Second life is a digital version of the world, that is created entirealy by its users. You create your own character, both physically and mentally and then send them places to meet new people, the people that you are talking to are actually characters, with real humans attatched to computers on the other side. it is free to sign up and the virtual world that you seem if graphically very similar to "The Sims".
I would say that the biggest thing that it is used for is escapeism, within this world you can be anything you want to be and create a life that you want to lead, without maybe the normal issues of everyday communities and normal life. For instance if you have isses with your appearance, like you are overweight, your avatar can look slim and you could make your weight so it was no longer an issue.
I saw a television programme on this the other day, and to me the man thing that appealed to e was the novelty value, i used to love to play on sims for ours and this would be similar, only " real" people to talk to, me and my friend said it was like sims but with msn.
On the documentary that i saw, the characters that people created often looked completely different to how they actually looked, they usually made them selves look more eccentric, for instance one couple that met on second life were two middle class white people, but the woman made her self have sort of a lara croft outfit with long dark hair and the man made himself black and have big muscles, with lots and lots of peircings and tatooed, which is not what they looked like in real life at all. Although there physical appearance was exaggerated, it could be said that there personalities were real, and therefore it could be a projection of real life, but when it came down to it this coupld had no chemistry in real life and they found it difficult to talk to each other, but online there relatioship was great.
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Hey, thats really weird that the couple didn't have any chemistry in real life but got on through the website. Maybe that reinforces the theory that people put on a certain persona on the internet that is often not representing their true personalities at all.
I think this sort of website is a good form of escapism but i don't feel like people should rely on it for their main communication and way of meeting people. Like you said, the characters they create are often totally opposite to what they actually look like and this could cause problems if they did actually ever meet up with the people they befriend on there.
yeh, i also thought it was a similar concept to the sims.
i cans ee the appeal of it like u said 4 people with weight/appearance issues, but i just wouldn't say its for me.
although some people can find genuine online reltionships, I personally dont think its healthy for any relationship to exist solely on online activity.
Do you? I don't think I could ever be that bothered by someone from the internet to want to let msyelf get to know them. Like the friends you amde through forums kayleigh, you probably never had any desire to meet them in real life did u?
I don't personally think i could develop a relationship online as for a start i wouldn't even trust the person i was talking to online if i had never even met them before. I wouldn't know what was true and what was false when they were telling me thinks about themselves. so its definitly not for me either i agree with you there aly.
yeo definitely not.
I mean, i'm all for online contact between people you know but not strangers. Like keeping in touch with you guys when I'm at home or whatever and postng on your facebook wall asking how u r or dropping u update emails, thats all fine. but thats as far as id go with regards to developing relationships online which Iguess in a way is sad as some people may be genuine and just want to chat.
Like pen-pals and pen-friends, does the growing phenomenom of paedophiles, etc on the internet put an end 2 that tradition?
Becuase for older generations writing letters to random people was probably quite normal and acceptable when they were younger, but now if children who didn't know eachother were to start emailing, there would quite possibly be uproar about it. Anyone agree?
i dnt think the people that people used to necessairily just randomly write to people, they had usually met them on holiday or something and developed a relationship and then started writing to them. I think its a slightly different situation if you have never met someone face to face and you start writing to them, than if you have become friends on holiday.
Though in Sue Graus lecture on children and media the other day she did mention that it is hard to tell whether someone is who they say they are when you meet them for the first time, you may believe that they are called john, but they are actually called jack!
The only thing that is more obvious when meeting someone face to face is someones age, a man can not groom a child by saying they are 14 when they are obviously in there late 20's or whatever, if they are meeting them face to face.
we were given random french people to write to in school for a project....I didn't do so well lol!
o yeh, no i totally agree that you can write to people that you've met on holiday or whatever. There's loads of ones I know from Spain and we always used to write to eachother, then we used MSN Messenger and now most of us are on Facebook.
yeah, i guess we still can be fooled by a person's identity face to face. And although a lot of internet chat rooms etc, make easier targets for paedophilia, it's not only just become a problem with the rise of the internet. Paedophilia has been a problem in society for a long time, with ot without internet.
Kayleigh,
The summary about Second Life is useful. Do you know what the documentary that you saw was called or what channel and time it was on, as it may be useful to reference it? There are quite a lot of errors/typos in your work, it may be beneficial to plan what you want to say in MS Word, then paste it into your blog?
Looking at your comments on the discussion, I have a friend at the Uni of Lincoln who met their wife via the Internet and chatting on MSN, unfortunately when she moved over from America, their relationship only lasted a year. It's hard to say whether this was due to differences perceived when they saw each other in real-life....as some relationships formed by people in real-time, may only last a year too?
All the best
Emma
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