Becoming otter: Avatars and the crafting of the self in social virtual reality

Abstract

Through an ethnography in VRChat, a platform of social virtual reality (SVR), this article seeks to offer a nuanced understanding of the crafting of the self in a unique digital environment. We look at the complex relationships that are woven between users and their avatars, namely how they grow into their personae and embody them to the extent they become a “second skin.” Far from being customized and incorporated representations only, these electronic masks constitute vectors of power and intimacy, augmenting physical, individual, and social capacities of those who wear them. Moreover, while much of the existing literature emphasizes the exploratory potential of avatars and their role in fostering self-multiplication, this study illustrates how avatarial incarnation, as facilitated by virtual reality (VR) technology, can also serve as a means of engaging with an intimate self, experienced as unified and authentic.

Keywords

identity self digital anthropology mask embodiment tactility virtual reality

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acena

Freeman

(2021) “In My Safe Space”: Social support for LGBTQ users in social virtual reality. In: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama Japan, 8 May 2021, pp. 1–6. ACM. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411763.3451673 (accessed 9 October 2024).

Anzieu

(1995) Le Moi Peau. Malakoff: Dunod.

Archambault

(2017) Mobile Secrets: Youth, Intimacy, and the Politics of Pretense in Mozambique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Available at: https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.landing.epl?ISBN=9780226447605 (accessed 9 October 2024).

Asshoff

(2022) Welcome to VRChat: An Ethnographic Study on Embodiment and Immersion in Virtual Reality. Master’s thesis, Stockholm University.

Auray

(2005) Sosies et avatars dans les jeux: Entre écriture et image. In: Baptiste-Marrey (ed.) L’image sosie: l’original et son double actes du 1er Colloque international Icône-image, Musées de Sens, 8-10 juillet 2004. Chevillon: les Trois P., Plumes, papiers, pinceaux, pp.95–108.

Austin

(2021) Fan Identities in the Furry Fandom, 1st ed London, England: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bailenson

(2018) Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality is, How It Works, and What It Can Do, 1st ed Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated.

Banakou

Kishore

Slater

(2018) Virtually being Einstein results in an improvement in cognitive task performance and a decrease in age bias. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 917.

Bauman

(2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Malden, MA: Polity Press ; Blackwell.

10.

Beaufils

Berland

(2022) Avatar embodiment: From cognitive self-representation to digital body ownership. Hybrid 9: 1–17.

11.

Berliner

(2007) When the object of transmission is not an object: A west African example (Guinea, Conakry). RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 51: 47–61.

12.

Berliner

(2024) Becoming Other: Heterogeneity and Plasticity of the Self. New York: Berghahn Books.

13.

Bessière

Seay

Kiesler

(2007) The ideal Elf: Identity exploration in world of warcraft. CyberPsychology & Behavior 10(4): 530–535.

14.

Beyea

Ratan

Lei

, et al. (2022) A new meta-analysis of the Proteus effect: Studies in VR find stronger effect sizes. PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality 31: 189–202.

15.

Blackwell

Ellison

Elliott-Deflo

, et al. (2019) Harassment in social virtual reality: Challenges for platform governance. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3(CSCW): 1–25.

16.

Blascovich

Bailenson

(2011) Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. 1st ed. New York: William Morrow.

17.

Boellstorff

(2008) Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

18.

Boellstorff

(2019) The opportunity to contribute: Disability and the digital entrepreneur. Information, Communication & Society 22(4): 474–490.

19.

Boellstorff

(2020) The ability of place: Digital topographies of the virtual human on ethnographia island. Current Anthropology 61(S21): S109–S122.

20.

Boellstorff

(2024) Toward anthropologies of the metaverse. American Ethnologist 51(1): 47–56.

21.

Bollmer

Suddarth

(2022) Embodied parallelism and immersion in virtual reality gaming. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 28(2): 579–594.

22.

Bourassa

Poissant

(eds) (2013) Personnage virtuel et corps performatif: Effets de présence. Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec.

23.

Chen

(2012) Leet Noobs: The life and death of an expert player group in world of warcraft. New literacies and digital epistemologies v. 55. New York: Peter Lang.

24.

Coleman

(2013) Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

25.

Coupaye

(2022) Danse avec les catégories: Anthropologie de la ‘technologie’ et anthropologie des techniques. Artefact, Techniques, Histoire et Sciences Humaines 15: 127–150.

26.

Deighan

Ayobi

, et al. (2023) Social virtual reality as a mental health tool: How people use VRChat to support social connectedness and wellbeing. In: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hamburg Germany, 19 April 2023, pp.1–13. ACM. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581103 (accessed 17 May 2025).

27.

Diener

Fraser

Beaman

, et al. (1976) Effects of deindividuation variables on stealing among Halloween trick-or-treaters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 33(2): 178–183.

