Second life

A friend of mine long back told me about this game called second life - the virtual world. Read about it on wikipedia and since the idea was enticing enough I decided to have a go at it and downloaded the software. Had enough free time in those days.

The software loaded I made a new identity for myself and logged into the deeper make believe world. Putzed around for a while, chatted with a few people who were going through the training rounds as well and then in the end, once I logged out I uninstalled the software forever from my computer. One real life is hard enough to manage, I didn't want to start another even virtually.

But this thought has been nagging me for a while. Especially what with the reports of people actually making real money in the virtual world and second life having banks and exchange systems etc. - what drives people to start another life, what blurs the line between what's 'real' and what's 'unreal'? How can we get so caught up in the world of make believe? And how is it that we try to turn a virtual life to represent a close to real life - something we were running from in the first place!

For example take many of those who closely follow soap operas or tv series and actually end up so involved in the lives of the characters that they forget that those characters are actually fiction. It takes the place of real flesh and blood people for them. Or the second life example, where it has actually developed on to be so close to the real world with the same kind of tensions and problems - so much so that now there is probably going to be a SEC like regulatory authority to control the monetary operations. So, how is it thatg those who invested themselves in this world of make believe, probably to escape from their real lives, actually let their sanctuary turn close to represent what they were running from? And if it is so like the world we live in, then do we really need a virtual existence? Have distances grown so much that we would actually prefer to live inside our own minds and interact through computer wires than head out and see the sun and smell the flowers?

Real life sucks big time, but it has it's rewards too. One thin is for sure, one life is more than enough for me, am not heading out to get a second life any time soon. No sir!