Doppelgänger

8 billion humans.
67 million SL avatars.

Are we alone?

Are you unique?

Is this my one, true life path?

Do all the SL heads, and all the bodies, in all their combinations, with all the different skins, in all their combinations, multiplied by every possible avatar shape slider setting, equal an infinite number of bodies? Personas? Ways of being?

Can there be two identical humans on earth?

Can there be two identical avatars in SL?
Are there avatar roads less traveled?
Paths not taken?
Lives that could have been lived, but other paths were chosen?

On the 3rd of January 2023 I did something, surprisingly, that I’ve never done before: I googled my own name.

Are there other Kate Nova’s in the world? What would it mean for someone to walk around with my name? Is there only one Kate Nova in all of creation? Or am I simply one small stream that a torrent of water has chosen to follow, and that other waters follow other paths from the mountains to the sea?

In her album United States, Laurie Anderson talks about having her palms read. Everything the palm reader told her was wrong. She said she felt like she was walking around with these “false documents.”

Is another person with my name a false document? If someone goes to LeLutka and buys “my” face, and then to Doux and buys “my” hair, are they a false document? Am I?

if you walked down a dark and hazy alley and came across another person, another avatar, with your same name, or with your same face, what would it mean? How would you feel? Would you embrace them? Reject them? If you hugged them would it be some sort of matter – antimatter annihilation?

The vastness of humankind, and the connectivity of the World Wide Web, mean that you can, as I did starting on the 3rd, actually discover these other versions of yourself. Other versions, that without something like The Web, we would never have any idea existed.

What’s in a name? Is a rose a rose? Is a Kate Nova a Kate Nova? What  makes you you? If you had made different choices along your life path, would you still be you?

A fleshvatar walking the streets of their city has virtually no chance of ever encountering their own doppelgänger. But with the magic of The Web, or the possibilities of a world like Second Life, discovering doppelgängers is not only possible, it is perhaps even probable.

What would you do?

~ Kate