Surprising revelation: Virtual world users don't necessarily want their avatar to be their digital self. In fact, they don't necessarily only want to have one avatar.

During the Metaverse hype of 2022, you could often read statements like, "In the future, everyone will have an avatar."

This practically always meant that everyone would have one avatar. This avatar would be their digital twin, as close to their real-life self as possible. And, as New World Notes point out, [url=]Horizons is entirely based on this idea.

Mark Zuckerberg had Meta Horizons, what most people think "The Metaverse" refers to, designed around this idea. And with hardly any way to deviate from it. He wants Horizons to be 3-D Facebook with everyone having an avatar on Horizons, only one avatar, and that avatar must be the digital representation of their real-life selves. Just like he wants everyone to be themselves on Facebook by having nicknames banned early on. Horizons was and still is planned to become 3-D Facebook.

This, however, is one out of several signs that Zuckerberg doesn't know anything about virtual worlds. As shown in the link above, Zuckerberg knows that there has been something called Second Life, but I'm not sure whether he knows that Second Life still exists. And he definitely doesn't know what Second Life is like. Even though Cory Ondrejka, who is behind Facebook's acquisition of Oculus, used to be a Linden himself. But Zuck doesn't care what people say. He knows everything better. He isn't the Meta CEO and a multi-billionnaire for nothing. And they aren't.

Of course, if you talk about virtual worlds with people who have never used virtual worlds yet, at least not with avatars of their own, this is generally their idea of how virtual worlds are used. Mass media generally follow the same notion and even amplify it by spreading it. In the future, you'll have a digital twin in the Metaverse. That's how it's done. Could it possibly be any different?

In the virtual worlds which exist today, it is different. Very different.

Perfect places to prove people wrong are Second Life and OpenSim-based worlds. Compared with Roblox or Rec Room or VRChat or other platforms, their avatars are fairly realistic which, you may think, should make life-like digital twins even more life-like.

Now, just get yourself an avatar in Second Life or on some OpenSim grid, preferably one connected to the Hypergrid, but most are. Go to some event where a lot of avatars have gathered like a club party with a DJ. Look at the avatars that are there.

And then ask yourself: "Do all these people look like this in real life?"

Because everyone will look like a combination of a super-model and a dolled-up Instagram influencer. At the very least. Especially the female avatars. They all have big boobs, they all have big butts, they all have big, voluptuous lips. Almost all have long, lush manes. In OpenSim probably more than in Second Life, they're dressed in ways that you couldn't imagine digital avatars to be possible to dress in. Or real-life women, for that matter. Some of the ladies will be dancing on six-inch platforms with twelve-inch spike heels, regardless of the underground.

Also, in OpenSim probably more than in Second Life, female avatars in particular may be outright unnatural. Humongous breasts which nonetheless no gravity seems to be tugging on in spite of the obvious lack of a bra. Hips at least twice as wide as the waist. Thighs that they could fit their heads into.

Male avatars aren't quite as extreme. But if you see male avatars with an open shirt or topless, they always have chiseled abs.

If you really think they're all digital twins of their users, think twice. Especially about the female avatars with the outrageously unrealistic body measurements that are completely impossible in real life. Even disregarding these, the "digital twin" logic means you must have stumbled into some unguarded super-model meet-up. Until you discover that avatars look like this everywhere.

Also, look around again. How many avatars are female, how many are male? You'll notice that female avatars are the majority. Again, if you spend some more time looking around and meeting avatars, you'll discover that female avatars are the majority in general.

So, does this mean that many more women use Second Life and OpenSim than men? But why?

No, they don't.

Here's the truth: Just because an avatar is female, doesn't mean the owner is female.

Second Life is so very very much not 3-D Facebook. It never aimed to be 3-D Facebook, not only because it pre-dates Facebook by several years, but also because the name "Second Life" indicates that your avatar can live a life independent from your real life without being "digital you".

