Most of the time when I think about my life I look back and see my mistakes and just try to avoid them in the future. There's drama, there's fun, there's misery, there's love, and there's happiness, what more could you ask for? Well some people think there's more to life than just that. Some people use the website "Second Life" to live a second life. Now I'm not sure if I'm just a simpleton, but I have plenty of trouble keeping my first life straight and not mixing stuff up, how can I expect to lead a whole new virtual life?
Most of the time to get a better idea about how these sites work I'll get a profile on it, however Second Life is something that I'm going to steer clear of. Maybe I just have tunnel vision, but Second Life just seems to be a site where people can live their dreams online in a world without regret or true consequence. I don't see this to be a necessity or even a hobby by any stretch of the imagination. I'd much rather spend my time doing something semi-productive on the computer rather than monitor my imaginary life superimposed on a computer screen.
When I hear the word "Avatar," I normally think of the blockbuster James Cameron film, however avatars are just the bodies through which people live their Second Lives through. Every time I hear "avatar," I think that everyone is 9 feet tall, blue skinned and lives on a planet named Pandora. It just not seem practical to me to have a virtual life to live out your dreams. Your dreams are something that you should strive for in real life, not in some virtual reality like the Matrix. Come on people, isn't one life enough?
I agree that Second Life would be easy to get addicted too, especially if you are unhappy with your real life. But then, why not take action and change it instead of pretending you are something that you are not in a virtual world. I feel that this would just make you more depressed about your true self when you have to leave the virtual world to sleep or eat something every once in a while. The worst part is, people most likely don't realize how into the game they get and would not even realize if they were in fact addicted or obsessed.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I think of people getting really involved in Second Life I keep associating it with World of Warcraft.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder if you folks aren't reifying the metaphor of "second life" here. How would your responses differ if you just thought of it as a different kind of interface to the same social networking functions as Facebook and MySpace?
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