Everything Hits at Once

Introduction

I read Alicia’s post musing on why it is so hard to meet decent guys in Second Life—a post that wonders if men are just interested in the big-boobed clicky-boot blingtards—and it got me thinking. No, I wasn’t thinking “Hell, yes!” but “Why does this question continue to arise?” The guys on my friends list are definitely not interested in the “glamazons” as Alicia puts it. Or rather, they’re not seriously interested in the glamazons if they pay them any attention at all. I won’t deny that plenty of men are attracted to them, but even if a guy is attracted to them, it doesn’t mean he won’t be attracted to other, less, um, vibrant, women. And because of that thought process, I started to write a comment and then the comment went too long. So I abandoned it and hopped in the shower (I had to give the dog a bath). Like most of the world, I do some of my best thinking in the shower, even with a wet dog—he’s a lab, he loves it. In said shower I came to the conclusion that I am thinking way too hard about this, most likely because it is a pleasant distraction involving an issue of some complexity that has nothing to do with me or larger issues in my life that I should be focused on, such as the imminent arrival of my offspring, the need for a more secure income stream and just more cash, damn it, to say nothing of my graduate thesis that is due this winter. Or even the class I start teaching Monday tomorrow later today that needs a few hours of review before I walk into the classroom.

Determined to correct my errant course, Mason and I dried off, then I logged on to convene a round table of Wrath, Daila and Bone with the express purpose of bouncing ideas off of them to see if I could take Alicia’s question out to the back 40 and put a bullet in its brain. What follows is the result of that discussion and way too much time spent thinking about this issue. I love social science problems, and this really is a good one, it just isn’t mine. That said, let the rumination commence.

Part One: The question and the hypothesis

Whether male or female, I think the many of the nice, smart, sexy, interesting, funny people who form the active creative population of Second Life often find it difficult to meet and connect. And, to an avatar, all ask some form of the questions: “Is it me?” “Is it them?”

My sense is that while there are certainly things about you and them that make real connections difficult, the major portion of the difficulty lies in a confluence of demographics, expectations, and assumptions that admit impediments to the marriage of true minds.

I think it’s difficult for women to meet someone in Second Life for more than simple friendship or SLex because the number of available confident hetero men with male avatars in SL is low, and not just because, yes, many men are in SL just for the interactive pixel porn.(1) I think the number of men available for SL relationships is lower than our senses tell us. In fact, I think it’s possible the number of potentially available male avatars that are on in any given moment may be so low that it is exceedingly difficult to meet someone you really connect with—at least as difficult, and maybe more, than in real life. If you’re interested, read on and follow me down the rabbit hole of extrapolation.

(1) I think plenty of women do want those guys for the same reason the guys want them—as Erica Jong put it 30 years ago: the zipless fuck. I’m also of the opinion that there are women who find themselves attracted to those guys, but who don’t want to run around looking “trashy” and who may also think they can be the one to change the behavior of those guys. Don’t bet on that happening.

Mostly naked dude, glamazon pics, and more discussion after the jump…

Part Two: Literature search and ruminations

It is very difficult to find the relevant statistics on Second Life, other than economic indicators, so I’m going to have to make some big fat guesses, please feel free to argue or correct me, but I think I’m headed in the right direction.

The “active” user base of Second Life is around 500,000. That means about 500,000 people who are logging in frequently and maintaining some kind of SLife. I use that as the starting point for the populace. (However, I read somewhere recently that the number may really be closer to half that, but I can’t find the link. If that’s the case, things are even more dire and you can cut my numbers in half.) Forget the millions of registered accounts, that doesn’t mean squat for this discussion. Too many of them are defunct or alts or n00bs to be part of the potential relationship base.

So to start with, we have a Second Life population that is arguably the size of a small to midsize North American city, small being Lexington, KY (approx. 250,000) and midsize being Atlanta, GA (approx. 500,000).

