Extra Credit - Second Life

Second Life Experience – Extra Credit

I created a person in the Second Life community on the internet for extra credit, and it was somewhat of a strange experience. I do not have a lot of experience with video games or computers, let alone an online community like Second Life, so this was a new event for me.

When I went to the Second Life website, I was a little surprised that it wanted your real name in addition to your Second Life name. I do not like giving out my information so I made up a fake name similar to my Second Life name. I chose Ally for my first name because it is similar to my real name. There was a list of choices to pick for your last name, so I chose Hazelnut. Ally Hazelnut is a strange name and I think it almost sounds like a stripper’s name. So right away I felt weird about the situation. I was creating the community alongside of Karra, and when I saw which image of a person she chose, I made sure to choose a different one. I chose a female figure with funky hair and colorful and creative clothes, basically because that is the opposite of what I look like.

When I logged on to Second Life for the first time after creating it, there was a tutorial available in the top left corner of the screen that gave directions and instructions about how to do certain things, which was a helpful tool. The first and most important thing it told was how to make your person simply just walk and move toward different directions, which is done by just using the arrow keys on the keyboard. There is also a way to make the person fly, which I was surprised about. The Second Life world seemed very big, but I found myself just basically moving in circles. I tried to go into the ocean to see my person could swim, but it would not let me.

I did not see many other characters around in my area which I was surprised about also. I suppose that I thought there would be multiple people around me. I even “walked” a fairly far distance and did not see many people. I did see one male character that was sitting on a ledge near the ocean and I walked up to him. He did not move or anything so I kept “moving” and actually stood on top of him which was weird. Then I noticed that next to him it said that he was “away” so that explained why he was not responding. I also randomly saw a group of people flying together, but I could not seem to catch up to them.

I did see a link to click to chat with people but I was not interested in that because I have heard too much about cybersex and creeps on this type of internet tool. I have read about people who join the Second Life community and it actually takes over their real lives and that creeps me out. Overall, creating my character was a decent experience because I had never done anything like it before. At least now I know what communities like Second Life are like and the basis of them.