Second Life?

Our this weeks assignment was to explore a virtual site called Second Life. Here’s what we came up to.

Second Life is a virtual role- and communication place (”CMC” computer mediated communication) and it has a realtime chat (”synchronized communication”) and it has over a million users from all over the world so it is a part of a social media, where you can ”meet” new people. You can interact with people via messages or microphones. There is also its own virtual currency, the Linden Dollar, (I found it a little amusing) which is exchangeable with real world currency. Isn't that crazy? So you can actually buy things and make some kind of bisnes with people.

When you log in Second Life you start your journey by creating your own avatar. You can be man or woman or even a dog. But hey, you might have always wanted to be a dog, congratulations, in second life that's possible, or even better.. you can also be a vegetable, mineral, or a combination.(come on like seriously?) Basically anything is possible in second life. You can improve your avatar along your journey.

It seems that Second life is a place where you can actually have a second life, a whole other place to live your life. life what you have created around you. for example you can have a family in real life and you can have a family in second life. 

Second life also have these awesome beaches, pools, discos and nice cars, a very rich way of life. I think people wants to experience that kind of lifestyle if it isn’t possible in real life.

Avatars seemed to be very good looking, men had trained bodies and tattoos, and women were skinny and had also very goodlooking bodies. We thought that they looked a little plastic, and they could be a little more realistic. Based on screenshots they also were having very little clothes on. And there we’re lots of sexual things happening there and even a women giving birth to a baby. So it's safe to say that some of the actions here are things that can happen in real life also but there were also a very disturbing things like a women having sex with some kind of dog? So others things maybe not so realistic...

                                                                          

Of course these kinds of sites have also negativity around them. Maybe one reason is because you can't really know who is behind that avatar, it can be anyone. So you need to be realistic and careful.

Here is one really interesting document about second life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUwD7u7wwcY

-CS