Mortality Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying ISSN: 1357-6275 (Print) 1469-9885 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmrt20 Grievable lives: avatars, memorials, and family ‘plots’ in Second Life Margaret Gibson To cite this article: Margaret Gibson (2017): Grievable lives: avatars, memorials, and family ‘plots’ in Second Life, Mortality, DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2016.1263941 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2016.1263941 Published online: 12 Jan 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cmrt20 Download by: [121.222.244.177] Date: 15 January 2017, At: 08:26 MORTALITY, 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2016.1263941 Grievable lives: avatars, memorials, and family ‘plots’ in Second Life Margaret Gibson School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Based on ieldwork within the virtual social world Second Life, this paper focuses on its Second Afterlife Cemetery, promoting itself as the irst ‘bury your avatar site’. Avatars are symbolically buried and memorialised on this site and so too are the real-life biological deaths of people who may or may not have corresponding Second Life avatar lives and histories. Second Life is a place in which diverse forms of family relationships are created through role-play within games or through other processes such as Second Life adoption agencies and classiied advertisements where residents seek out others to enter into family role-play relationships. Second Life role-play families are sometimes inclusive of real-life biological family members so that a type of blended family emerges also inclusive of non-biological Second Life role-play family members. Second Life is thus a place in which complex digital kinship systems operate, informing its bereavement and memorial culture. In examining the complexity of gender structure, relationships and family ‘plots’ of memorials, this paper argues that a biological death in real life while deceasing a second life does not amount to the loss of one life. Second lives are partially independent of the life behind the screen and may indeed challenge the assumption that the corporeal, ontological gravitas of physical real-world existence is the only way of life that really matters for grieving and remembrance. The activity of memorialising a second life based on avatar sociality and embodiment, acknowledges and gives value to a computer-mediated, screen-based way of life with its particular formations of identity and practices of relationship. It can be independent socially of real-life relationships and mourned on its own terms for what it meant to others in this avatar-embodied world. Avatars; families; gender; memorials; second life; grievable Introduction The 3D virtual social world of Second Life was publicly launched in June 2003 with its currency of Linden dollars recognised on the global Stock Exchange in 2005. As an open social world (Boellstorf, 2009; Boone, 2007; Johnson, 2010) anyone can join Second Life for free, create an avatar, form social and sexual relationships, promote commercial interests, attend university classes, explore and authorise alternative versions of self, lifestyle and ways of being. In online social world terms, Second Life is no longer new and might be best CONTACT Margaret Gibson margaret.gibson@griffith.edu.au © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 M. GIBSON characterised as a mature virtual world with a predominantly middle age demographic. In its lifetime, Second Life is a place marked by signs and histories of loss and remembrance. Many residents are socially deceased by long-term absence, by the reality of biological death, or by an act of ritual departure such as symbolically killing one’s avatar. While an avatar cannot survive without the bodily consciousness that is its necessary animus, a SL ‘social’ death can occur before and separately from a RL biological death. The impact of this social death (without or without a biological basis for this death) can be signiicant in that it provokes memorials, which speak of loss, sadness and phrases such as ‘soul-mate’ or ‘love of my life’ (discussed later). Second Life has many types of death commerce, bereavement support and remembrance ritual. This includes just some of the following: bereavement counselling and support groups; funeral homes providing caskets and hearses; memorial events linked to remembering deceased residents; charity fundraisers for diseases that have caused the death of family and friends; memorials and memorial sites speciic to gaming communities; sub-cultural identities, war histories, celebrities and real-world tragedies; funerals services within religious and non-religious communities and congregations; and celebrations of life held at biographically meaningfully sims (private homes, beaches, parks, bars, etc.). This paper is based on ieldwork and focuses on the Second Afterlife Cemetery promoting itself as the irst ‘bury your avatar site’. Avatars are symbolically buried and memorialised on this site but so too are the ‘real life’1 biological deaths of people who may or may not have corresponding Second Life avatar lives and histories. While these binary terms ‘real life’ and ‘second life’ (hereby RL and SL)2 are problematic they are deployed because they are the pervasive vernacular of SL resident discourse. SL and RL necessarily intersect through computer screens, so this category distinction is best understood as part of the fantasy and promise that SL provides for participants who are named as residents. For some residents the distinction signiies an investment in keeping life behind the screen, and life on screen, as separate as possible for the purposes of fantasy, experimentation and freedom. Therefore, privacy and anonymity can be highly valued and protected. And yet for others, there is already the mixing of RL and SL lives and relationships through the computer screen. In addition, SL relationships