When Did We Stop Dancing?

When did dancing become uncool in Second Life? 

I don't mean that nobody dances anymore. They obviously do. There are still dance clubs, dance events, dance HUDs and people who happily spend an evening moving around to music.

But something has changed.

And perhaps it is only the beginning of a change rather than its final form.

I first really noticed it last year around August at the The Hotwife Hotel, when on different occasions I asked someone to dance.

The answer was something along the lines of: "Thanks, I don't dance. It's not cool."

Or perhaps it was "That's so noobish."

I don't remember the exact wording anymore. But I remember the feeling. Noobish? Dancing?

When did that happen?

Because once upon a time, dancing was one of the most ordinary things you did in Second Life.

You arrived somewhere, found some music, clicked a dance ball or opened your dance HUD, and started moving. Someone else joined. Maybe you danced together. Maybe you changed dances every few minutes. Maybe you simply stood in a group and let your avatar do something while you talked. 

You can still experience this feeling at Muddy’s today, a place frequented by new players and oldies who often have forgotten to update their avatar and wardrobe in the last years.

Movement was part of being there. Today, increasingly, it seems that simply being there is enough.

From dancing to choreography

There has been a fascinating technological evolution behind this.

In the early days, Second Life dancing was relatively simple. You had the dances that came with clubs or dance systems such as Bits and Bobs. You clicked something, your avatar danced, and that was it.

Then came increasingly sophisticated personal dance HUDs.

Instead of everybody doing the same handful of dances supplied by the club, you could build your own collection. You could decide exactly how your avatar moved. You could create sequences, synchronize with a partner and develop your own particular style.

Today, systems such as the Paragon Hybrid Dance HUD can handle both solo and couples dances, large animation libraries, sequencing, synchronization and precise positioning. In other words, Second Life has never had better technology for dancing.

And yet I increasingly see fewer people actually doing it. That is the paradox.

When movement became a fashion statement

At some point, dancing itself began to change.

The old dances were often obviously animations. You could see that an avatar was dancing.

The newer generation of animations became increasingly sophisticated, subtle and realistic.

And then came the pose. The avatar no longer had to do something. It could simply look like it was doing something.

A slight shift of weight.

A hand resting somewhere.

A particular tilt of the head.

A carefully selected stance.

A slow sway.

A pose that says I am relaxed, attractive and completely unconcerned with the fact that there are 37 people looking at me.

And eventually we arrived at something rather strange: The ideal Second Life avatar increasingly seems to be one that doesn't move very much.

The statue effect

Go to some clubs today and watch the crowd. Not everybody, of course. 

But increasingly there are avatars standing around in carefully constructed outfits, often with highly customized AOs, occasionally changing their stance or animation, but otherwise remaining almost completely stationary.

They are not necessarily inactive.

Their owners may be chatting.

They may be reading local chat.

They may be IMing three other people.

They may be shopping in another window.

But visually, from the outside, something peculiar has happened.

The virtual humans have become statues.

And perhaps that is not accidental. Because in Second Life, appearance has become extraordinarily sophisticated.

Bodies are better.

Faces are better.

Clothes are better.

Hair is better.

Lighting is better.

Animations are better.

Poses are better.

We have spent years making avatars look more human.

And perhaps, at the same time, we have made them increasingly afraid to behave like humans.

When the accessory starts moving

But there is another development that makes this even more interesting. While the avatar itself may be standing almost completely still, something else is often moving.

Over the years, Second Life designers have become extraordinarily inventive at turning objects into extensions of an avatar's personality and appearance.

Cigarettes and cigars are an obvious example. Designers such as Chris Two Designs have created increasingly elaborate smoking accessories that can be attached to the avatar and animated convincingly. Suddenly, standing still doesn't necessarily mean doing nothing. Your avatar can be standing there, beautifully dressed, apparently lost in thought, while slowly smoking a cigarette or cigar.

Then there are the drinks.

A glass held casually in the hand can do almost as much for an avatar's appearance as a sophisticated pose. A drink from a designer such as :::CHICCHICA::: becomes part of the outfit, part of the scene and part of the character. The avatar may not be dancing, but it is doing something.

And then the possibilities become almost comical.

- A purse held in one hand - and a cell phone in the other.

- Dice being thrown and caught.

- A Rubik's Cube nimbly solved one-handed, almost casually, as a display of skill.

