FirstLife, SecondLife, And The People Who Love Them Too Much

If you haven't seen the FirstLife website parody of SecondLife - go look. It's funny on a few different levels. Webomatica's 'Second Life Parting Thoughts (And Shots)' is less funny, yet with some of the same points.

First, it is funny because some people do seem to use SecondLife as a substitute for First Life - the real world - and it most certainly is not a substitute. If it were, you'd be able to eat in SecondLife - but instead there seems to be a 'Hungry Ghost' aspect for some people:

...the torture of the hungry ghost is not so much the frustration of not being able to get what he wants. rather it is his clinging to those things he mistakenly thinks will bring satisfaction and relief.

On another level, it is funny that someone who was trying to make a point spent so much time validating SecondLife through mimicry that it has only added fuel for the media. Of course, within SecondLife one hears people quip often enough about 'ThirdLife', where people will be liberated from 'FirstLife' and 'SecondLife'. It's a joke, but again it is funny because some people take SecondLife too seriously - and oddly, I'm not talking about the businesses that enter SecondLife or are already in SL - I'm talking about people. If you've spent enough time within SecondLife, you'll know what I'm talking about. You'll hear someone talking about their SecondLife ex as if they'd been sharing a real bed - the emotion is much the same, the stakes... somewhat different.

Then there are the people who, for all intents and purposes, would not exist without SecondLife. These are the relatively unremarkable people who eek out what they want - celebrity, riches, et al. - from SecondLife to mirror themselves larger than they are within the real world, on the internet, etc - they're easy to spot since they try to use their SecondLife names as a substitute for their real names. In a way that is sad. In another it is amusing.

But there are ways to integrate the real world and SecondLife - very valid ways to do so - which are not technical, which are real, and which do have very real benefits. After all - whisper this on the wind - SecondLife does exist in the real world, and therefore is a part of the real world... but only a part. Discussion, business, exploring our own humanity through less-than-human renditions of ourselves. Sharing ideas, finding people with like interests (even if those interests are people who dress up in Star Trek uniforms and make videos). There is a very real social ability. It was just so with the internet when it started - much of the growth was because people with technical ability who were isolated by geography could transcend their geopolitical limitations and interact with the peer groups which they belonged to.

SecondLife doesn't have awesome graphics. It was only 20 years ago when operating systems were accessible through a command line instead of a GUI. The command line wasn't a replacement for the real world (though many of us seemed to find solace there), but in a way it was an enhancement which permitted some to build the graphic user interface which allowed just about everyone to use a computer.

SecondLife is very unreal in several regards - I would find an ugly avatar somewhat refreshing, but in a twist, I decided not to do that to my own avatars. The water between islands is not something one can sail or swim across in... in fact, it is extremely difficult to get lost in SecondLife unless you have the exact coordinates.

More importantly, a computer monitor is not how one gets a suntan. Trust me, after about 25 years of spending hours a day in front of a monitor - the beach is better. Your avatar exercising will not reduce your risk of heart disease. You can never create another life within SecondLife; we're still limited to sex and glorified turkey basters in the hands of qualified professionals. You can't get the very basic human touch in SecondLife, and a seeing-eye dog will do a blind person no good in SecondLife. Think about it.

There are valid uses of SecondLife, real uses which validate SecondLife itself. Some people can't find these uses, and it may be that this is because in the real world those uses simply don't interest them - the allure of chatting with a skunk from the other side of the world with some contrived body language loses meaning.

Some people reject because of these voids, some try to fill the voids. Some people want to drive cars without having to know how it works - a reality for people now - but when cars were first made it was almost a requirement to know the basics of how a car works. To this day, people who understand how cars work at a distinct advantage over those who do not. Knowledge is indeed power, and claiming ignorance as power is as effective as hitting one's head against a wall - would that some people did that instead of making guttural and verbose writings a plague of idiocy.

Do you need a SecondLife? If you don't have a real life, it is fair to say that you don't have the tools to make an informed decision. Don't expect my avatars of Nobody Fugazi to kiss your prim babies, or ride around in a pixel canoe in a Star Trek uniform, or to have a kitchen where he can't burn himself. But expect him to hang out and gain the benefits of interacting with others who are like minded and who aren't like minded but are reasonable and intelligent enough to look at more than their own perspectives.

Where the true power of democracy is discussion, some choose not to discuss even when they live in a democracy. Where politics is the assertion that one is more dominant than another, people often mistake politics for diplomacy and even for democracy itself. Some think that having a spirit of community makes one socialist and some think having a business makes one an evil capitalist. Some think that their product is so good that everyone should know about it, but fail to realize that our knowing about it does not make it a good product. Some think that being in a virtual world liberates them from ethics, and yet they distinguish their level of ethics with how they behave . Some thumb their nose at authority and wish to be seen as authority... and are upset when others thumb their noses at them. Am I writing of only a virtual world? No, of course not. Can such things be dealt with only in a virtual world? No, of course not. Is it more readily identifiable in a virtual world? Yes, because we literally stand outside ourselves as the default setting.

The more I think about it, the more psychological screening for virtual worlds may become necessary. Of course, it probably should have started with the internet...