Then, since concurrency is about 65,000, you have just 13% of the population that is logged in or “awake” at any one time. Thirteen percent. That is a much smaller town, and since these concurrency figures relate to an average number of people with a time zone and inworld schedule that is similar to yours, it’s actually much closer to the working pool of people you will be able to connect with. (I’m making some other statistical assumptions here, but unless you really want to debate numbers with me, I’m going to leave it out because it’s even duller than the rest of this discussion.)

Statistics, from 2007, suggest that Second Life users are about 41% female and 59% male. The number of female avs being played by men is going to cut into that 59%. Let’s be generous and say it’s only 9%, as the gender balance may have evened slightly since 2007, and 50% is an easy number to extrapolate with. So, 250,000 members of the active user base are men, 32,500 will be logged in or awake at any one time.

Of that, I’ll go with a conservative 4% of those men who are gay, though the number could be higher in Second Life and in the real world, because I want to show that even with conservative numbers it is very tricky to meet people here.

So that four percent lops off 10,000 of the 250,000, leaving it at 240,000 active heterosexual male users with male avatars, with about 31,200 logged in at any one time.

That may seem like a lot of people, but if that’s the total number of heterosexual males you’re starting with, it’s going to be very small when you put the normal social, cultural and demographic factors on it.

Then there are language and cultural issues. Only about 50% are native English speakers, though we’re very lucky in SL that the non-native English speakers are quite good at communicating with those of us who are monolingual English speakers.

Time zone issues may actually be negligible. Basing assumptions on concurrency figures, there are about 30,000 available men who are available when you are. If you’re in a mostly English-speaking time zone, then most of those people on concurrently will also. Let’s say 25,000 to be nice.

Then what about age? Most people want to meet someone relatively close in age. The average age of the SL resident was 32 in 2006 (with the median 36) . Data from March 2007 shows the spread of ages is fairly well distributed, though somewhat skewed toward 25-34 year olds:

Age of active users:
18-25 27.5%
25-34 38.8%
35-44 21%
45+ 11.5%

You can see what you’re working with. It’s a bit difficult to extrapolate for age preferences, but if you’re 30 and considering everyone from 25-34, you’re looking at 10,000 possible matches, with an additional 5,000 to 7,500 men if you would consider people up to 44 or older. Even if age is not a prime factor, it will probably affect the actual number of available matches just based on raw compatibility factors.

That’s somewhere between 10,000 and 18,000 potential people. To find a partner in that group, you have to meet them. That means they need to show up in the same place that you do. And we congregate in groups usually no larger than 20 avatars because of performance issues. It would take a long, long, time to cycle through a decent sample if you were able to have 19 new people at every party or event to speak to. And face it, that’s just not how social scenes in SL or FL work. To say nothing of how conversations take more time because they’re mostly in text (at least at first).

It’s essentially like trying to meet someone at a big university where you can only congregate in groups of 20 people or less. While you may have met tons of people you liked at school, how easy was it for you to find someone you really wanted to spend a ton of time with? Are you more or less picky now than you were then?

Part Three: More inane discussion

Out of those 18,000 potential men in Second Life, many of them are just not going to be available or potential relationship material.

1. First, you have guys like me, married in real life with a partner who is active in SL.

2. Second, you have guys like Hawks—guys who are interested in meeting women and who can in SL or RL. They quickly get partnered. Hawks met JellyBean within weeks of making an account. I’d venture to say he might be the kind of guy you want to meet, but you need to scoop him up fast. I say game places like Tringo and trivia are worth a try.

3. Third, guys like Wrath who are not interested in a Second Life relationship at all. I know that drives many of you crazy, but I know the man fairly well and I can say don’t let it. You wouldn’t want him anyway. No, seriously. I kid. But it’s true. No, the truth is he doesn’t want the additional trouble. Second Life for him is a low-stress, no drama fun zone. He works hard to keep it that way and he’s to be respected for it.

