The Other Me... Second Life.

Second life well... it didn't captivate real life for me. Now I am all for trying new things so I went into second life with an open eyes. Thinking maybe I can make friends or perhaps take this on as a personal hobby. First off second life is not for those with a little bit of ram. I quickly realized how important it was for me to order a ram upgrade. Second life ran ridiculously slow on my computer freezing every couple of minutes and making the whole experience much harder than it seemed. After I finally borrowed a friends computer, the experience finally began. I must say I never really got the hang of it. As I kept "exploring" new worlds I found myself craving to do real life things. I found a park, trees real green and I found myself craving a real park. I hadn't been to the park all summer or fall and found myself a bit jealous of the second life me. I visited something that looked like a beach and found myself craving a vacation.

Meeting people on Second Life was awkward for me. I was completely out of my element. I usually base my starter conversations based on the social atmosphere I am in. So say I meet someone in the academic setting I ask questions around this fact as a starter, what school you go to? what's your major? what highschool you went to? etc. But in Second Life I am literally meeting people from all walks of life and find myself socially awkward introducing myself and starting a conversation. Conversations with males in second life went quickly from Hi, hello to ASL, and do you really look like that. I just found myself uninterested in continuing the conversation. I felt like I was lacking focus when meeting all these new people. I feel we needed a context for this meeting, second life felt like I was on the train talking to every person there, for no real reason. After a few failed attempts at starting conversations I just roamed around in silence and explored and watched people and their interactions.

Although Lahti readings excited me for the whole experience on second life. I thought if an adult, a professional, could get so caught up in second life, then perhaps second life could have something to offer me. Instead of craving the second world i began craving real life more. I found myself wanting to interact with real people and real friends. I found myself socially awkward in second life. But after trying it, I can see how people could use this world to recreate themselves and live vicariously through the characters they create because of the space Second Life creates. Second Life provides its users with a new life, a born again feeling to reinvent oneself. Unfortunately for me i was born again a socially awkward person.