Goths and Other Weirdos at i live in science land

You can find all sorts of avatar looks in Second Life and Open Sim worlds like Reaction Grid (RG) or other virtual worlds like Blue Mars. I’ve seen robots, humans, jello blobs, disembodied heads, furries, nekos, vampires, geeks/nerds, androids, pregnant ladies, army men, monsters, wizards, beach bunnies, and… goths.

Goths. Hmmmm, they sure are popular. Are they just vampire wannabees? Or uber fashionistas who favor black fabric and pale skin? Is Emo a subset of Goth?

Well, I’ll let you decide for yourself. Personally I favor the goth look (black matches black so well, and I’m fashion-lazy!), but you might sometimes find me “slumming” in jeans or sweats and tshirts, esp. when I’m building stuff in sandboxes (Ener has a really nice sandbox in Reaction Grid now, and the Ivory Tower Sandbox in Second Life is nice). I’m still working on my goth persona in RG, where peeps like SunnyGirl Whitfield are bringing awesome clothes and skins.

I came across “Goth” as a “Top Ten Word of the 90s” on the Merriam-Webster dictionary website. Here is what the entry said:

GOTH

: This word contains over a thousand years of drama. In brief:

Around the fifth century, the Goths were a tribe that helped defeat the Roman Empire; by the 1500s, gothic meant “barbaric” and was used to insult a new style of architecture; that architecture became associated with the medieval age; ideas of medieval darkness and mystery inspired gothic fiction of the 1800s like Dracula. All this eventually led, in the 1990s, to goth fashion – characterized by vampire-ish black clothes and eyeliner, and a preference for dark music and moody Romanticism.

Well, that was interesting. Like us Goths can really be defined in one paragraph! *Giggle*

So, some questions to ponder:

1. What is your favorite look?
2. Do you have an alternate/secret look for your avvie?
3. Do you avoid certain types of avatars/peep, based on their looks?
4. Do Vampires have an undesired bad rep in virtual worlds ?
5. What would you like to see more of?
6. Do Vampires sparkle? (sorry, couldn’t resist a jab at Twilight!)*
7. What does “goth(ic)” mean to you?
8. Would virtual worlds suck if we all had to look like homo sapiens?
9. Can you identify the IMVU avatar in the photo to the left?

* Real ones do NOT. What, you don’t believe? Then don’t look behind you.