formed initially through anonymity can develop into non-anonymous, of-screen as well as further on-screen social media connections.3 In examining the complexity of gender structure, relationships and family plots on this particular Second Life memorial site, this paper argues that a biological death in real life while deceasing a second life is not the same deceased life and does not amount to the loss and grievability of one life. Second lives are partially independent of the life behind the screen and may indeed challenge the assumption that the corporeal, ontological gravitas of the physical real-world existence is the only way of life that really matters. In his ethnography of SL, Boellstorf warns against the reductionism which equates and collapses SL into RL: ‘The sociality of virtual worlds develops on its own terms; it references the actual world but is not simply derivative of it’ (2009, p. 63). The concept of ‘grievable lives’ associated with Judith Butler’s work has focused on the non-recognition and ritual exclusion of queer identities and bonds of love within families and wider hetero-normative culture (2004b, 2009, 2011). Butler’s work also addresses the politics of war and the symbolic, politically calculated exclusions of grievability in the representation and construction of ‘others’ as non-human or barely human (2004a, 2009). The human is thus a touchstone in Butler’s stylistically circuitous analytics for the political, MORTALITY 3 cultural and legal demarcations of recognised lives/subjects for political and media rites of grievability.4 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Butler’s work has generated further debate, inviting critique of the anthropocentricism of her work in its exclusion of animals as grievable lives (Stanescu, 2012; Taylor, 2008). While Butler’s contribution to the scholarly terrain of mourning is important, it has perhaps overshadowed another iteration of the politics of grievable lives and histories through Kenneth Doka’s work and concept of disenfranchised grief (1999). As a specialist of the psychology of grief, Doka identiied ive ways in which grief is disenfranchised in social life: The relationship is not socially recognised; the loss is not socially recognised or is hidden from others; the griever is not socially recognised; the circumstances of the death or deaths contribute to stigma and negative judgment by others; and inally, the ways individuals or groups grieve breaches the ‘grieving rules’ of the dominant culture. (Doka, 1999). Doka’s concept provides a critical lens on the social and symbolic regulation of grief in terms of who or what counts as a loss personally, communally and publicly. The second lives of deceased persons – deceased in both RL and SL – can also give rise to a reversal of an assumed natural hierarchy of value in RL. For some persons, SL provides arguably more life, and a better quality of life than RL because circumstances of illness, disability and socio-economic disadvantage place limits on social interaction, forms of embodied experience and lifestyle. Bloustien and Wood’s ethnographic research on disability and SL provides an important insight into the airmative role of SL in providing a space of play, visibility, mobility and fantasy for individuals whose RL embodiments and subjectivities are normatively conigured as lacking, placed within ‘the tragic view of disability’ (2016, p. 8). The ‘choice and agency’ (2016, p. 11) and ‘protean nature’ of the SL avatars authorises modes of being which disrupt ixed, singularised and reductionist constructions of self and embodiment (Bloustien & Wood, 2016). Surprisingly, there is little published research on SL’s commemorative culture even within Boellstorf’s intellectually rich ethnography of this social world (2009). Anna Haverinen’s doctoral thesis Memoria Virtualis: death and mourning rituals in online environments provides fascinating, new and important ethnographic research into Second Life memorial culture. Her research, like mine, also demonstrates the deep connections in role-play relationships. In one of her case studies, Haverinen describes a group interview at a memorial site, a cave, once the home of a deceased role-play friend from a Gorean community. The creator of the cave, Anjali, told Haverinen about how the site opened up from being the memorial to its deceased former resident to include many deceased friends and family: ‘When Anjali lost her actual parents in the oline world, she decided to dedicate the cave to all (virtual and actual) friends and family who passed away. It became a symbolic “family crypt”’ (2014, p. 142). This evocative idea of a digital family crypt also ties in to Haverinen’s larger thesis concerning the value of online memorials as ‘family legacies’ (2014, p. 135). SL memorial culture is also featured in wider studies focused on heritage sites and material memories (Harrison, 2009) and the study of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Witnessing History: Kristallnacht–The November 1938 Pogroms reproduced within as virtual 3D experience (see Stougaard-Nielsen, 2010 unpublished; Trezise, 2012). These projects on SL memorialisation unlike Haverinen’s, and my own research, do not focus on a vernacular memorial for ordinary lives, lost and grieved. However, vernacular memorials have been a key focus in the study of online memorial culture since the 1990s emerging with Sofka (1997) and later Roberts and Vidal (1999–2000) identiication of the extension and shift of mourning and memorial 4 M. GIBSON culture beyond physical geographies of space–time convergence. Social media memorials such as Facebook, MySpace and other dedicated web memorials have also brought to light the often complex, global geographies of friends, family and colleagues constituting the deceased’s network (Brubaker & Vertesi, 2010; De Vries & Rutherford, 2004; Dobler, 2009; Haverinen, 2014; Maddrell, 2013; Moss, 2004; Roberts, 2004a, 2004b; Roberts & Vidal, 1999–2000). Transnational