COM 125 - Entry #2: Second Life - A Reality or a virtual game?

Second Life.

There was quite a lot of hype about it a few months back. I came across this virtual game in an article in Newsweek. It talked about what "Second Life" was all about - kinda like a cross between a networking site like facebook and those games whereby you build your own zoo kinda thing, except that this is modelled after the "real world" whereby 'residents' can acquire companies and buy property and the like - very similar to the real world here. Even their currency (Linden dollars) used can be converted to USD, which is interesting but it is this very fact that make me wonder if the inclusion of this special feature of the virtual game would bring about disastrous effects.

The lure of creating a new identity for oneself is and can be liberating, but it also can be damaging. Damaging to one's life, whereby one is so absorbed with playing their online persona that it takes over their life and they begin to 'live' in the virtual world more so than in the real world and lose sense of reality in turn.

One interesting fact i read about that was related to the introduction of "Second Life" was that a couple actually got engaged and eventually married through the platform for networking that Second Life provides. The article actually stated that the couple fell in love with one another's alter ego first, and eventually the person behind their on-screen personas. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that true love can happen through this, or any online social networking site for that matter. It's just fake and unnatural cos one can post anything they want and appear in the specific or present an idealized image of themselves through these networking sites. How someone can say they love someone they just met online (like a total stranger) does not make sense to me. Don't you have to know that person and be able to observe or at least interact with him/her for awhile before being able to get what he/she is about? Finding love online? I really don't believe in that. But, oh well, to each his own.