Avatars: How we face life online

Sometimes, the only thing better than being yourself is pretending to be somebody else. From nomes de plume to [CB radio code names]( anonymity can be liberating. The internet offers unprecedented ways to cloak our real identities. Some people create digital entities that look and behave just as they do in real life. Others use anonymity to commit crimes and perpetuate violent rhetoric. Some find ways to explore new parts of their personalities, to try on different versions of themselves. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of digital avatars. It’s big business, too. Online gamers fork over huge wads of real cash to customize their digital appearances. In the future they may even be able to tweak different elements of their online personae—including their voices. Let’s look behind the mask. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Sponsored by [Quartz Obsession] Avatars May 21, 2019 Sorry, who's this? --------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes, the only thing better than being yourself is pretending to be somebody else. From nomes de plume to [CB radio code names]( anonymity can be liberating. The internet offers unprecedented ways to cloak our real identities. Some people create digital entities that look and behave just as they do in real life. Others use anonymity to commit crimes and perpetuate violent rhetoric. Some find ways to explore new parts of their personalities, to try on different versions of themselves. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of digital avatars. It’s big business, too. Online gamers fork over huge wads of real cash to customize their digital appearances. In the future they may even be able to tweak different elements of their online personae—including their voices. Let’s look behind the mask. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Origin story What's an avatar? --------------------------------------------------------------- The word [traces its origins]( to Hinduism, as a way to describe an incarnation of a god. In a digital context, it simply means an online representation or character that a user controls, whether it’s a picture next to a name on social media or a totally new identity in a game. The concept first popped up online as [the title of a 1977 multiplayer dungeon game]( on the PLATO platform. The 1985 game Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar [assigned one based on a morality test](. But the first real incarnation of what we think as online avatars came the next year with Habitat from Lucasfilm Games. “Habitat presents its users with a real-time animated view into an online simulated world in which users can communicate, play games, go on adventures, fall in love, get married, get divorced, start businesses, found religions, wage wars, protest against them, and experiment with self-government,” [its creators wrote in 1990](. By 1996, Wired was covering online avatars in virtual worlds as the next big thing, [visiting four different multiuser worlds](. In 1997, one of those, The Palace, introduced “dollz”—the digital equivalent of paper dolls, allowing users to play with clothes and “props.” This is credited for The Palace’s even split between male and female users, early evidence of the power of avatars. “It was the feature that let girls and women on the internet experiment with power, identity, and creativity. A users’ avatar could stand naked in a crowded room, experiment in gender or sexuality, or tell their secrets,” [writes Nicole Carpenter]( in The Outline. By the digits [150 million:]( Number of people who played Club Penguin before it shut down in 2017 [13 million:]( Total number of games sold in the Sims franchise [$85:]( Average amount a Fortnite player spends on custom skins [$300 million:]( Revenue Fortnite has earned in a month, mostly from in-game purchases of custom skins [$9:]( Cost of a “typical” Fortnite skin [1.9 septillion:]( Number of possible [Bitmoji]( all-purpose online avatar generator—combinations [8:]( Number of countries with smaller GDPs than the digital world Second Life in 2015 Sponsored by Accenture It takes a village to combat cyberattackers --------------------------------------------------------------- Your electricity provider’s third-party payment system malfunctioned, exposing your credit card information. Do you blame the third-party system or your utility company? The fact is, your security is only as safe as your service’s weakest partner. By strengthening cybersecurity between partners, businesses can differentiate themselves as trustworthy, becoming attractive for other companies, governments, and consumers alike.[Check out Accenture's 2019 Technology Vision for more technology trends]( What's next? It’s about to get weird --------------------------------------------------------------- Soon we’ll be able to disguise our voices online the same way we can customize our visual avatars. A company called [Modulate]( uses a type of machine learning technique to process voices so that they maintain the inflection and cadence of their speaker, but sound like someone else. Its primary application is in video games, where Modulate will launch in the next few months. The modulation happens in real-time. That’s helpful for female gamers who, sick of [the abuse they receive]( on gaming platforms, [pretend to be men online](. It’s also interesting for people who are reconsidering their gender identity, or those who simply want to sound like Barack Obama. It’s not hard to imagine that “voice skins,” like the ones Modulate creates, could become commonplace outside of the gaming world. Voice fraud, the practice of imitating someone’s voice to access their private information, [increased by 350%]( between 2013 and 2017, primarily by fraudsters trying to access victims’ credit unions, banks, insurers, brokerages, and card issuers. Combine voice skins with technology like deepfakes, and, as Quartz reporter [Ephrat Livni writes]( “there’s the potential for deception that will be very difficult to distinguish from authentic content.” [Read our Obsession about deepfakes]( Should voice skins exist? --------------------------------------------------------------- The creators of Modulate’s “voice skin” technology believe it fulfills the promise of the digital world: the complete freedom to design your identity. But what would happen if we all used it? Mike Pappas and Carter Huffman discuss their invention on Should This Exist?, a podcast hosted by Caterina Fake. [Listen to Should This Exist?]