networks of relationship, bonds of love and desire (e.g. SL marriages) are also a feature of SL memorial culture. Furthermore, social media’s capacity to bring together disparate connections to the deceased provides diverse channels for storytelling, grieving and remembering. It is through social media that continuing bonds with deceased persons are also maintained – a signiicant and continuing theme in web-based memorial research (Brubaker & Hayes, 2011; Carroll & Landry, 2010; Degroot, 2012; Hutchings, 2013; Kasket, 2009, 2012; Maddrell, 2012; Marwick & Ellison, 2012; Mitchell, Stephenson, Cadell, & MacDonald, 2012; Musambira, Hasting, & Hoover, 2006–2007; Nager & de Vries, 2004; Pantti & Sumiala, 2009; Sofka, 2009; Walter, Hourizi, Moncur, & Pitsillides, 2011–2012). Method In November 2011, I began the irst stage of the research process with the creation of an avatar and initial survey of community forum posts. I examined forum archives gathering data on discussion threads using key words such as death, grief, property, bequest, remembering, memorials and funerals. This yielded valuable research and served to frame topic questions in generating my data through forum post questions. In 2011 and 2012, I posted questions in the community forum about funerals, the value of virtual property after a RL death (one’s own or loved-one’s virtual property who are members of SL), mourning, grief and memorials. This generated some useful responses and discussion threads as well as advice on places to visit and people to contact. The second stage involved more active immersion as an avatar presence within SL by visiting memorial sites, visually documenting these sites through photographs (using the SL dashboard tool) and screen shots, and systematically taking notes and narrative descriptions about speciic memorials across a range of sites. It also involved contacting people who had created memorials to request interviews via private chat, that is, one-on-one realtime text communication. Almost everyone I contacted about their memorials was willing to tell me the story behind it and this includes twelve responses from an initial 15 interview requests. In requesting an interview I wanted to ind out who the deceased were, their relationship to them, why they created the memorial, whether or not the subjects visited the SL cemetery and, if they did, when and how often they did so. The conversational process while framed by these questions was open-ended in the understanding that it is my task to learn from residents who have created these memorials. These communications often demonstrated that memorials to avatars should not be interpreted at face value. In other words, what a memorial appears to be based on – its imagery – is not always decipherable in terms of the possible identity of deceased and/or relationship conigurations of the memorial. For example, the memorial to ‘S’ (discussed later) is dedicated to a young woman who had many SL families but this multiplicity of virtual kin can’t be gleaned by the information on the cemetery plot alone and requires further investigation. This is perhaps true for all cemetery plots whether virtual or in the physical world where there are hidden, untold, MORTALITY 5 forgotten or even prohibited relationships of signiicance behind the conventions of acknowledged and inscribed relationships. I recruited by way of instant messages (IM), and contacted persons renting plots, communicating my research details and requesting an interview. The respondents usually suggested a day and time to talk. Sometimes this meant meeting at the cemetery plot they rent, their SL home, or communicating via private chat. Private chat was the most common option and sometimes this was mixed with meeting face-to-face in avatar bodily terms at the cemetery. Establishing rapport didn’t necessarily align itself to any one of these modes of contact. In some ways I found private chat more intimate and open because there was no virtual body to frame the perception of either party. Like most interviews, some participants were just more comfortable, forthcoming and narratively adept than others.5 In representing the interview participants, as well as the deceased people they talk about, I have protected anonymity by allocating letters (capital letters) instead of using SL names. This practice recognises that online pseudonyms ‘function exactly like real names and should be treated as real names’ (Kozinets, 2010, pp. 144–155) and thus require privacy protection (Hine, 2008, p. 265). While almost all participants were not concerned about the use of their SL names one interviewee was concerned about privacy. In representing my professional research status in SL I sought to construct my avatar MargieG with a look that limited, as far as possible, the prevailing body norms of highly sexualised embodiment. I chose to be gendered female in accordance with my RL identity and in correspondence to the disclosure of my professional identity required by my university research ethics approval conditions. I constructed my appearance choosing clothing that was preppie in style from the possible clothing and hairstyle options from the female newbie (new resident) kit. Over time, I have modiied my appearance as part of more immersive engagement. Description of ieldwork Created on the 28 March 2008, the Second Afterlife Cemetery identiies its purpose as follows: The Second Afterlife Cemetery is the irst ‘bury’ your avatar cemetery, as well as a place to make a memorial in honor of a loved one from Second Life or from Real Life. The cemetery is located within Parks and Nature and has a site rating of M for moderate. All SL sites have geographical markers of location, land size and a category theme. A rating system partly serves to identify geographies mapped by sexual activity or other imagery sometimes linked to niche/sub-cultural identity groups. Avatars also have a rating preference – General, Moderate or Adult – indicating their lifestyle