28.

DiGiuseppe

Nardi

(2007) Real genders choose fantasy characters: Class choice in world of warcraft. First Monday 12(5). 10.5210/fm.v12i5.1831.

29.

Dulin

(2021) Virtual reality as a proxy for participant observation in introduction to socio-cultural anthropology. Teaching Anthropology 11(2): 118–121.

30.

Erofeeva

(2025) Why does social virtual reality feel so real? A phenomenological study of spatiality, embodiment, and continuity between digital and physical realities. Human Studies. DOI: 10.1007/s10746-025-09796-z.

31.

Freeman

Acena

(2022) ‘Acting out’ queer identity: The embodied visibility in social virtual reality. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6(CSCW2): 1–32.

32.

Freeman

Maloney

(2021) Body, avatar, and me: The presentation and perception of self in social virtual reality. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 4(CSCW3): 1–27.

33.

Garland-Thomson

(2017) Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Twentieth Anniversary edition. New York: Columbia University Press.

34.

Georges

(2012) Avatars et identité. Hermès 62(1): 33.

35.

Gergen

(2000) The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books.

36.

Gergen

Barton

(1973) Deviance in the dark. Psychology Today 7(5): 129–130.

37.

Giddens

(2003) Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford Univ. Press.

38.

Graffam

(2013) Avatar: A posthuman perspective on virtual worlds. In: Whitehead

Wesch

(eds) Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology. University Press of Colorado, pp.131–146. Available at: http://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1956-human-no-more (accessed 10 October 2024).

39.

Evans

(2025) It is me, but not me: Self-representation as an avatar in VRChat. In: Evans

(ed) Virtual Reality Gaming. Leeds: Emerald Publishing Limited, 75–87. Available at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-83549-376-220251012/full/html (accessed 17 May 2025).

40.

Kafai

Fields

Cook

(2010) Your second selves: Player-designed avatars. Games and Culture 5(1): 23–42.

41.

Krell

Wettmann

(2023) Corporeal interactions in VRChat : Situational intensity and body synchronization. Symbolic Interaction 46(2): 159–181.

42.

Lange

(2019) Thanks for Watching: An Anthropological Study of Video Sharing on YouTube. Louisville: University Press of Colorado.

43.

Latour

(2011) Reflections on Etienne Souriau’s Les différents modes d’existence. In: Bryant

Srnicek

Harman

(eds) The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Anamnesis. Melbourne: Re.press, pp.304–333.

44.

Lave

Wenger

(1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9780511815355/type/book (accessed 18 May 2025).

45.

Martey

Consalvo

(2011) Performing the looking-glass self: Avatar appearance and group identity in second life. Popular Communication 9(3): 165–180.

46.

Marwick

Boyd

(2011) I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1): 114–133.

47.

Mauss

(1938) Une Categorie de L’Esprit Humain: La Notion de Personne Celle de ‘Moi’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 68: 263.

48.

McCracken

(ed.) (2010) Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

49.

Merola

Peña

(2009) The effects of avatar appearance in virtual worlds. Journal for Virtual Worlds Research 2(5): 3–12.

50.

Messeri

(2021) Realities of illusion: Tracing an anthropology of the unreal from Torres Strait to virtual reality. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27(2): 340–359.

51.

Messeri

(2023) Ethnography of/and virtual reality. In: Costa

Lange

Haynes

, et al. (eds) Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology. London, New York: Taylor & Francis, 570–580.

52.

Messeri

(2024) In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles. Durham: Duke University Press. Available at: https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/3332/In-the-Land-of-the-UnrealVirtual-and-Other (accessed 10 October 2024).

53.

Messinger

Smirnov

, et al. (2019) Reflections of the extended self: Visual self-representation in avatar-mediated environments. Journal of Business Research 100: 531–546.

54.

Miller

(2011) Tales from Facebook. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press.

55.

Montemorano

(2020) Body Language: Avatars, Identity Formation, and Communicative Interaction in VRChat. Undergraduate thesis. University of Mary Washington.

56.

Morris

(2010) Anthropology of the self: The individual in cultural perspective. In Anthropology, Culture, and Society, 1351–5403. London, Boulder, Colo: Pluto Press.

57.

Nakamura

(1995) Race in/for cyberspace: Identity tourism and racial passing on the internet. Works and Days 13(1–2): 181–193.

58.

Napier

(ed.) (1987) Masks, Transformation, and Paradox. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

59.

Nardi

(2010) My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: University of Michigan Press.

60.

Nem Mila (2023) Social VR lifestyle survey 2023. Available at: https://medium.com/@nemchan_nel/social-vr-lifestyle-survey-2023-a61d1c4cae33 (accessed 10 October 2024).

61.

Pearce

Boellstorff

(2009) Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

62.

