from FAQ guides to instructor-led classes, are available for users to become initiates in this written genre. The available writings even include some basic literary theory about the genre, helping participants distinguish between good and bad examples.

This aestheticization of intimacy is not limited to sexual behavior, but rather extends to all of virtual life. In a different study, we researched the virtual domestic spaces of a community devoted to the dark sex-themed novels of Gor [ 10]. In that community, which we refer to as Ithaca, residents undergo a lengthy period of training before they can properly become members. Once in the community, we found that avatars spend much less time engaging in sexual encounters, instead spending their time among friends, chatting, decorating household interiors, and above all collectively defining and individually cultivating their Gorean citizenship. We were surprised to see that members of what promised to be an exotic and (by reputation) scary community were primarily using the location to engage in everyday acts of friendship, intimacy, and self-cultivation in their virtual homes. We asked the Gorean residents of Ithaca what their most precious virtual object was, and the most common response was a physical token embodying a deeply personal set of memories and associations.

The Second Life client, including its API, rendering capabilities, and 3-D modeling toolset, is regularly updated; the world, in other words, is always evolving. As we have argued, its users’ subjectivities are also in a constant state of evolution. It should not

be surprising, then, that we have witnessed changes in intimate expression in Second Life over the years. Whereas the intimacy-related content in the past was explicit, often even pornographic, today we see much more content that is merely intimate, romantic, affectionate, but not overtly sexual. It includes animations, photography, fashion, and ritualized scripts that contain elements of ambiguity, of mystery. Because the meaning of this newer content is not immediately obvious, it needs to be interpreted, incorporated into one’s performance of self. In short, the world has evolved in a way that is more supportive of the kind of stylized identity performance in which users engage.

It is a mistake to think of avatars as online representations with a simple relationship to real-life selves; rather, they are subjectivities constituted by their actions in-world. These actions in-world are conditioned both by real-life horizons and by the particular ways users are able to interface with the virtual world. We have stressed that participation in virtual worlds is akin to multimedia authoring, where the multimedia content created in some meaningful, albeit complex way maps to the identity of th e user. The symbolic possibilities available online, when joined with the capabilities of the interface, amount to a software of the self, a tool that enables users to play with their own subjectivities (again, for better or worse). The hundreds of hours people put into virtual worlds, the friends they make in them, the expressions of intimacy in which they participate, and the personal conflicts they negotiate—

all of these become a part of the real-life person, in much the same way as going to a museum or out on a date becomes a part of someone. Users are not so much immersed in virtual worlds as they are immersed in their own social experience, and virtual worlds—like professional life, family life, and intimate life—are a dynamic part of that. Experience-oriented software needs not only to be usable, but it also needs to support these meaning-laden and intensely personal performances of the self.

Beyond being affected by culture, HCI is a cultural force in its own right. As our field rightly embraces notions of cultural, contextual, and embodied computing, it must also face, without flinching, the most personal, intimate, nonrational, and even sexual aspects of our life-worlds, for these are the very stuff of our experience.

[ 10] Bardzell, S. and W. Odom. “The Experience of Embodied Space in Virtual Worlds: An ethnography of a Second Life community.” Space and Culture: An International Journal of Social Spaces 11, no. 3 (August 2008): 239–259.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jeffrey Bardzell is an assis-
tant professor of HCI Design
at Indiana University. His
research focuses on the
relationships between soft-
ware interfaces and innovation in amateur
multimedia as well as on the philosophy
and aesthetics of interaction design.
Recent projects include studies on virtual
fashion, measuring user engagement with
social media, and developing a theory of
interaction criticism.

Shaowen Bardzell is an assistant professor of HCI Design at Indiana University. She specializes in social and cultural computing,

with an emphasis on emotional, intimate, and/or embodied experiences. Recent work has focused on embodied collaboration in virtual worlds, designing for intimacy and emotion in non-western homes, and concept-driven design strategies for social networking sites such as Yahoo! Answers.

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September + October 2008

DOI 10.1145/1390085.1400111