preference in SL. I sought to experience SL social geographies of death and grief as one might when visiting physical RL sites and so spent repeated hours walking through cemeteries and memorials, pausing, reading, sitting and listening. As an avatar my negotiation of these spaces involved watching myself walk around and approach cemetery plots and memorials, dodge or walk through trees, look at birds, butterlies and other animations of simulated nature. Occasionally I noticed avatars at the Afterlife Cemetery standing or sitting near a memorial. Sometimes 6 M. GIBSON I approached people and at other times held back and observed. I was not always welcome when I approached people and I learnt to be more respectful of privacy and recognise that some visitors are grieving. At times an avatar-person would allow me to talk to them but on many days I would not run into anyone by chance. It was usually only after I had contacted and subsequently talked to someone about the memorial they rent that I might ind them at the cemetery looking to ind me for further conversation. I also photographed my movements in order to visually document the style and aesthetic characteristics of graveyard memorials, the representation of relationships and avatar identities mourned in these spaces. As an avatar not particularly skilled in seamless mobility, I keenly watched MargieG on screen moving in space and, through error, became aware of how norms of respect for burial grounds structured my spatial practices. For example, I would quickly step back from standing on a grave. Unlike non-3D cyber-memorials and cemeteries located on Internet servers – the basis of most research to date – the researcher of a 3D virtual social world (or game) is an embodied presence acting within and upon an environment that can only be encountered in an avatar projection of bodily presence. While there is a uniformity to all plots in terms of their spatial demarcation within lowlevel metal railings or stone borders, there is diversity too in regard to who is mourned and objects used represent the identity of the deceased (RL, SL or both) and also create an atmosphere of comfort at the grave. Typically one inds memoriam cards, photographs, video-streamed images projected from headstones or virtual monitors, lowers, lit candles, resting benches, blankets on resting benches, toys, teddy bears, birds, butterlies, musical instruments and other objects distinctive to the deceased’s SL and/or RL identity. Rented and available cemetery plots mark this deathscape and, as one approaches a plot, information about who rents it is shown through text information hovering over the plot’s surface.6 Many memorials and cemeteries including the Second Afterlife Cemetery create atmospheres of sound movement with wind blowing in trees, birds lying and chirping around plots and, on a number of sites, background music – which is a radio broadcast free of advertisements – is an integrated, whole-of-site feature. The northern hemisphere is the default setting co-relating SL to real-world seasonal climates and associated nature-based imageries in the Second Afterlife Cemetery. The second afterlife cemetery This section presents an overall snapshot of the site survey data supported by more detailed information on a small selection of plots (5 in a sample of 12 interviews) based on conversational text data. The 12 interviews were made up of 9 women and 3 men – this gender imbalance is representative of the fact that more women compared to men do the work of memorialisation (both oline and online) across a greater range of relationships. While men in SL typically memorialise their mothers, fathers and wives, women will memorialise fathers, mothers, husbands, close friends, sons, daughters, deceased babies, siblings and so on. This gender diference is taken up later for discussion. Up until 15 January 2015, my surveying of the site captured memorials that have existed for less than nine days while others have existed since the very creation of the site in 2008. At the main entrance to the Second Afterlife Cemetery visitors are ofered a history of this site through a notecard which reveals that the cemetery creators initially thought the MORTALITY 7 site would be useful for people wanting to escape stalkers or symbolically enact their SL departure through burial. The original purpose of the cemetery was soon overtaken by other purposes and needs as the notecard explains: At a community drum circle back in early 2008, a group of us were talking about running businesses in Second Life. It came to be that there might be a need for a cemetery as a place to bury your avatar in the event that you were being stalked and needed to leave. It was a place where people could go to check if they had not seen you online in a long time. So, it was more of a quirky, fun type atmosphere in the very beginning. But, it soon became evident that there was more of a need for a place for people to make a memorial to an avatar who had died in Real Life, or for avatars that needed to leave Second Life for personal reasons. Those left behind needed a place to show that those people mattered, that they were more than mere pixels, and they were not forgotten. (Notecard, History of Second Afterlife Cemetery: 22 June 2011) In the main cemetery I documented 74 plots with a total of 82 identiiable deaths recorded on these plots. Two plots of the 74, while counted over all, have been excluded from any further content mapping as they do not provide any reliable demographic information in terms of the deceased memorialised or information about the person renting the plot because it has been made private (blocked from view). The total of 82 deaths already excludes these two plots from the sample description. There is an excess of deaths-to-plots because some plots include multiple deaths – sometimes two SL deaths or a combination of SL and RL deaths who may be diferent people. The 82 deaths also include animal memorials – mostly cats and