Piitulainen

Hämäläinen

Mekler

(2022) Vibing together: Dance experiences in social virtual reality. In: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New Orleans LA USA, 29 April 2022, pp.1–18. ACM. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3501828 (accessed 17 May 2025).

63.

Rheingold

(1993) The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

64.

Romano

(2019) Être soi-même: une autre histoire de la philosophie. Paris: Gallimard.

65.

Rosa

(2024) No fear of the dark: une sociologie du heavy metal. Paris: La Découverte.

66.

Scarborough

Bailenson

(2014) Avatar Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28128/chapter/212311197 (accessed 17 May 2025).

67.

Schroeder

(ed.) (2002) Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments. 1st ed. London: Praxis.

68.

Schüll

(2014) Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton: Princeton university press.

69.

Schultze

(2010) Embodiment and presence in virtual worlds: A review. Journal of Information Technology 25(4): 434–449.

70.

Schultze

(2011) The Avatar as Sociomaterial Entanglement: A Performative Perspective on Identity, Agency and World-Making in Virtual Worlds. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2011, Shanghai, China, 2011.

71.

Senkbeil

(2025) Virtual spaces, real interactions—analyzing communication in virtual reality. Language & Communication 100: 212–223.

72.

Slater

Sanchez-Vives

(2014) Transcending the self in immersive virtual reality. Computer 47(7): 24–30.

73.

Slater

Spanlang

Sanchez-Vives

, et al. (2010) First person experience of body transfer in virtual reality. PLoS One Williams MA (ed.) 5(5): e10564.

74.

Snodgrass

(2023) The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games. 1st ed. Costa Mesa: University of California Press.

75.

Starobinski

Barceló

(2015) Interrogatoire du masque. Lignes fictives. Paris: Éditions Galilée.

76.

Stephenson

(1992) Snow Crash. A Bantam Spectra Book. New York: Bantam Books.

77.

Strohminger

Knobe

Newman

(2017) The true self: A psychological concept distinct from the self. Perspectives on Psychological Science 12(4): 551–560.

78.

Taylor

(2010) Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. 11. print. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

79.

Taylor

(2002) Living digitally: Embodiment in virtual worlds. In: Schroeder

(ed.) The Social Life of Avatars. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. London: Springer London, pp.40–62. Available at: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-4471-0277-9_3 (accessed 10 October 2024).

80.

Taylor

(2006) Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. The MIT Press. Available at: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2800/Play-Between-WorldsExploring-Online-Game-Culture (accessed 18 May 2025).

81.

Thibault

Bujić

(2022) “Mirror Dwellers”: Social VR, Identity and Internet Culture. In: Proceedings of DiGRA 2022 Conference: Bringing Worlds Together, 1 January 2022. Available at: https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dlc/article/view/1419 (accessed 17 May 2025).

82.

Trilling

(1972) Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

83.

Turkle

(1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.

84.

Turkle

(1999) Cyberspace and identity. Contemporary Sociology 28(6): 643.

85.

Vannini

Williams

(2009) Authenticity in culture, self, and society. In: Vannini P and Williams JP (eds) Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society. London, New York: Routledge, pp.1–18. Available at: https://www-taylorfrancis-com-443.web.bisu.edu.cn/books/9781351956666 (accessed 17 May 2025). Vannini

Williams

(eds) London, New York: Routledge, 1–18 Available at: https://www-taylorfrancis-com-443.web.bisu.edu.cn/books/9781351956666 (accessed 17 May 2025).

86.

Waligórski

(2024) From avatars to hybrid bodies: Postdualistic and posthumanist approach for the anthropology of virtual reality. Available at: https://osf.io/e5a92 (accessed 17 May 2025).

87.

Winnicott

(2018) Ego distortion in terms of true and false self (1960). In: Winnicott

(ed) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London: Routledge, pp.140–152.

88.

Wright

(2023) Robots Won’t Save Japan: An Ethnography of Eldercare Automation. 1st ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/cornell-scholarship-online/book/45923 (accessed 10 October 2024).

89.

Yee

(2007) The Proteus Effect: Behavioral Modification via Transformations of Digital Self-Representation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Stanford University. Available at: http://www.nickyee.com/pubs/Dissertation_Nick_Yee.pdf (accessed 10 October 2024).

90.

Yee

Bailenson

(2007) The Proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research 33(3): 271–290.

91.

Yee

Bailenson

Ducheneaut

(2009) The Proteus effect: Implications of transformed digital self-representation on online and offline behavior. Communication Research 36(2): 285–312.

92.

Zahavi

(2014) Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford: Oxford university press.

93.

Zamanifard

Freeman

(2019) ‘The togetherness that we crave’: Experiencing social VR in long distance relationships. In: Companion Publication of the 2019 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Austin TX USA, 9 November 2019, pp.438–442. ACM. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3311957.3359453 (accessed 17 May 2025).