Furry
Cyberpunk
Steampunk
Jedi – (which by the way is the first most common religion in SL, “the force”)
Startrek

to mention a few – There is some quite amazing content to found in these self run mostly role playing based communities, some of the best in SL.

I have been in SL for a while, and started out styling my avatar realistically, meaning constructing my avatar as close to my RL looks. This must be what you refer to as the Hollywood look. After some time in SL I began wondering why I never met any avatars with an african look. Exploring the skin fashion at several stores I discovered that the look of an avatar with “Hollywood” styling was mostly to be caucasian or mongolic. It took me some effort to find a dark skin, and I never found a body shape that fitted, because the parameters of the avatar body is of caucasian standards. But I found a very fine afro wig.

After experiencing SL with my avatar sculpted as a human body I wanted to find out how SL would be without a body. You can buy or construct bodies to wear, which disguises the human parameters of the avatar so it looks as if your avatar has a non-human form. In that way your avatar can be an animal, a science fiction figur or even an object of some kind. Forming an avatar in this way is done by wearing a costume as your “body”. Sometimes the human limbs protude from the “body”, because you can never get rid of your basic avatar parts.

At the moment my avatar is an electric eye ball with two green limbs protuding. This is because I am exploring the differences between having a virtual body in cyberspace compared to being as disembodied as possible.

I find that many of the citizens in SL have a relationship to their avatars as being some kind of representation of their RL subject; either realistically or as a fantasy projection. Being a ball, as I am currently represented, I am met in a very different way socially than I was used to, having a well proportioned female body. This happens although I am still being met as a female, because of my very common female name. The social aspects of SL is a large part of the world. Therefore I find it very interesting to explore the different avatar representations; these being human, animal or, if possible, disembodied.

When my avatar was styled with an african look, I experienced racism, wich was a very rich experience to me, as I am caucasian in a caucassian society. In this way SL can be used for constructive means in understanding of different cultures.