- A banana or an egg being tossed into the air and caught again.

And why stop there? There are creators such as Kunst, {geek} and Chris Two Designs producing objects and animations that can turn an otherwise motionless avatar into a tiny stage performer — sometimes even balancing something as absurdly inappropriate as a knife on their fingertip.

At first glance, these things might seem unrelated to dancing. I don't think they are. They are part of the same evolution.

The avatar doesn't necessarily have to move anymore. The avatar only has to perform.

And that performance can be reduced to one carefully selected gesture or prop.

The cigarette says something.

The glass says something.

The handbag says something.

The dice say something.

Even the ridiculous banana or egg says something: They are visual shorthand for a personality.

And this is where Second Life fashion becomes particularly fascinating. The modern avatar is no longer merely wearing an outfit. It is increasingly staging a scene.

The body, the pose, the accessory, the facial expression and the object in the hand all work together. You are not just standing there. You are posing as someone who would stand there like that. 

Which brings us back to dancing. Because dancing is perhaps the least controlled form of this kind of presentation.

You can carefully choose your dress.

You can carefully choose your AO.

You can carefully choose your cigarette.

You can carefully choose the glass in your hand.

You can even choose an animation in which you throw something into the air and catch it again.

But once you start dancing, you surrender some control.

Your avatar moves.

Your body changes position.

Your arms and legs do things you did not individually select.

And suddenly the carefully constructed image becomes a performance rather than a photograph.

Perhaps that is why the transition from dancing to posing is more significant than it initially appears.

The most peculiar thing

There is another detail I've noticed at The Hotwife Hotel: It isn't just that people aren't dancing. They're all looking at the dance floor.

Walk into the club and you can find a whole group of beautifully dressed avatars standing around the perimeter. They aren't moving much. Their AOs may occasionally shift their weight or change their stance. And almost all of them are facing the same direction: Toward the dance floor.

Which is very often completely empty!

Think about that for a moment. A room full of people has gathered around a space specifically designed for dancing. The music is playing. The dance floor is there. The animations are there.

And the people are standing around the edge, watching… nothing.

It is almost like attending a football match where nobody is playing football, while everyone sits in the stadium facing the empty pitch.

Of course, there are perfectly reasonable explanations.

They may be talking in private messages. They may be watching the chat. They may be waiting for someone. They may simply be enjoying the atmosphere. And The Hotwife Hotel is hardly a scientific sample of Second Life.

But the visual impression is striking. The dance floor has become the centre of attention without anyone actually using it.

And I've started noticing versions of the same thing in other clubs too: more avatars standing around, fewer actually moving.

Not everyone. Not yet. But enough to make me wonder whether something is changing.

The music doesn't even require the club

And there is another curious aspect to this.

The music itself isn't really the reason you have to be there. The Hotwife Hotel music stream can be copied and listened to at home or even offline. You don't need to have your avatar standing inside the club to hear what song is playing. You could sit alone in front of your computer, listen to exactly the same music, and never log into Second Life at all.

So why come to the club?

Of course, there are many possible answers. You might want to chat. You might be waiting for someone. You might enjoy seeing the other avatars. You might simply like the feeling of being there.

But that makes the sight of a crowded club where almost nobody dances even more intriguing.

The music can be enjoyed alone. The virtual company is optional. And yet people still come together — only increasingly without actually doing the thing the place was built around.

Perhaps this is another peculiarity of Second Life: the possibility of solitude in company.

You can be surrounded by dozens of people and still spend most of your evening alone — behind your avatar, behind your private IM windows, behind your carefully constructed appearance.

You are there.

They are there.

Everyone is together.

And yet, in a strange way, everyone may still be alone.

So, when did movement become embarrassing?

There is an interesting social pressure here.

A dance animation is not neutral. It tells everyone around you that you are doing something.

And that means you are also making yourself visible.

A ridiculous old dance can be funny. An exaggerated dance can be entertaining. A badly synchronized couples dance can be charmingly awkward.

But all of those things involve a little vulnerability.

A pose doesn't. A pose can be controlled. A pose can be beautiful. A pose can be selected because it fits your outfit. A pose doesn't suddenly make you look ridiculous because your avatar's virtual hips have decided to travel somewhere you hadn't anticipated.

Perhaps this is part of what has changed.

The more sophisticated our avatars become, the more carefully curated they become. And the more carefully curated they become, the less spontaneous they become.

