Coming of Age in Second Life by Tom Boellstorff
In a chapter of Tom Boellstorff's Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human , Boellstorff explains how many residents behave in the virtual world of Second Life. "Against views of online technology as inevitably alienating, virtual worlds can provide contexts for self-fashioning--techne in its most basic sense." He explains that these sort of multi-user dimensional (MUDs) online games were capable of being more than "inevitably alienating" online games. He goes on to explain how residents use Second Life as a way to be their true selves and not pretend. Some residents explained how they felt they did more "role playing", and acting in the real world, than they did online. They were able to use their avatars, or a screen name, and could be who ever they wanted, but Boellstorff argued that many chose to be their raw selves and self-fashion their identities. Virtual worlds like Second Life were around to allow r...