dogs and one horse is memorialised within a larger animal memorial of two cats. Six of the eight animals are RL animal deaths and two are avatar SL pet deaths (both dogs). There is only one memorial to a celebrity – the late comedian and actor Robin Williams (he is memorialised elsewhere in SL as are other celebrities). There is also one memorial where the identity of the deceased is possibly a SL animal character – a furry – and the gender of the deceased unclear as the name Ash could be male or female. In this case, and others, where identity markers are not clear, I have placed the memorial in the category of indetermine.7 Almost all of the plots are in the language of English with the exception of one memorial each in Italian, Spanish and German. The majority of memorials to RL deaths were to parents and grandparents (Figures 1 and 2). The cemetery includes both RL and SL deaths and sometimes both of these deaths are included in the plot information so that the SL date of birth and death, and the RL date of birth and death are documented together. Often one will not see the RL date of birth but only the RL death date in these examples. The SL birth and death date is almost always documented when it is just an avatar death that is memorialised. Sometimes the RL date of death serves simply to indicate that this avatar’s disappearance from SL is based on biological death and not some other possible reason. Even when this biological reality is indicated, it is most often the SL identity that dominates the story of the memorial. Sometimes it is only a RL bereavement that is memorialised and sometimes it is only SL death. These recognitions depend on who is being memorialised and if they are SL residents or the RL family and friends of the SL residents who have created the memorial. Memorials and family plots In SL there are family plots that are ‘chosen families’ (Weston, 1997) and there are also ‘blended families’. By blended families I mean family conigurations where RL kinship based on blood or ainal ties combine with elective ainities from SL family role-play relationships. 8 M. GIBSON Figure 1. Second afterlife cemetery entrance. Figure 2. Winter in the second afterlife cemetery. Blended family thus captures the very blending of ‘of-line’ family relationships with online SL chosen role-play families. Kate Weston coined the term ‘chosen family’ in relation to her research on gay men and lesbians who forge a family group amongst their closest friends and lovers. These elective ainities often emerge out of circumstances of rejection and homophobia from families of biological origin. The absence of family acceptance of sexuality and same-sex bonds of love are motivating factors for creating elective families. These motivations may be part of some SL chosen families but further interview research would need to ind an explicit connection. It is quite common in SL for people to choose to become someone’s mother or father, aunt or uncle, brother or sister and for people to seek out parents for their own role-play as child. This might be done through adoption agencies or through classiied advertisements where people seek others interested in family role-play relationships. SL chosen families can also incorporate a range of sexualities and complex kinship structures. MORTALITY 9 SL children might be of a similar or older age than their SL parents but this RL biological construct does not matter to those involved as it is about playing a role for fun or to fulil a need or perhaps a bit of both. The desire to be fathered or mothered or to be a mother or father may have complex sources of need in RL biographical situations or histories. In chats, I heard a story of family violence, stories of serious illness and disability. One interviewee ‘MB’ spoke about the SL family she is a part of in a role of grandmother to the woman for whom she created the memorial: I chose to do a memorial in a public place as she had diferent moms and diferent families in sl. Sadly they all didn’t get along so I paid for a year for this spot for those to come and see her or say goodbye whichever they chose without any ighting … I made a stone irst but while i was making one my daughter-in-law had begun one and that is the one we chose to use. The memorial location I rented for the next year, I believe it is about 2 K or 3 K [US$8 – $9] can help other’s heal with the loss of her. It was very sudden and very tragic. (07 January 2015) The memorial headstone was used to project streamed video images which included the deceased’s SL and RL relationships and memories of times and activities together. In her forties in RL at the time of death, the deceased woman had a number of SL family ties from her role-play in the game Bloodlines where people are part of vampire genealogies. Visiting this memorial during the Christmas festive season in 2014, I noted a change from previous visits in that it now incorporated presents at the grave. Changing objects at cemeteries signify that the deceased remains socially alive within the context of SL although biologically deceased in RL. The deceased woman in RL was housebound living in fear of her estranged RL male partner. SL was a safe place where she could socialise and gain valuable support from her many SL families. I found out the circumstances behind this family plot in text chat with the deceased’s SL grandmother ‘MB’ who wrote: ‘S’ was my SL granddaughter. She was loved and cared for by many. She had a few moms here in SL. Many sisters and family members. The end of September she went missing NO one could reach her, not by phone, not by text, no skype and she just wasn’t here. It was very unlike her so we started searching. A week maybe after her disappearance it was found [sic] a news article close to where she lived. Her estranged husband was wanted by the police as she was found in her living room dead. He was on the run from the police and later apprehended. I didn’t know much more than that as I wasn’t in contact with