personality. And the bonus is it helps them feel better.
The same feeling washed over me when I signed into Decentraland. An entire world of unwritten outcomes was in front of me for the taking. All I had to do was hit the keys A, S, D, and W (hi gamers) and point my mouse to walk around, interact with others, and purchase digital goods. And I was excited to do those things and wrap my head around the possibilities. I still did some pretty ordinary things, though, like going to the bar:
So, while these platforms seem stupid and absolutely suffer from predatory scamming, they might also help people feel better about themselves. The whole Reddit thread is fascinating for the numerous variations of pretend described by posters. Here’s another:
Not only am I around your age, I still do this, and I dont always do it ALONE. Its called LARPing, live action role play. we pretend to be jedi among other things, or pokemon trainers, when we were kids we loved to pretend to be in the movie Starship Troopers (we are both dudes). I thot we would grow out of it, the "pressure" to do so existed even before it normally does (I first felt self-conscious about it in late elementary school). We LARP together but normally at night in a garage or house.
If you didn't know it, LARPing is Live Action Role Playing. We all did it when we were kids. Most of us do not partake in LARPing as adults, at least not as far as our friends are concerned. But many do much like the poster from the last quote.
The metaverse is, in my mind, an extension of LARPing. You're working through an imaginary situation with numerous other participants, all in real-time. What you pretend to be helps determine what you might become in that world. But your personality and actions are, to some extent, unhinged from the rules surrounding your real life. You get to be what you want to be, at least for a little bit.
Yea, But
I wanted to finish the post on the above point. But I think it's important to highlight a counter to my view. Some things in real life are wrong. Translating those things to their digital counterparts doesn't necessarily make them right. Case in point: digital groping. Meta introduced a four-foot personal boundary around their avatars after users complained about avatars groping each other. It's too bad that virtual behavior devolves like real-life behavior. But I think we should expect that to happen given everything in the world since 2016. Yet, it is somewhat reassuring that software can solve the problem by creating boundaries for people, unlike real life.