I'm sure a zillion blogs about Second Life have been written and many have been forgotten and cast aside. So what could possibly be different about this one? Well, first of all, it's been written by yours truly. Now that right there ought to be worth the price of admission, no? But secondly, this represents in my eyes both a curious adventure and an interesting opportunity to take a peek at the human psyche in the most unusual of circumstances. How many times in your life do you have a chance to start over, I mean truly start over?
Second Life is a long, long way from The Matrix. Others have probably beaten it to death how the graphics are poor, the technology is clunky and crashes and lag have oddly become the acceptable norm. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of people keep coming back over and over again for the opportunity of doing what they can't do in RL, Real Life.
Warning: This blog will make absolutely no sense to you if you do not play or have never played Second Life.
If you don't play golf, if you've never played golf, is sitting around with a bunch of people discussing golf going to be interesting? Heck, are you even going to understand what they're talking about? What's a birdie? A mulligan? Where is the "back nine"? I could go on and on (the list is endless), but I think you see my point. If you don't know the game, why would you talk about it, but more importantly how could you talk about it with any degree of expertise? In fact, you would probably be better to not say anything as your opinion would be so inexperienced, so naive, so uninformed, just what could you possibly say of any worth?
We could collectively come up with any number of other examples. Nuclear physics? I know nothing about that and I will defer to the Einsteins in the crowd. Yes, I know what a nuclear explosion is, but E=mc2 is just Greek to me. Or is that "Geek to me"?
I don't play tennis. While I like Love, I'm afraid that my total lack of skill in the game will mean I'm not going to get any.
So what's my warning? If you have never played Second Life, this blog is going to be meaningless to you. If you have never played Second Life, the situations described in this blog will be unknown to you. The jokes won't be funny. The activities will seem uninteresting. If you don't play chess, what the heck does Bishop to Rook Three mean anyway?
What's a bigger danger? Those who do not play, who have never played are going to attempt to connect SL back to RL. Yes, in exploring the human psyche, there is obviously a connection to us as human beings, but I warn you to be careful in interpreting SL as RL. After all, can you fly in RL? Do you "cam" around in RL? And on and on and on. SL is an on-line fantasy game and I emphasize "fantasy". This is NOT real life so don't stand on the sidelines with no game experience and start theorizing about what's going on. A game is a game; it is NOT real life. Don't believe me? In first person shooter games like Halo or Resident Evil, etc., a gamer runs around killing people, yes, killing people. Anybody plan on phoning the police because the individual in question is a psychotic nutbar who's going to go on a shooting rampage in real life?
Addendum
I started this blog back on 2012-02-29 but never put it on-line. Busy with other things. While I'm not on much these days, a few conversations as of late prompted me to share some thoughts. Good? Bad? Will I get distracted and abandon all this? RL is busy but that's a good thing. For the moment, however a few thoughts to share.
2019-09-25
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