Blog 9: Second Life -- Mine was short-lived

Blog 9

Second Life – Mine was short-lived

I tried to like Second Life, I really did, though after giving it a spin my initial beliefs were confirmed, and my second life is over.

I have known about the program for a while though always thought the concept was cheesy and the implementation weak. Perhaps I am too much of a realist, though I just never quite understood the draw to creating and walking around in a virtual world to meet strangers. This belief is even more magnified when I realized the amount of time people spend doing this and the fact that they actually purchase items using real money in their Second Life.

After signing up online and downloading the program I did the walkthrough tutorial to learn about the controls and different actions in the program. I learned to fly and to walk. I learned how to change my appearance and how to talk to other people, random people, who looked just as lost as me. I saw a little helicopter and I tried to fly it though I was told that I did not own it. This however did not prevent me from getting my character stuck in it. Yes, my Second Life character was stuck in a strangers locked helicopter. I tried so many different actions that failed, as I attempted to get out of the helicopter, the program actually crashed. When I restarted, I hoped that maybe I would not still be stuck, though to much sadness I reentered the world right where I left off. This was good in a way as it finally let me discover how to go to different worlds. I clicked on the first world that popped up as was brought to some strange giant storefront where there were advertisements for different plots of land and people trying to sell different Second Life sexual related items. There were about 10 avatars I could see in this world, though the majority were motionless and non interactive, I imagine there real world counterparts got bored and left their computers.

At this time I decided to try and find more people. I thought where would be a fun place to fly to? Before I knew it I was teleported to Times Square. I walked up from the subway platform to the street level. It was a night setting and the streets were dark and empty. The billboards were not activated, perhaps because no one actually wanted to send the creator some of their Second Life money to post an ad for a product. A lone taxicab drove by, uninterrupted by the lack of traffic. The crossroads of a million lives daily was lucky to have dozen people walk through it today. Not exactly an impressive site.

Perhaps I still don’t understand the lure that brings millions of users to Second Life daily, though for now I think I will stick to chatting with real friends and catching up in real coffee shops.