Department of English

This paper takes on a visceral exploration of virtuality and corporeality in the third-person social-networking arena known as IMVU, which, in fact, is neither an acronym nor an initialism. Unsatiated, we beg the question: What can it stand for? The virtual bodies of metaverses posit the opportunity for virtual subjectivity, but more importantly, the breadth and mutability of such subjectivity. This paper transforms the layout of the essay to bare the uniform of the human body thereby traversing its organs, systems, synchronizations, breaks, and flows. A critical rendition of Operation, this thesis evokes the possible veins of thought that the eccentric IMVU bodies and their movement, or lack thereof, occupy to jumpstart a discourse on IMVU corporeality specifically. This paper is accompanied by a compilation of critical collages made from scrap magazines and printed images that elicits the heart of its argument: Just as the name ‘IMVU’ is only an arbitrary combination of letters, cut and paste from the birth of the virtual world, the collages emulate the breakage and consequential damage of organization and expectation against the body as they dance with deliberation. Users do not hide in the haphazardness and excess of curvature, but revel in it, desiring to be desired in spaces that make room for the worship of stillness and pose.