Habbo Race

Race is the final topic for these blogs, and Habbo Hotel has many good examples of exemplifying the differences in race, and how we as players and people interpret it. I think race also can coincide with some stereotypes, which may be viable during this blog.

First off, the best example of race in Habbo is the creation of your avatar. This is one of those games that has every color under the sun for you to choose from when choosing the color of your avatar’s skin. (I of course made my avatar tanner, because in real life I’m cursed with being so pale). They also have many different face shapes, so like we discussed in class today, its not the Barbie syndrome, where they took white Barbie, painted her brown, and called her a black Barbie- same facial features and everything. Instead, Habbo Hotel tries fairly well at being able to create many different races, both make believe and true.

Also, I found that asking what race/ethnicity you are, was a very prevalent question. Any time anyone messages you, you’re either asked your age, sex, and language/race. One boy flat out asked “what are you?” to me. I of course was oblivious to this, and I realized later on he was asking what ethnic background made up me as a person.

Besides this, I also think it’s interesting how any avatar that isn’t white, tends to fulfill some sort of stereotype about said race. Nine out of ten black avatars were wearing baggier clothing, or chains around their neck. Most of the white avatars had blonde hair and were lighter skin-toned. Even reading their speech bubbles, seeing how they wrote sentences, their word usage etc, made the player more aware of the race of the players (again could be considered a stereotype but for this argument, lets pretend its not). My only question after considering Habbo Hotel as the medium for conveying race, does it further fuel our stereotypes we have for races we aren’t a part of? Or not? Explain.

What kinds of races do you see in the virtual world you’re a part of and how does it compare?