The Global Geek Podcast recently announced they will be messing around with Second Life and I thought it would be a good time to recount my own experience within the virtual world.
It wasn’t too long ago when Juliaroy from Twitter posted a message asking for anyone interested to hop into Second Life to check our her estate. Since I wanted to give Second Life a try after hearing all sorts of stuff about it in the news, I decided to download the client and jump in. Once I logged in, I had to complete a series of tests, sort of like a walk through or beginner’s guide tutorial which taught me how to move around, how to fly, and just how to get around this new world.
After completing the tutorial, Julia transported me directly to her Second Life house. It was pretty fancy seeing images from the real world plastered on her walls and even on her computer monitor. After the tour, Julia logged off and I managed to spend an hour editing, then dressing my avatar. Once I thought I had a decent looking guy, I decided to give the rest of the Second Life world a tour.
The thing I noticed first was that, unless you know a ton of people, Second Life is boring. Also, based on what I could see, some of the only places to have a congregation of people were the dance clubs. The dance clubs were pretty cool at first. People were dancing, music was streaming live, and weird lights were flashing abroad. After doing the dance thing for awhile, I started to wonder why so many people would be wasting their time, sitting in front of their computer monitor watching themselves and others dance the night away.
So after dancing my own Second Life away for awhile, the entire Second Life thing started to get pretty boring. At this point, I decided to join the DARK SIDE. I undressed my avatar, made him fat, ugly, and PINK and kicked off the party. Apparently, people hate it when you run around and push other avatars off the dance floor. After doing this for a little while, the dance club security people would kick me out. I’d run right back in and push them around some more. Then, the security people would ban me from the territory. When your banned from a territory, there is a giant RED square that surrounds the place that prevents me from even getting close to the club. That’s ok. I went to a few more dance clubs I could find.
After being banned from 5 dance clubs for running around naked, pushing avatars off the floor, I found a particular club which allowed something I’ve never seen before. I noticed an avatar that was able to SMACK the ass of another avatar. It even played the sound of a SMACK. This was just too funny and I had to give it a try myself. So I took my ugly, pink, naked avatar and walked up next to a male avatar. I looked down at the posterior of this guy and double clicked the mouse button. Each time I did I heard “SMACK” and the text “BLABLA has smacked BLABLA’s ass”. This was hilarious. The male avatar kept telling me to stop, as he doesn’t swing that way. He kicked me out of the club but I ended up turning around and coming right back, smacking his ass hundreds of times before he kicked me out again. After a couple of times, he finally wised up and banned me. I tried to take screen shots but they never worked out to anything.
After that banning, I calmed down from my half hour of insane laughter and proceeded to uninstall Second Life. I understand some of the applications that Second Life may have such as, board meetings or some other cause. But I often times wonder what those people could be doing to benefit their first life. The graphics in second life suck no matter how high your graphic settings are. The entire world is based on 2D which is why it looks so bad yet, thats one of the reasons why Second Life is so mod-able. It’s just a world based on textures. In the end, Second Life is nothing more than a virtual social network. And like most of the other social networks, if your anti-social or don’t know the right people or have a ton of friends, Second Life becomes yet another waste of time.
