Second Life is like a virtual community, where people sign up, create an account and become 'residents'. They can interact with other users. The appeal of this is users do not know eachother in real life and therefore can develop an online persona and perhaps do/say things or act how they wouldn't in real life.
In this virtual world, 'resident's can build their own houses and what they look like, i guess this is kind of like the PC game The Sims where the user is in comtrol of their character's actions and interactions with other characters.
An sppeal of Second Life is it is exactly what the users make it for themselves whereas in real life there are more constraints on how people may behave.
According to the website, 60% of users are male and 40% are female. I reckon Second Life is the type of things people could become partially addicted to and become to prefer it to real lfie as they may prefer their online persona and their online relationships. I personally think this is a very unhealthy way to be living. Online interaction can't be the same as real life and I believe people who use sites like this all the time may become reclusive and socially rejected as they are not used to interacting face to face.
I have never used Second Life and I don't think I know anyone who does use it. I think it may just be an excuse for people who aren't very social or dont have many friends in real life to try and feel better about themselves. That is, however, just my opinion. If anyone disagrees or is a resident of Second Life then I would be interested to hear why people would become residents and the advantages of being one.
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2 comments:
Alyson,
This is interesting, I'd never previously heard of this before. It does seem a little unusual and I think I share your concerns of the effect this may have on someone's psychological state if they were to play this for too long. I wonder if any psychology studies have been done on this? I was reading about Sherry Turkle in the Lister book, which seems similar? All the best
Emma
yeah, she basically says about how online interaction gives people the opportunity to play about with their characteristics and aspects of their personalities and basically get away with/ try things they wouldn't in real life
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