Oh, and by the way:

• Second Life avatars have a forename and a surname. But the surname has never been a free-text field. At most, you have a list of surnames to choose one from. So no naming your avatar like yourself unless your family name just happens to be offered in Second Life, and even then only if nobody else has chosen that name before you.
• Second Life lets you have more than one avatar. Linden Lab doesn't really like it when their users create so-called alts for themselves, but it's possible. And it's commonplace.
• Alts are even more commonplace in OpenSim. For starters, you can have multiple avatars with the same name on multiple grids. Besides, there are fewer obstacles in creating alts, even on the same grid. In OpenSim, it's even more common to have alts for various purposes.
• As indicated in the first link, one out of three male users of virtual worlds have female main avatars.
• Also, as indicated in the first link, one out of ten female users of virtual worlds have male main avatars.
• Again, they may always have alts. Just because a guy has a male main, doesn't mean he doesn't have at least one female alt somewhere.
• According to estimations, behind every other female avatar in Second Life and OpenSim, there's a male user.

If you don't believe any of this: I personally know a whole bunch of female OpenSim avatars with guys behind them. In three cases, it's blatantly obvious: Two of them have weekly DJ gigs, the third one DJs on particular occasions, and all three announce by voice. In all three cases, there are guys talking. Only one of them has a male DJ alt, but you have to address to his female main for song requests.

It becomes blatantly obvious that remaking your real-life self in Second Life and OpenSim is not only not the primary goal, but undesired once you start customising your own avatar. Unlike other virtual world platforms, Second Life and OpenSim don't do this in some avatar appearance editor with nothing but switches and sliders, nor do they rely on imported monolithic avatars à la Ready Player Me. There is no way of scanning yourself or even only importing a photograph of your face and using that for your avatar.

Instead, you have to piece your avatar together. And you have to acquire these pieces into your inventory first. Said pieces were all made by users as opposed to being supplied by the same people who develop the worlds.

You need a body. You almost always need a separate head. You need a set of skin textures. You need hair. And that's just the basic building blocks; I'm not talking about clothes and accessories yet.

Now look at what you can get. Everything is geared towards young, beautiful, sexy. Where's the chubbier stuff? Where's the elderly stuff? In fact, where's the normal stuff? You may discover variants of female mesh bodies or add-ons for female mesh bodies with more realistically-sized breasts, usually marketed as something like "petite". But since everyone is used to standard big boobs, many users consider these bodies not realistic, but underage and their users potential paedophiles.

Why is there no more normal stuff? Because there's too little demand for it. It simply isn't worth making. Go figure. And remember that all these bodies, these heads, these skins, this hair and all the clothes and accessories for your avatar come from the community.

In fact, one reason why so many guys have female avatars, often even female main avatars, is because you've got many many more customisation options for female avatars, especially clothes. Both Second Life and OpenSim are full-blown menswear ghettos.

It's partially a vicious circle and partially self-fulfilling. It's commonly said that women basically need a walk-in wardrobe whereas a guy needs one shirt, one pair of jeans and one pair of shoes. But often, the reason why male avatars rarely change their outfits is because they don't have that much to choose from in the first place. Menswear is considered not worth making at such a variety.

So while men are more inclined to outfit their avatars once and then leave them like this for all eternity whereas women are more inclined to "play Barbie" giving their avatars a different outfit each day, there certainly are guys who want to be virtual dressmen. And if they can't "play Ken" with a male avatar the way they want, they resort to "playing Barbie" instead and getting themselves a female avatar.

Of course, there are many other reasons to make an opposite-gender avatar. Women may want to avoid sleazy guys by having a male avatar. Both may want to experiment with how an opposite-gender avatar is made, or they need one to test opposite-gender clothes and outfits before selling them. Just a few examples.

This is actually one of the nice things about virtual worlds: You can be what you want to be. Your avatar doesn't have to be your digital self. You can choose to try and model it after you, but you've also got the choice not to do that. You can even roleplay if you want to. And if you want to play different roles, many worlds let you create multiple avatars with different identities.

It isn't wise for a virtual world to force its users to have only one avatar and make it a digital copy of their real-life selves. Not because the owners of the world "say so". Not because it's their corporate philosophy. Especially not because it's unimaginable to them that virtual world users would not make their avatars their digital twins.

A vital lesson that virtual world companies need to learn from existing virtual worlds instead of disregarding them entirely and re-inventing the wheel from zero again.