Second Life

In Monday’s lecture Nigel brought the widely disputed online community Second Life to our attention.

Personally I have never considered establishing a Second Life presence, possibly because I’m already finding it difficult enough to cope with my (let’s call it) ‘First Life’. Two of my very good friends however are keen proponents of the virtual world, without allowing it to take over their life. Let me also assure you that, unlike some people might have thought, both of them are perfectly sane and enjoy a healthy social life (in the real world).

Second Life certainly offers them an opportunity to interact with people on a global scale, something the incredibly dull and mono-cultural village they live in seems to deny them.

I’m actually very tempted to make an unduly comparison here. Second Life for some appears to me to serve the same social function as nightclubs do for others. Rather than having an intimate party with close friends at home, many prefer to mingle (in small groups) with complete strangers in overpriced nightclubs. I’m not trying to suggest that both should be considered equal social activities since I don’t believe they are, not least because clubbing requires one’s physical presence.

This leads me to another interesting question raised in Monday’s class: Is meeting (in the sense of getting to know) people online less safe than meeting people in the flesh?

In my opinion this question is slightly complex. Virtual encounters indisputably cannot cause physical pain, i.e. in the virtual world you certainly won’t be (physically) raped, tortured, beaten, killed, etc. On the other hand, I don’t believe virtual contact prevents you from experiencing emotional pain caused by bullying or other forms of emotional abuse. Considering that in extreme cases this might lead to suicide, the answer to the above question seems less straight-forward. It becomes even more complicated when taking into account that paedophiles for example might use virtual communities as a realm to get to know future victims.

Anyway, I’m digressing. There’s one last thing I’d like to mention in regards to Second Life: the reactions provoked by the idea of people spending money on virtual commodities, be that cars or even a piece of land. Contemplating this idea, it occurred to me that we’re probably all guilty of purchasing items we don’t really need. We live in a consumption-driven society in which status (and maybe even class?) is determined by commodities, so why should online communities be different from that? I’m certainly not going to spend my money on virtual commodities anytime soon, but maybe we can regard these communities as a mere reflection of reality and evaluate our own habits and behaviour accordingly.

If, as Rheingold suggests, some virtual communities indeed operate ‘gift economies’,

‘in which people do things for one another out of a spirit of building something between them, rather than a spreadsheet- calculated quid pro quo’ (Rheingold. 1994: 59),

then perhaps we can even learn from them.

Rheingold, H. (1994) The Virtual Community: Surfing the Internet. Minerva: London (Yes, I still prefer reading print editions to online editions)