In Sherry Turkle’s “Life on the Screen”, Turkle chronicles life in cyberspace and the way that individuals interact through out their computer networking. In the case of the MUDs, people essentially create their own collaborative virtual community. Through the virtual community, players can collectively create, maneuver, and actively discuss on a daily basis. Over time, familiarity makes usage of the virtual systems easier as individuals networking the system gradually become more comfortable. From further honing of the systems, the virtual characters develop their own identity and selves. According to Turkle, “As players participate, they become authors not only of text but of themselves, constructing new selves through social interaction”(12). From the continuous interaction that players have with the various virtual systems, they do indeed create players that reflect themselves or an individual of their liking. This statement holds very true in terms of the recent aim interaction.
While chatting with my alternate aim partner it became evident that our created selves did indeed take on virtual personas. I myself personally felt that I put significantly more effort into making my discussions more realistic throughout my social interaction. By chatting often I was able to actively continue the conversations as my virtual being, adding more information to make it as realistic as possible. The more specific I became, and the further in depth with my created character I went, the more the virtual reality became somewhat of a reality. Through the project it became more evident that Sherry Turkle’s statement that the players also “become authors not only of text but of themselves,” held quite true. I myself did in fact not only author my aim character throughout the text, but also gave it more of a self throughout detailed characteristics.