I don’t know how much further these three categories shrink the pool, but they do, and you still have to throw in all of the normal social problems that people have offline–some of which might actually be more pronounced in the online population: Guys who are on line with particularly poor social skills and low esteem. Yes, they’re either going to be looking for pixel pr0n only or they’re going to be harder too meet and get to know. Many (most?) may not be good with the romantic arts in the first place. That’s why they’re here. They may also be in the sex dens because they think it’s going to be easier for them there, and face it, they’re men so they’re horny first romantic second. And you may not even like them when you do meet them. My guess is that they are less aggressive and less likely to make the first move—so if you like to take the initiative, you’re going to be in better position to meet a nice guy with some potential issues. The rest of you, don’t bet on him asking you out.

One of Alicia’s first points about her friends is that “Men do not notice them.”

To this I say: Maybe they are not being seen by enough men—and I say this only as a hypothetical, not as criticism, I really don’t know. Granted, there are some men in the regular Hump Day crowd who might be seen as eligible, but it’s still an exceedingly small sample size. Like trying to make real connections in a small high school clique—something that works when you are in high school only in as far as everyone is experimenting.

And those guys at the Hump Day parties are definitely not the guys who are interested in the glamazons. I doubt the reasons connections are not being made in the smaller circle of friends is because the apparently available men are simply only interested in pixel porn. More likely the chemistry just isn’t right.

The guys you see passing you over for the glamazons are not available and, I would posit, are not the guys you want. Those guys are likely to be men who are only looking for interactive pixel porn with no strings attached.

So, it’s not the guys you would actually be interested in that are passing you over for the girls that flaunt it. Unless what is really going on is that you are attracted to the guy who wants the glamazon because he represents some male archetype that is desirable, but you want him to like you and be a good friend and partner—sounds not unlike a common real world problem. The gals want the bad boys but want them to change. My hunch is they’re even less likely to change in SL, so good luck there.

Excluding that group of men demonstrates that the available pool is even smaller.

Another good point raised by Alicia:

“It also came up that men may actually like the trashier looking women because they can’t get a woman like that in their real lives. Kind of like going to a strip club and coming home with the stripper. It doesn’t happen that often in RL, perhaps, but in SL it could happen every night.”

Definitely. If you are a guy who has trouble connecting with women because you have poor social skills, low self esteem, or just lack confidence, the SL free sex scene probably looks like an easy way to get off and may make some men feel empowered, or at the least, virile and desirable.

Alicia again, quoting a conversation with her friends:

“Is it just me though or are the big-haired, big-boobed, clicky-boots crowd the ones having to turn guys away? Seems like the better put together you are, the less popular.”

Look, the better put together you are, the more intimidating you’re going to be. Some guys like a challenge, but, again, a lot of guys probably see SL as cartoon sex—it definitely has a rep as a pickup spot, so you have to figure a lot of men are going to try it for specifically that reason. Otherwise, they’re in WoW. SL does not have obvious rules and objectives—things men are predisposed to look for in an online “game.” So my hunch is that many come here thinking the idea is to have sex, and where is it going to be easy to have sex? In a free sex area or at an escort club. Men are not lining up to join SL because of the potential virtual relationship factors—a situation that means dating without real physical contact or real food and drink, but with all the talk and emotional cuddling that many of them suffer in real life just to get to the food and sex. I know that’s a stereotype, and it doesn’t apply across the board, but it may offer insight into why guys who show up in SL may be going for the escorts rather than many of the truly excellent things the rest of us enjoy about the metaverse.

Guys also like to make things. Many of them are here to build and design in a 3D environment—getting involved is going to be something that happens to them, rather than something they go looking for. It’s a lot like that for many men in RL.

One more thing—my guess is a lot of the glamazons are actually guys with female avs. It just seems like the kind of av a guy would make if he wanted to play female, for whatever reason.

Conclusion

All of these factors work against anyone actually meeting someone in SL, yet it does happen. Miraculously, it does. How does it happen? Stay tuned. I’ll work it out.

With all that said, if you are a guy who is interested in more than pixel sex, someone who is open to the possibility of meeting someone for an SL relationship, read Alicia’s blog and consider showing up at a Hump Day party. Also, read Hawks’ post at AWNM on how to meet your dream girl in SL and 50 first dates.