( Quotable There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet —[T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”]( Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with Avatars? [ [Forward link to a friend](mailto:?subject=Thought you'd enjoy.&body=Read this Quartz Obsession email – to the email – Epic Games Brief history [1984:]( Social scientist Sherry Turkle publishes The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, about our online identities. [1992:]( Neal Stephenson uses “avatar” to describe the personas people take on in the online, virtual-reality “Metaverse” in his novel Snow Crash. [2000:]( The Sims is released, going on to sell 6.3 million copies, making it the best-selling game of all time. [2003:]( The digital roleplaying game Second Life is released. [2008:]( A British couple divorces after the wife caught her husband’s Second Life avatar acting affectionately with another avatar. [2011:]( The book Ready Player One, in which most of the plot is acted out with avatars in virtual reality, is published. [2012:]( Tupac’s hologram performs at Coachella. [2017:]( Fortnite is released after five years of development. [2020:]( Expected release of The Sims 5, proving that our love for controlling digital lives hasn’t wavered (yet). Pop quiz Which of these actions is your avatar not allowed to do in Second Life? Buy landGet marriedGet pregnantInvade someone’s personal space Correct. Per the Second Life community standards: “Any activity or behavior that can be construed as intended to bring spatial discomfort to another user is strictly prohibited.” But the platform does have a flourishing kink community. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Million-dollar question Why are avatars such big business? --------------------------------------------------------------- From [dolls]( to [animojis]( people love to see themselves rendered in many forms. Tech companies know this, and they’re not afraid to invest millions of dollars in the hope that this strange quirk of human narcissism can translate into serious cash. In 2017, Snapchat paid [$64.2 million to acquire]( the online avatar generator Bitstrips, which it quickly integrated into its platform. Online gaming communities have taken it to the next level. In the virtual world of Second Life, avatars can buy and sell items with their own currency, Linden Dollars, that they buy with real money. In 2015, Second Life had a [GDP of $500 million]( larger than [several real-life countries](. It doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Fortnite, the hugely popular online game, doesn’t charge to play, but within the game players can outfit their players with “skins” that they buy with real money. Many of those skins are recognizably female, which, as Bloomberg points out, likely has a lot to do with why a [substantial 46%]( of the game’s users are women. What kind of skin your avatar wears has become a status symbol, with [kids bullying one another]( for not having the most expensive or recent skin. Using the default settings is, apparently, very basic. Under the hood Our avatars, ourselves --------------------------------------------------------------- Psychologists have been paying a lot of attention to how our online identities intersect with our real-life ones. Their discoveries offer an interesting analysis about what draws us to online communities and how we behave in them. - When we’re able to customize our avatars, we feel more strongly connected to them, [a 2015 study]( found. This may foster more emotional growth, since players are more invested in these online communities. - The kinds of avatars we choose depend on [what we’re hoping to get]( out of the experience. - Our avatars are often [pretty good representations]( of our actual personalities. - Avatars can help us [be more empathetic]( and help [treat phobias](. Watch this! In 1986, Lucasfilm released Habitat, the first graphic multiplayer online world. Here’s how they sold it. Reuters/Toby Melville Poll How do you feel about avatars? [Click here to vote]( They're liberatingThey're scaryI don't have one, one personality is plenty 💬Let's talk! In yesterday’s poll about [relativity]( 31% of you said that the next big scientific problem we should tackle is “what is consciousness?” 🤔 [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20relativity&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) 🎲 [Show me a random Obsession]( Today’s email was written by [Alexandra Ossola]( and edited and produced by [Whet Moser](. The correct answer to the quiz is Invade someone’s personal space. Enjoying the Quartz Obsession? [Send this link]( to a friend! Want to advertise in the Quartz Obsession? Send us an email at ads@qz.com. Not enjoying it? No worries. [Click here]( to unsubscribe. Quartz | 675 Avenue of the Americas, 4th Fl | New York, NY 10011 | United States [Share this email](