YES. the palace, where i spent some of my formative days before eventually working on a 3D virtual world community platform over a decade later. surprisingly, online communities have may have changed contexts over the years but the basis of user behavior remains large the same.
see also the excellent collection of essays and articles The Psychology of Cyberspace (1996) by John Suler, Ph.D.:
- The Basic Psychological Features of Cyberspace
- From ASCII to Holodecks: Psychology of an Online Multimedia Community
via users.rider.edu
The Hula Party
I accidentally stumbled on this Hula Party one night while cruising the Palace. Apparently, the party was a spontaneous event. Note the use of theme specific avatars, props added to the background image, and painting onto the background - all as decorations to visually enliven the event. Although I didn’t have any Hawaiian type props in my collection, several of the members generously gave me some of theirs. Here you can see me attempting to assemble the props onto my avatar. Once appropriately dressed, I changed my name to “TanakaOwl.” Members often alter their names, as well as their props, to match the situation at hand.
(1996)
