What is this thing, Second Life?

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the importance of sex in Second Life. There’s a strange division here. If you look up the popular places list, it seems that the things people most like in SL involve sex and gambling…or both. If you look at the profile of most business people and professional developers in SL, it will look as though they have no idea that there is such a thing as sex in SL.

Neither is true…they are both obfuscations. The popular places list looks that way because the people who run the sex and gambling places in SL put time and money into making sure they appear at the top of the lists. The profiles look that way because most people use an alt avatar if they are going to indulge in anything in any way risque.

Most of the people I know in SL may have some degree of sex life in SL, but it isn’t a significant part of what draws them into SL or keeps them there. It is just a part of their SL in the way that sex is part of RL.

For most people that I know, Second Life is a place to be creative, to meet people they would never have met in RL and to be inspired. I have no problem with them having as much sex there as they desire, but I don’t see that forming a big part of it for people that I know.

I have learned so much in SL, it is really hard to take myself back and remember what it was like not to know those things… you’re going to laugh, but one of the things I learned here is that no matter how rich and well equipped you are, you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time. I felt a profound sense of realization when it dawned upon me that the same was true in RL too… you can have a wardrobe the size of Imelda Marcos’s, but you still can’t manage to wear more than one pair of shoes at a time.

Somehow… that became a lightbulb moment for me, as I realized it is all too easy in RL to be seduced into thinking that you need things you do not need, or that you should buy things you cannot afford and possibly don’t want. It is interesting that my virtual self seems to be far more proof against advertising than my RL self.

People have been a revelation to me. Friendly, generous with time and friendship and creations. Ready to share, ready to open themselves, ready to give their expertise and advice. Initially I began to think that a whole new breed of person was emerging in SL, then I realise these were just the same people I meet in the street, on the tube, in the shops…they are just far more hidden and protected in RL.

Reaping what you sow… I have always believed that one does, over time, reap the things one sows, but in SL, I have seen that in operation. I give time to someone and then receive it back one hundredfold. In Nemesis, I am proud that we have built a community of friends, who are creative, who help and like each other, who support each other’s endeavours. I love being there, and dislike it when I have to spend a lot of time away from Nemesis and NCC.

In Numbakulla, I love helping people to understand what they need to do, watching them enjoy the game, and the island.

For me, Second Life is work, love, challenges, entertainment, friends, creativity. I have yet to see anything to touch it in the virtual worlds.

Can people be other than they appear? Yes, but so they can in the real world. Can they be deceptive, lie and cheat? Yes, but so they can in the real world.

Can people come to Second Life and spend their whole time watching porn…yes, if they want to. Can they come in and never show anything of themselves, wearing a job title instead? Yes, if they want to. Second Life, as much as real life, is what you make of it. If you want to find wonderful things they are there… if you seek out the mundane, that is also what you will find.

Where I think there is a big divergence is in the attitude of those who have never been in the world as themselves, but only as a job title. Those people aren’t truly engaged, or immersed in the world, and can’t understand how it is for those of us who are here as our true selves. The lessons for big business are going to be in learning how to be authentic, how to relate and communicate with the people who are of the world, and not just in it.

In some ways, I have to hope that SL will never allow concurrency to reach the hundreds and thousands in one sim, because I think the uniqueness of the world relates quite strongly to its humanscale limitations. I think that they are what keeps it interesting and personal and exciting. Once we all have collective experiences which are so big that they have to be passive because we can’t all respond in one space, something will be lost.