My goal this week was to log on to second life and teleport to a place where I can find high density of people. Then, make a statement about a controversial topic that will trigger a debate. Make observations about the debate, if it is more technical and educational or if it contains more hate words, negative sentiment and derogatory language.
Methods of Study:
- Teleport to the Newbie Island
- Observe the mood of the people.
- Make a controversial statement to trigger a debate.
- Make observations from what people say about the issue.
- Judge the tone of the debate.
When I got to the newbie island, i noticed that one of the guys was changing his costume very frequently. All the costumes he was wearing were superhero costumes. First, he showed up in the spider-man costume, then superman, then batman and lastly he-man.
A controversial statement I used:
"I think all the superheroes are faggots (gay)!"
Observations:
Initially people interpreted this statement as something against the superheroes. So, they started talking about real life superheroes and they help people and why they are important. One of the good point was that super heroes inspire kids to behave well. Some people remained neutral while some people agreed that super hero costumes usually look pretty stupid and lame.
However, soon the debate switched to the other aspect of the statement - Homosexuality. This is what I was really looking for. Homosexuality is a very controversial topic and I wanted to know people's opinions about the issue.
Most people present at the Newbie Island actually supported homosexuality. Most of them said that they had no issues with people being homosexual. One of them asked me straight up that what was my problems with gay people since I made a controversial statement. I tried to keep the debate going. The debate lasted for about an hour.
Tone of the debate:
The debate did not contain a lot of obscene words or hate words. It was surprisingly quite educational. I think one of the reasons for this is the place where you carry on the debate. At the newbie island, most of the folks who frequent there come from good backgrounds - college students, housewives, professionals etc. Also, when I checked the profiles of the people who were present there, most of them were from California, some from New York and New Jersey region, a few from Washington and a couple from Chicago, Illinois. People from other states formed a minority. Since most people available there were from big cities, especially from the west coast, they had a more liberal attitude.
Overall Experience
The overall experience was very interesting. I did collect a lot of qualitative data. It was interesting to know what people think about the LGBT community. Lot of people on SL actually are intelligent and do make sense opposing to the popular belief that people on SL are time-killing procrastinators and losers. I found a lot of interesting people on SL who are professionals, doing great in their lives.
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