her rl family. (07 January 2015) Another memorial that stood out for its representation of the deceased was one with many images of a young female child. In one particular image a young girl is wearing a party dress, hair in pigtails and she carries a doll. This is a fairly common SL female child image that can be interpreted as stereotypical in its signiiers of gender normativity. I contacted the person who rents this plot to ind out the nature of this particular family. The memorial is dedicated to a woman who played this role of a child and belonged to a SL family which included her RL sister and RL daughter (both adults). The man who created the memorial – ’G’ – was a role-play father to all of them. In SL they are all siblings to each other while in RL they are relationships of sisters, aunt, mother and daughter. The deceased died at the age of 67 and in RL she was biologically older than her SL father’s RL biological age. The conversation with ‘G’ revealed that the deceased sufered from terminal cancer and SL was where she had fun in role-playing and spent time with family as a blending of both RL blood ties and SL chosen family members. ‘G’ also disclosed that he is part of other SL families as a father. He stated that this role ‘is something I am good at’. In our chat he wrote that the deceased ‘was not just my SL daughter but in RL she was my friend and family’ (10 January 2015). 10 M. GIBSON The next memorial rented by ‘W’ includes three deaths: the RL death of ‘W’s’ grandmother; and her two best SL friends. ‘W’ visited the memorial when I was there one evening (my RL evening) to have a chat. She brought along her four SL sim children in strollers – two girls and two boys. It was on the day after the terrorist attack in Paris (7 January 2015) and her avatar had Je Suis Charlie above her head to publicly indicate, in SL, her solidarity with the RL journalists murdered at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo magazine. In our chat, ‘W’ expressed sadness not just about the attack in Paris but about the loss of her best friends both of whom died (it seems) three months apart. One of these friends ‘A’ was a SL neighbour introduced to her by another neighbour. She met her other best friend ‘D’ in a SL gay nightclub and called him her ‘soulmate’. She described ‘A’ as ‘the love of her life in SL and RL’ and he died overnight because of a ruptured aneurysm. It is believed that ‘D’ died from a large tree crashing on him while he was landscaping (9 February 2015 SL). ‘W’ has tried to verify with local police where ‘D’ physically lived (the USA, while ‘W’s’ physical location is France) if he is in fact biologically deceased. However, ‘W’s’ sense of really knowing the truth remains unveriied. ‘W’ included her RL grandmother in the SL memorial in order to have a place in which to visit her because in RL her grandmother’s grave is 480 kms away. Her RL circumstances underpin this decision as her RL husband has a disability which keeps her at home looking after him. The other issue she mentioned is limited inances to travel to her grandmother’s grave. SL for ‘W’ also provided a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy and access forms of sociality and lifestyle such as having a nice house. Virtual mobility and virtual social access is an important part of her life which SL makes possible. Both of ‘W’s’ best friends along with her four virtual children formed a SL family. She said in conversation that ‘A’ liked to move around a lot in SL but she has kept, rather sentimentally, the land where she irst met him as a neighbour. I also interviewed women married to SL husbands and men married to SL wives. In one particular interview, a woman ‘RM’ talked about her biologically deceased SL husband who lived in Sweden while she lives in Brazil. She said: We as [sic] married 2 years in SL but didn’t know him in rl … he was a great musician who was very sick. He died in 2011 after 8 days in hospital. Since he died I did the memorial. He will be in my heart forever. He was the most wonderful, amazing, gentlemen I met in SL :)) ‘RM’ said that she thinks about her SL husband (her only husband) everyday and although was never able to physically be with him outside the computer screen – that is, in RL – he was her ‘great love’. In another conversation, I asked the owner/creator of a memorial dedicated to a single avatar death who they were to them. In the initial stage of the conversation, I hadn’t quite caught on that the memorial was to her own avatar ‘killed of’ and buried in order to start a new SL. The owner ‘Z’ sent me her notecard located on her plot which speaks to the community about her second life as she ritualises its ending: These pictures lashing through this frame detail a period of time less than 2 years. I made mistakes, told my share of lies, found a SL family, lost a SL Family and gained another. I have been loved, I have been lost, I have loved and found great friendships. I have had friends and enemies. This grave is dedicated to that life. To all Those [sic] people who enriched that life and THE ONE that made it unforgettable. May you experience all of the same without any of the heartache. Best wishes for your second life. In text chat ‘Z’ explained that sometimes she visits the memorial to her past self because she misses some of that time and the friends she had but she also said that she has lost her MORTALITY 11 RL parents; both are now deceased. The memorial then has many functions and is a place where she can mourn the death of her parents – albeit, in an unmarked way. Gender and memorialisation The gender of avatars memorialised is generally easier to discern compared to other identities such as sexuality. The exact nature of the SL relationship to the person memorialised can also be diicult to decipher when based solely on memorial textual information and visual signiiers. As the examples already discussed suggest, it can look like a RL family relationship is being memorialised when in fact