COLOR ME CONFUSED

One of the things you are taught in college, after having studied what I did is body language, interpreting it, translating it and identifying the way each culture uses it in different ways; so a gesture that is perfectly normal for a person in one country, might be the most offensive thing in the world to another one in a different part of the world.

Even the way eye contact is used changes, but what about SL, where we are deprived from the interpretation, proper use and communication through body language and eye contact?. I have come to learn (sometimes the hard way) that text communication can be very limiting when it is referred to certain things in second life, hence leaving me in a state of confusion, perplexity and the many other synonyms listed on the picture.

When it comes to flirting or negotiating a potential sex encounter you have all of those subtleties which assist the language used and hint you in the right direction, but when it comes to second life, words are all you have. Most of the time chatting someone up can be really straightforward, specially on the usual hangouts (you all know those, we’ve all been there) but what do you do when a chat with someone who you thought (and knew as a fact) to be straight seems to be leading to sex?

This happened to me today and let’s just say, turning a straight friend gay is not one of my goals as a person, let alone as a homosexual individual. Maybe it was just me having the wrong impression and limited by all of those things we lack and I mentioned before, so just to be safe I very casually diverted the topic away from sex. Under regular circumstances and with a different person, I would have bitten the bullet and asked directly if that was what he wanted (you’re talking sex right? me and you sex?), but with people you are close to, I rather not risk it.

There are many gay fantasies that sound good on paper, but when faced with the situation, you realise it’s just not the thing for you. I guess I’ll never know if he wanted sex, from his curious straight-guy-experimenting-in-secondlife perspective or if it was just me, reading him wrong… just colour me confused with the limitations of text communication.

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