Many people know about Second Life. It’s one of the most popular virtual worlds. After writing a recent paper about MMORPGs for a class, I decided I should take a visit to this virtual world for a little while. Although I’ve heard a lot about it in the past couple of years, I have never actually tried Second Life before. Here is my story.

My name? Linwood Waco. I’m quite a handsome fellow. Oh, and so is my character in this game:

Click the pictures for a much larger view.

Like the jeans? I customized them myself. Upon starting the game, I was put into a tutorial mode to quickly teach me how to walk around, change my appearance, talk to others, and fly. I really enjoyed the flying aspect of the game. It’s cool to just be able to fly into the air, and it’s a much quicker mode of transportation than walking or running.

I flew around this little world and found a deserted office building. I decided to sit down and take a look around:

This is me, and see, I’m taking a look around.

The game instructed me of a search feature I could use to find interesting places. There is also a menu that shows you popular places to visit. One such place was called Sintimacy, shown here:

This is not suitable for good girls, folks.
Or me. It’s the truth.

The other day my professor was talking about how everyone has different ideas of “personal space” and these ideas tend to differ from culture to culture. He talked about how even in cyberspace, people have ideas of personal space, and they will get irritated if you violate the space just like they would in real life. To test this idea, I got in someone’s face:

It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

When I walked up to them, one semi-politely asked me, “Um, is there something I can help you with?” I mistakenly took her for an employee of this store, and replied, “No thanks, I’m just looking around.” Since I was still in their face, they both started yelling at me to move and “rolling their eyes.” I know they rolled their eyes because they said, “I am rolling my eyes.” My feelings were crushed by such an outlandish rejection. This was like elementary school all over again. One “feature” I liked about Second Life is that not only can you get in someone’s face, but it seems you can literally push their character around. Hilarious.

So I flew away and decided to visit some other popular place, which happens to go by the name of “FREE SEX PLACE.” This mysterious title made me curious what goes on there, so I “teleported” to the area and instantly appeared. And to my surprise, people were doing “the intercourse locomotion!”

The body isn’t supposed to bend that way!

Scary. Anyway, not wanting to be the social outcast, I tried to fit in:

Mission unsuccessful.

So I leave and look for some place a little more wholesome. To my slight happiness, I do find a go-kart racing track. It was mildly entertaining to drive around, although a bit hard to control. I also saw some cars for sale:

This whole adventure was pretty boring. It’s not fair to call Second Life a “game” because that implies there is some kind of objective, some kind of enemy to defeat. But there isn’t. I don’t even need to feed my character, brush his hair, or floss his teeth. He’s just fine and dandy.

I stumbled upon a little city, and I found a house that had the most beautiful thing I have ever seen:

This made the whole trip worthwhile.

After this, I signed off, and uninstalled the program. I must say, I was mostly bored throughout this whole process. I mean, flying was kind of cool, but it isn’t enough. I know there are many interesting things to do in this world, such as buying land, building property, and all sorts of other things, but this is not my type of thing. I think mowing my lawn in real life is more exciting.

I’ve heard that H&R Block has tax offices in the game to offer real-world tax advice, and I’ve heard many universities even teach classes through this program. But I wonder, is the tax office really much more effective than just talking to someone on the phone? And for universities, wouldn’t the traditional online way of holding classes be much more effective than having to type out the same material to multiple classes online?

To each their own. Virtual worlds are still relatively new, and this is just the beginning. It may be normal for everyone to interact with each other in virtual lands in a couple hundred years. But for now, I’m happy to just focus on my first life.