it is a SL chosen family relationship. The gender of avatars is also not always clear when names seem gender inclusive or gender neutral and there are no other collaborating identity markers such as photographs. I often searched through the SL database of proiles to determine gender based on other available information. The charts below show a fairly even number of SL and RL death memorials with a small proportion of these combining the recognition of both ‘lives’ (Table 1). The even distribution of representation of SL and RL deaths in the cemetery shows the extent to which SL relationships have their own value, existing as distinct lives lost and remembered solely within the context of SL itself. SL is where avatars come into existence and thus, in some sense, they belong to the virtual ‘earth’ from whence they came. In interviews I asked people why they chose to memorialise a RL family member who was not a resident of SL. Responses generally focused on the inexpensive nature of a virtual memorial, the ease with which it can be visited for quiet relection and grieving, and the opportunity to create a shared place for other SL friends and family to visit. These kinds of responses are consistent with research by Vidal and Roberts, Roberts (2004a, 2004b), Maddrell (2012) and Haverinen (2014) on web memorials (Tables 2 and 3). Table 3 represents the types of memorials on the site according to how the deceased is identiied and how this is connected to where they have lives. Mostly, the identities of SL Table 1. Memorial demographics by death represented/recorded. RL death only 32 SL death only 32 RL and SL deaths both recorded on a single plot 9 RL animal deaths 7 SL animal deaths 2 Total deaths 82 Table 2. Memorial gender demographic (excludes animals). Female Male 29 40 Indeterminate gender 4 Table 3. Gender demographics according biographical-identity location(s) of deceased memorialised. Female RL only 14 * Female avatar only 20 Female SL/RL 6 Male RL 20 Includes animals and indeterminate gender in either RL, SL or both. Male avatar only 4 Male SL/RL 5 Other* 13 12 M. GIBSON and RL stand alone as separate lives that can be acknowleged on their own terms. When there is information about the RL death or identity of the deceased it is often minimal when combined in the SL memorial proile. This recording of the RL date of death acknowledges that this memorial is underpinned by biological death. This in turn signiies that the deceased is not just a single avatar-person who has passed away but also a RL person whose other life – RL – has also deceased. Avatars do not biologically die but rather decease as future active persons often (but not always) as a result of a biological death in RL. Summary of indings The recognition of the convergence between RL and SL deceasing by the annotation of both lives on a single plot also signiies that there are at least two deaths for social recognition of loss. In the tables above, the distribution of gender according to where the identity resides – either in RL or in SL – suggests that males in RL relationships are memorialised more often than females in RL relationship contexts. This inding certainly accords with wider demographics of a gender bias towards web memorialising men/males more than women/females (Roberts and Vidal 1999–2000). A key factor in this gender distribution is men’s higher rate of mortality by age relative to women by age. This means that men are not biologically alive to memorialise their wives, partners, sisters or female friends who outlive them. However, while RL men and relationships have a higher memorial representation compared to women the opposite is true in relation to SL residents in the Second Afterlife Cemetery where female avatars outstrip males in their memorialisation. Who is doing this memorialisation is also gendered – signiicantly more women take the time to memorialise overall compared to men in the online world as existing international research shows (Klaassens & Bijlsma, 2014; Musambira et al., 2006–2007; Roberts & Vidal, 1999–2000) and this is also evident in the Second Afterlife Cemetery. Women residents in SL memorialise a more diverse set of relationships to include their RL children, mothers and fathers; RL grandparents; RL and SL female and male friends; SL and RL husbands or intimate partners; and, RL and SL siblings. Men also memorialise, though much less commonly their male friends (both SL and RL), and mainly memorialise their SL and RL wives and intimate partners; RL parents and grandparents; and only one male, in the Second Afterlife Cemetery, memorialised a child whom he had fathered in a chosen family context of role-play (as discussed earlier). And in terms of the evidence on this particular SL memorial site, men also seem less inclined to memorialise their SL or RL siblings. SL vernacular memorials share many of the features of these other web-based memorials with a similar visual and material language in the form of headstones, teddy bears, candles, trees, national lags, messages, lowers, grass, video streamed images and photographs (Haverinen, 2014). They also provide an inexpensive way to locate the deceased in a space or place that can be visited, shared with others, changed and updated (Klaassens & Bijlsma, 2014; Maddrell, 2012; Roberts, 2004a, 2004b; Roberts & Vidal, 1999–2000; Veale, 2004). In a similar way to physical cemeteries, Second Life cemeteries meet the needs of an existing and changing population (Rugg, 2000, p. 262). Furthermore, as ‘spaces for action’ as well as ‘relection and remembrance’, they are enabled to ‘do something’ with their grief (Maddrell, 2012, p. 52) by channelling emotion and creating something in the process. Virtual worlds such as SL are highly meaningful to the lives of individuals whose mobility and sociality is limited by social and/or physical disabilities, serious and often terminal illness MORTALITY 13 (Boellstorf, 2009, pp. 136, 137; Bloustien & Wood, 2016). Lives of-screen, then, may be