One student's observation about first weeks on SL
I've noticed some very weird things going on in second life. The bulk of
the people that I've encountered have been pretty open to talking to
people that they don't know. On several occasions, I've received or sent
IMs to people and have had good conversations with them. I assume that
since the people are only intereacting through text, there's no reason to
be afraid of anything, and in theory you can pretend to be whoever you
want to be. If I wanted to be a 30 year old woman (not that I want to
be), I could and no one would know the difference. I think that the IM
feature is a little different than AIM because in second life your info is
out in the open and you expect to hear from random people and intereact
with them. If some random person IMed me on AIM, I would be kinda freaked
out because that's my personal account and I don't give that information
out to people that aren't my friends. I've also noticed that a lot of the
people on second life are really into a digital sense of meeting people.
Most of them have blogs or Myspace accounts to which the provide links in
their personal info on SL. I was chatting with a 30 year old registered
nurse from Washington state last night while playing slingo. I asked her
what she found so interesting about SL and she said that it was just fun
in general to be able to shop and create a person that she feels like
inside, but isn't necessarily her. In an essence, it's an escape from
real life. None-the-less, still freaks me out a little.
posted by Kim Gregson @ 5:36 PM
1 Comments:
Well, I too have noticed that it's quite easy to talk to people in SL, but it's really hard to keep a conversation with some. I have made a friend outside of class in the game; she's a dancer in a club that I frequent. I really didn't find it weird that she would be so open to having a conversation with a person that she hardly knows, but I have spoken to random strangers in the AIM chat rooms some Saturday nites long, long ago [when I didn't have a life]. But, I really have to disagree with your claim that people in SL are really into meeting our digital selves. If everyone I encountered [like that premium user I ran across in the Slingo area] had added me to their friends list, then I would have a lot more than just Sara, extremely and katee Fluffy on my friends list.
It could be just me. After all, I'm pretty open to meeting new people regardless of the medium. As for this dancer that I friended, she said I was a nice person, and that's how I am in my "First Life"...if many people didn't know that before hand. Interestingly though, no one commented on my purple shirt yet.
--Jerry Fluffy
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