When I first entered the second life world I decided the best way to explore would be to teleport to random places where there appeared to be people. So I looked at the map, selected a random location and hit teleport. Upon arriving at the location I did not see any people. The only things I found at first were strange looking objects that looked like torture devices. When I looked at the actions associated with these objects I realized that they were some sort of sexual playthings. I continued to explore the location and eventually I found some people. They were standing near a number of animals with oversized male genitalia. There were dogs, horses, etc. A female character began to perform fellatio on one of the dogs. I typed, “What is this place?” and hit the shout button. Someone replied “heaven.” Soon after I discovered that it was an area devoted to “shemales.” As the users put it. I typed something along the lines of “Gee, of all the places to randomly teleport to when first signing up for the game.” A user replied, “Are you sure you didn’t search for shemales?” Others laughed. I decided to leave. Previous to this I had not thought of second life as a place for people to live out their sexual fantasies. Though apparently it is. Second life allows the users to act out fantasies or curiosities that may not be appropriate in real life, such as having sex with dogs. I wondered how many of the users at that location were actually transsexuals and how many were just exploring a curiosity. I wondered whether or not the use of second life as a sexual tool was a good thing or not. It is obviously all digital, making it safe, but what sort of mindset does this behavior promote? Frankly, I had no idea what to make of it.

            In another one of my random teleports I ended up in a room with two people sitting on a couch. “Are you lost?” said one of them. I replied, “I just joined, so I am teleporting to random places to explore.” “Well,” said the man, “you are in someone’s house.” The user that appeared to be his digital wife said, “lol.” I apologized and left. What I really wanted to say was, “This is not a house. It does not exist. There is no space here. It doesn’t even provide digital privacy. Look at how easily I have invaded your “home.” What is the point of paying real money to own it?” I wondered why there weren’t more anarchists in second life. One could easily go around invading homes, attempting to point out how silly it is to own digital property. I supposed that users like this got banned from the server. Even this action in itself is somewhat contradictory. How can you point out something about real life within the world of second life? I personally can’t particularly understand why someone would pay real money to own a digital home. I suppose once again this ties into the idea of doing things in second life that you may not have the ability to do in real life, but why not put the time and money spent developing a life in second life into real life? I would think that after a certain time a second life user would realize that they could be just about the same person they are in second life in their real life (perhaps eliminating the fox head and unrealistic physique). Though the detachment from actuality is probably a liberating factor for most people.

            The third interesting thing I stumbled upon was a simple discussion. A number of users sat at a table discussing whether or not they thought second life was a game. I stood off to the side and listened in. One man asked how much of second life they thought was representative of people’s real lives. He told them to vote in a poll on his blog about whether or not they thought second life was a game. Apparently, at this point, 85% of people had said no. I felt like pointing out that most of this people probably played the game themselves considering that he promoted it within second life, but I remained digitally silent. Is second life indeed a game? Or is it something different? Something more? There is no actual objective to second life. Perhaps it should be classified as an experience or an online community. I don’t know what to call it. What exactly about second life is so gratifying that it attracts so many users? I don’t really have answers for any of the questions that arose during my second life experience. I suppose second life is a dream world of sorts. It doesn’t particularly serve any purpose. It merely exists. The only thing I know is that I have no particular desire to return to this dream world, nor did I find anything particularly enjoyable about it.