I’ve been to second life a few times because it is a big subject in media research at the moment. However, I always try to have a subjective perspective in addition to what is said objectively.

A few weeks ago I decided that I should personify my avatar so I started to work on that. It took some time to get the shape but I think it now looks more like me -not 100% but closer to reality-. I do understand most people chose their avatar to look more perfect than they (probably) really do but I don’t think that’s very unique.

Next thing was to find some nice clothes. You can easily find freebies (that’s free stuff you don’t need to pay for) and that’s where I got my pants, shoes and jacket from. But I ended up buying some T-Shirts and it took me hours of camping in front of a glasses store to get some really cool glasses.

I finished the shopping tour by buying a lightsaber hilt that is now attached to me all the time, recently I got a whole Jedi outfit for free, just in case I want to role-play a little bit.

However, I still don’t know what my opinion is about SL. There are some intriguing aspects but overall I find it not-so-fascinating. If you don’t want (or have) money you can’t take part in the important economic part of the world. If you don’t own land (again because you lack the money) building things is not really an option, it’s also not really easy and takes a lot of time. Why should one create virtual stuff in leisure time?

And about the people, well, I don’t know any -yet- in Second Life. I wouldn’t talk to a stranger on the real street and so I don’t in Second Life. And since I have nothing to do there apart from an occasional walk I don’t see how I should get to know anyone. And the world is not really good for taking a walk: I do own lots of vehicles, but there are no streets! Whoever designed the world (and that’s pretty much everybody who ever bought land there) obviously did not think about a coherent system and so there are no streets or way or anything as there are in MMORPGs. I think that’s really bad. There’s no predefined pattern or design guidelines unless the landowner makes them up. Second Life is an interesting experiment but I believe over time it will attract only a certain kind of people and it will get boring.

But I don’t want to talk it all down already as I’ve just started my second life. I may enjoy it one day but luckily I have a first life to go back to.