already marked by loss and grief from existing or unexpected transformations in bodily mobility, mental and physical wellness. While these demographics are important to acknowledge, I am not assuming or simply characterising virtual social worlds (in particular) as compensatory social spaces for these types of RL participant proiles. Nevertheless, at least half of the 12 SL residents I interviewed in conversation had – either in their own RL situation, or in the RL situation of those memorialised, or in both – serious illness or caring responsibilities which has made SL a valuable place in which to be with and for others in meaningful, fun and liberating ways. Conclusion Memorials to RL deceased family and friends can be a way of emotionally relocating the deceased to a place that is meaningful to the bereaved. The activity of memorialising a second life based on avatar sociality and embodiment acknowledges and gives value to a computer-mediated, screen-based way of life with its particular formations of identity and diversities of digital family formations. It can be independent socially of real-life relationships and, as this paper argues, mourned on its own terms for what it meant to others in this avatar-embodied world. Furthermore, the everydayness of computer and mobile-mediated sociality transforms how relationships are formed, fostered and mediated. Online relationships in virtual social or game worlds are often the primary/initial spaces for emergent inter-personal connection. Emotionally investing in connection with others via avatar projections has opened up the statuses of ‘a life’ and, by extension, grievability. The Second Afterlife Cemetery is a social geography of complex burial plots and attendant narratives. The plots reveal as much as they conceal other plot narratives. The stories behind the plot have to be exhumed in order to know whom they represent and what these lives might mean to those who have taken the time to memorialise a second life. The plots in the Second Afterlife Cemetery are also more complex and inclusive of relationship diversity than family plots in oline cemeteries and memorials. In SL, and elsewhere in online culture, boundaries around who memorialises whom and which relationships are recognised or involved in this memorialisation go beyond social conventions limited mostly by blood and marriage ties. In the oline world these ties or bonds dominate cemetery plot culture where it is much less common to ‘bury’ and memorialise a friend or lover. In SL there is already another trajectory – another life – that is opened to memorialisation in ways that repeat but also break with conventional patterns of relationships recognised and plotted through cemetery memorialisation in RL. As Walter suggests, the custodians of memory of the dead are now widened by the afordances of digital technologies and online forms of sociality (2015, pp. 226, 227). The interweaving of RL and SL is very evident in SL through the kinds of memorials that are created revealing degrees of RL inclusion of family and friends within SL social networks and activities. When a death happens in RL it also happens in SL too – it is a connected death but it is not the same death nor is it just one life that is deceased. With or without RL biological death there is the recognition of a social death in SL as residents have departed from the community. This transition into social absence is symbolically and materially marked as a someone who matters. By mattering, the avatar – as a project of the self and projected self – is a life form(ed) that, through memorialisation, is marked with the value of being meaningful and real. 14 M. GIBSON Notes 1. Herein real life will not be put into inverted commas but is recognised as problematic concept throughout this paper. 2. In Second Life it is the practice to annotate as SL and RL and this is followed in this paper albeit with capital letters. 3. Second Life now has links to Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms – part of maintaining economic and social relevance in a networked world. 4. A grievable life is fundamentally linked to rites of justice in Butler’s work. 5. Private chat interviews were sometimes fragmented or cut short if interviewees were attending to other matters such as working or meeting family and friends. Some conversations were spread out over three or four separate chat sessions particularly when rapport was established and ongoing contact welcomed by participants. 6. Like most objects, experiences and property in SL, the cost is inexpensive. For example, USD$1.00 will buy approximately L$250. In the Second Afterlife cemetery, renting a plot is based on a minimum thirteen weeks. The rental cost period moves from 13, 26, 39 or 52 weeks (quarterly) and can continue indeinitely as quarterly rate payments. This 13-week minimum period ranges from L$312 for 10 prims, L$442 for 15 prims and L$572 for 20 prims (See notecard Second Afterlife Cemetery). The cost increase on a prim scale relates to the number of objects used to design the plot. The more complicated and detailed the plot – headstone, bench, blanket, trees, lowers, birds, music, etc. – the greater the volume of prims required and thus the cost increases. The most expensive plot of 20 prims is just a fraction over USD$2.00 for a 13-week rental period. There is no expiration to renting so long as the cemetery continues to exist as a SL geography and SL as a whole continues. 7. By including this small number of plots in this category construction, I am acknowledging that these memorials matter – they have been created by someone and thus mean something to one or more residents of SL. Disclosure statement No potential conlict of interest was reported by the author. Notes on contributor Margaret Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, Griith University, Australia and a member of the Griith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. 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