What is it? Tell me about it. Your opinion of course.
One of my instructors was talking about computer avatars the other day, mentioned Second Life and that apparently, Obama has an avatar there.
It looks like The Sims video game, sort of.
I don’t feel like registering to discover it’s wonderfulness, so if you’ve played with it, could you share?
Is it of any significance, or a mere blip in our saturated multimedia online world?
I spent an hour there once. I wasn’t impressed.
There’s a lot of learning to do before you can get out in the the “real” part of it, and you have to pay real money to get fake money to do stuff.
That, and some idiot kept bumping his avatar into mine and saying “What’s up, bitch.” No, thank you. I can’t be bothered. I prefer the more intellectual interaction here.
Ive read that Second Life is based on the Metaverse from the book Snow Crash.
I’ve gone in a couple of times, but I seem to be missing something, especially good hair. Not to mention that I don’t want to worry about a second life until the first one is running a little smoother.
Er. . .I had no idea Obama had an avatar in SL. . .
I play there. It’s. . .it’s fun, but I use it almost exclusively in the way that people use WoW–in other words, as a game.
It’s interesting, and I think that the concept has merit, but I don’t think Second Life is going to take over the world. My ex-husband actually worked/works in SL as a DJ/stripper, and I think what he makes. . .about covers the cost of being in SL. Very few people make money off of it, and those who do put an incredible amount of time and effort into doing so. It’s easily a full-time job.
It’s a gimmick; it shows that people are 'net savvy. Trying to find intelligent discourse there is hard, though. It can be done, but there’s a lot of chaff. And I think its use by political candidates can be problematic. Because. . .really, anyone can be behind an avatar.
That being said, it has, IME, absolutely the best customizable avatars ever.
Also. . .there is a Teeming Millions group. Just sayin’. 
And the Metaverse was never a good idea. Whenever Neal goes on about people’s avatars running into each other, or the need to ride a monorail or a motorcycle in order to get to a certain site, I’m thinking “Damn, this is inconvenient. I’m glad you were wrong about this.” Playing in Second Life just reinforces this feeling for me.
Tried it out for half an hour and completely failed to see the point of it. It’s effectively a 3D chatroom.
Its a horrible “game” with a terrible UI. Until the media started using it as an example for anything online related it was a minor blip in the radar, with something like 10k users, i imagine its a bit more popular now.