From participation to presentation

This may be the larger cultural shift.

Old Second Life often felt like a place where people participated in things.

Today, parts of Second Life increasingly feel like places where people present themselves.

There is a difference.

Participating means: "Let's dance."

Presentation means: "Look at my avatar."

Participating is messy. Presentation is controlled.

Participating produces movement, accidents, bad timing, strange animations, unexpected interactions and occasionally hilarious failures.

Presentation produces photographs.

And increasingly, it produces carefully constructed little scenes: the perfect outfit, the perfect AO, the perfect pose, the perfect glass, the cigarette between the fingers, the handbag in one hand, perhaps even some absurd object being tossed into the air and caught.

Both have their place. But if the balance continues moving toward presentation, something very human may disappear from the virtual world: spontaneity.

And the technology is making this possible

There is an irony here that I find particularly amusing.

The technology keeps getting better at making avatars move.

Modern dance HUDs can contain enormous libraries of animations and sophisticated choreography. Paragon, for example, explicitly promotes the ability to build sequences and synchronize couples without traditional poseballs.

At the same time, designers are getting better at giving stationary avatars tiny pieces of life.

A smoking cigarette or cigar. A glass. A purse. A handful of dice. A banana. An egg. A knife balanced on a fingertip. The avatar may barely move, but the scene does.

And yet we seem increasingly reluctant to use all that movement for something as simple as dancing. We have solved the technical problem of virtual movement. Now we seem to have developed a social problem with using it.

The strange evolution of the dance

Perhaps the progression looks something like this:

First, we danced. Then we wanted more dances. So we bought HUDs.

Then we wanted better dances.So the animations became more sophisticated.

Then we wanted more realistic movement. Then we wanted motion capture.

Then we discovered poses. Then we discovered that even a stationary avatar could be made to do things.

Smoke.

Drink.

Pose.

Throw.

Catch.

Balance.

And somewhere along the way, the objective subtly changed.

It was no longer: "How can I make my avatar move?"

It became: "How can I make my avatar look good while barely moving?"

The funny thing is that the technological progression didn't make dancing obsolete. It made it better. And perhaps that makes the apparent decline in spontaneous dancing even more interesting.

Perhaps this is only the beginning

I don't think we should declare that Second Life has become a world of statues. It hasn't.

There are still plenty of dancers, clubs where people dance, couples who enjoy dancing together and communities built around movement.

And perhaps what I am seeing is simply a local or generational shift. Maybe other parts of Second Life are experiencing exactly the opposite. But I suspect there is something worth watching here.

The longer Second Life exists, the more its residents become sophisticated consumers of virtual identity.

New users once had an avatar.

Experienced users have an aesthetic.

They know their preferred body.

Their preferred head.

Their preferred skin.

Their preferred hair.

Their preferred AO.

Their preferred poses.

Their preferred photography style.

Their preferred way of standing.

And eventually even movement becomes part of the brand.

Even the things they hold become part of it.

The cigarette.

The glass.

The purse.

The absurd object that gets thrown into the air.

The prop that makes the avatar look as though it has a life even when its owner is sitting behind a computer.

Which raises an amusing question:

If everyone is trying to look unique while using increasingly similar conventions of beauty, fashion and behaviour, how unique are we actually becoming?

So, when did we stop dancing?

Perhaps we didn't. Perhaps we are simply beginning to dance differently.

Perhaps the old idea of dancing — getting together, pressing a button and letting your avatar move — belongs to an earlier, less self-conscious Second Life.

Or perhaps we're witnessing the beginning of something else. A virtual world in which the avatar becomes less a person who acts and more a person who is displayed.

A world where the ultimate sign of sophistication is not knowing how to dance beautifully.

It is knowing how to stand perfectly still.

And that would be a rather extraordinary outcome for a technology that gave us the ability to move anywhere, become anyone and dance without gravity.

We spent twenty years teaching our avatars how to dance better.

Maybe the strange part is that we are now teaching ourselves not to.

And perhaps the strangest image of all is still the simplest one:

An entire room full of beautifully dressed avatars at The Hotwife Hotel. Everyone standing still. Everyone looking toward the dance floor. And the dance floor… completely empty.

Perhaps the question isn't really "Why isn't anyone dancing?"

Perhaps it is: "When did movement become something we have to be embarrassed about?"