Head Hunting on the Internet:

Identity Tourisms, Avatars, and Racial Passing in Textual and

Graphic Chat Spaces
Anggita - Audi - Dena - Kinanti - Raisa
● Despite the claim that the Internet is
a discrimination-free space, race is
present both through the language
and images even when the physical
body is hidden away.
● The Internet is still a stage where
people perform the identity they
want to be seen as (passing) that is
driven by the sense that it would be
safer, or BETTER to be a person of
another race and/or gender.
● This online identity is more
commonly called ‘avatars’.
 what is seen what it turns
out to be
● These identities are build through
texts (nicknames/usernames, bio,
or recently status, captions, etc) and
graphs.
● All to support the idea of yourself
that you want to appear. Sometimes
accidentally including race when
people have assumptions based of
the image you create.
LambdaMOO and Orientalism
LambdaMOO → a network-
accessible, multi-user,
programmable, interactive system
well-suited to the construction of text
based adventure games,
conferencing systems, and other
collaborative software.

In LambdaMOO, users are known to

create their characters
● Defining gender is a central part of the discourse players who choose to
present themselves as “neuter.”
● Gender is an element of identity that must be defined by each player, though
the creators of LambdaMOO try to contribute toward a reimagining of gender
by offering four choices: still, one must be chosen.
● Race, however, is not an option that must be chosen. Although players can
elect to write it into their descriptions it is not required by the programming
that they do so.
● Description of self as a human size
pickle or pot-bellied pig are not
uncommon, and generally are
received in a positive, amused,
tolerant way by other players.
● In contrast, players who elect
to describe themselves in
racially “othered” terms as
Asian, African, American, or
Latino, are often as seen as
engaging in a form of hostile
performance, since they
introduce what many
consider a real-life “divisive
issue” into the phantasmatic
world of cybernetic textual
interaction.
● White people often use the persona of stereotypical Asian guy (identity tourism)
● The psychic motivation behind the pass is explained by Kaja Silverman on her
essay “Back to the Future”
● Users create a personae that they can personally accept
Fantasy Tourism
● Tourism: a metaphor for describing
the activity of racial identity
appropriation in cyberspace.
● Cyberspace is a place where travel
& mobility are featured attractions,
and figures it as a form of travel that
is inherently recreational, exotic,
and exciting.
● Example: enact as a samurai warrior
in LambdaMOO
● Time spent on the internet is a hiatus from
real life → a complete vacation
● The appropriation of racial identity becomes
a form of recreation, a vacation from fixed
identities and locales.
● “High technologies ‘promise ultimate
mobility and perfect exchange and
incidentally enable tourism…’” (Donna
Haraway)
● E.g: Identity tourism in cyberspaces like
LambdaMOO
Identity tourism across both race and gender
● Computer cross-dressing = double
appropriation
● Performances of Asian female personae
brings together virtual sex, orientalist
stereotyping, and performance
● Uses the oriental as part of a sexual lure,
thus using passing performances to exploit
and reify the Asian woman as submissive,
docile, and a sexual plaything.
PROSTHETIC BORDERS

Allucquére Rosanne-Stone

“The activity of online

interaction as a taking
place within a locus, a
Cyberspace?
Cyberspace?
space, a world unto
itself.”
Cyberspace? Cyberspace?
Cyberspace ? world is endowedCyberspace?
This virtual with

Cyberspace? Cyberspace
constant shifting boundaries, frontiers,
and dividing lines that separate it from
?
Cyberspace?
both the ‘real’ offline world Cyberspace?
and its
Cyberspace?
corollary, the world of the physical
Cyberspace? body which gets projected,
Cyberspace ? and performed via
manipulated, Cyberspace?
online
Cyberspace? interaction. Cyberspace?
Cyberspace? Cyberspace?
 Media depicts internet as a
world unto itself with shifting
frontiers and borders that
are contested in the same
way that national borders
are.

“Battle over
borders”
Concerning the
distinction between
public and private.
THANK
YOU