Who wants a SECOND LIFE?

SECOND

LIFE

Last thursday, I was able to take a little time to go into second life and to test drive it a bit. After hearing many mixed reviews about this elaborate user-controlled virtual world I was extremely curious. Naturally drawn to games that enable one to act out real-life activities, i was immediately excited to create my own name and pick my own avatar. I really liked how the appearance portion was made to adjust so many features on the avatar, that the creature resulting could look as normal or as odd as the user preferred. I ran into some problems however, from a glitch of some sort that didn't allow me to make certain changes to my avatar. I was also disappointed at how long it took me to take off an unattractive beanie off of my head. Before I begin with all the things i did not like about second life, I must admit that it has great deal of potential and the process of creating a detailed avatar with a home is something that I would enjoy. The ability to fly and to transport to different world is quite amusing and entertaining. I enjoyed how many of the items in the game were interactive however (Now for the components I did not like) I found it very hard to interact with many of the items, because I found it so difficult to even navigate my walking in the game without walking straight past something, falling off of something, or running into someone. I am no computer engineer or web specialist but from what my class members said I believe it had to do with the connection or bandwidth (What is bandwidth exactly?). After our break from Second Life, I was not able to log back in though I am not sure as to why.

The second issue that I have with second life and the #1 reason why I would not actively use the program ( the #2 reason being that I personally do not have any productive reason to use it) is that it is filled with a lot of ill-natured activity and people fulfilling fantasies they would not likely engage in if in reality.

Since second life evolves to the demands of its users, I really wonder how second life began. Was it meant to be a platform where people participated in "illegal" and sexual actions or is that something created solely by its users, branching from hidden desires that law and moral made them unable to openly engage in?

I must say that Second Life signals red warning in my opinion and while no doubt entertaining and interesting it may be it flashes red warning lights to me. Updating one's avatar is only so intriguing for so long. I would venture to say that quite a few user have "stumbled" into Second Life's red light district after subscribing with the intention to initially socialize. I feel it is a platform by which many can become corrupted by spending too much time in the game. As many older people have said, it is not good to be idle. With the exceptions of the academic and business purposed of Second Life I do not see it benefiting anyone in the long term, especially until it is more regulated.