The above examples of online identity as you can imagine are vastly text based, and don’t describe visually what a person is like. It is said that in the physical world we think how a person looks is much more descriptive of them self's than what the say, for example it is said that it takes us just four seconds to find out visually if you like or dislike someone. So it is only natural then that the next step was to create online virtual worlds to allow users to fully represent themselves to the world. Probably the best and most popular example of this is the Habbo Hotel, here internet users can actually sign in to a virtual hotel and communicate with other individuals, visually. It allows you to create your own Habbo (character) and then move around the hotel interact with other habbos. For example the above scene is that of the Christmas stage for a play and you can then interact with all the individuals in the room, and ask them to be your friend. You can even buy credits using physical money, so that you can buy furniture and clothes at the hotel as well as swim in the swimming pool and buy drinks at the bar. The exchange rate for these credits when I was dong my research was 10p for 1. Now this is obviously the way Habbo make the money to produce the website, but also it offers a great opportunity for individuals to live out parallel or totally opposite lifestyles. Allowing them to see what their lives are like in the eyes of other individuals. They can experiment with new chat up lines without physically being rejected which is also another key factor. This you see is interesting as it also happens in homepages and chat rooms; people become braver and more outgoing with their comments when they can’t physically see the person they are talking to. It’s the same phenomenon that appears in cars on the road, people act tough and confront people from within their cars with such expressions as the “V” sign, because they feel secure, but they would never dream of doing it when just walking past someone in the street. This then means that people talking to each other over the internet are in a sense more truthful and because they can construct opinions and arguments, they can be more constructive in their comments. It also works the other way though; the individual being commented upon can just as easily ignore the individual commenting on them. This also wouldn’t happen in real life as it would be seen to be rude to ignore someone, but yet again it is seen to be alright to do it on the “faceless” Internet.

The amazing thing though relating back to the Habbo Hotel is how much the visual representation of the character effects people’s perception of you. I created a stupid looking character and hardly anybody wanted to be my friend or talk to me but when I created a simple normal looking character, lots of people did. This obviously backs up the theory that people simply judge you one how you look, and the first four seconds of the first meeting are the most important.

So as you can see there are a variety of ways to create an online identity and many more aside but they all have the same problem, security. The very thing that makes the internet great for creating identities and allowing users to easily publish there views and opinions, is its greatest downfall. The problem is monitoring, there is no individual body such as the Police in the physical world that continually monitors the content of webpages. Homepage providers such as Yahoo! individually check homepages before publishing them but I’m sad to say not all do. This then allows individuals who may have angry opinions and evil personalities to talk to each other and even more dangerously, plan with each other. Terrorist organisations can promote their hate and evilness, that infects the minds of others creating dangerous, focused people of hate. Although occurrences where internet based violence has occurred are few and far between, in the future it may be different and this is only emphasised by the worlds governments who are creating vast teams to monitor and tackle inappropriate webpages of evil minded individuals. So as the internet becomes more and more available to more and more people only time will tell what affect online identities and opinions will have on our physical lives.

Bibliography

Web. Studies (David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley, 2004, Arnold, ISBN 0-340-81472-1)
Yahoo!
AOL
Microsoft
Talk City
Habbo Hotel