the lost weekend on secondlife.com

popular science had an story about second life, a free-membership, streaming video program, a mix of virtual reality games (tho a game with no objective), ebay, & myspace. you create your character, "teleport" to different "lands," meet people, use fictitious $ (which you obtain with real $) to buy & sell stuff.
i was intrigued when i read that you can mold your character/avatar's appearance to your specs. i love photoshop & being a half-breed kid during the 70s, have always been obsessed with my (what i think to be) odd facial features & skin tone, so i jumped at the chance to create a cyber jenny & find others on secondlife who looked like me or like my mixed family.
that was thursday. i came up for air last night.
secondlife is highly addictive. and now i must delete it.
but before i do, i forwarded secondlife info to friends, especially artists. let them become immersed for a bit, too!
the avatar part was most fun! i was obsessed w/making my character "really" look like me. quickly i learned that it's impossible - you can only create an idealized "you." the facial feature possibilities & skin tones are anglo-centric. the body types & skin textures are of healthy 20-somethings. however, it sure felt creative to mess with the little template female til she came out looking generically enough like a cartoonized me. (see pictures of "me" at my "home," a swiss chalet. i don't know why my home was a swiss chalet. i think there were parties going on inside, but i was scared to go see.)
i opened an account for & made an avatar of my spouse, too, but he didn't much like it, so i won't post it here... i thought the resemblance w/ him was much closer than the one i made of me, but that makes sense since i objectively observe his looks better than my own.
anyway, in my three days lost in secondlife, i was befriended by a young guy who took me on a ski lift ride & helped teach me to walk & fly (you can fly places, realistically, probably one of the most mesmerizing features of secondlife, especially if you've ever wished you were a bird) & then asked me to go get a drink, so i teleported to beat it... i went to "amsterdam," & it did look like the real place, but it was filled with impossibly tall, gorgeous, muscular, &/or scantily-clad young people looking to pick each other up.
it became more & more apparent that the "people" i saw on second life didn't WANT to look like their real selves... many of the conversations i observed (i mostly just flew places & was a voyeur) were about second life being escapist, a fantasy place. i really thought i'd find lots of folks who, like me, wanted to be themselves! secondlife is very UN-myspace-like in this way. myspace is juvenile & narcissistic, but i've met many music & movie nerds on there, bright & strange & wonderful people who proudly display their own visages & quirky interests. i've actually met people i have stuff in common with on myspace! second life seemed quite generic, by comparison, a place i guess where you'd go to "get away" from yourself & your "first [real] life"... i did chat with a chubby, bearded guy in trapeze artist garb who said he was in his "first life" in a hospital in bangkok, but i got spooked again & beat it out of there.
i put brian's avatar at the car & motorcycle races, but at each, there was only one car & one bike, & no other people.
secondlife felt lonely. i felt like charlton heston in "the omega man." i found myself flying all over the place, looking down on empty villages, buildings, towns. i would land & there would be groups of young people talking. it felt like high school. i felt awkward. everyone was toweringly tall & slim & glamorous. didn't anyone want to look like themselves?? maybe i just was in the wrong places... i kept trying to find nerds, goofballs, fat people, record collectors, movie fans, but no luck. oh, one more thing: on secondlife, you'll find lots of porn. and lots of furries. you don't have to even be on the look-out: both are just THERE.
when i realized hours & hours were passing with me unawares, it was time to stop.
so i say goodbye to vinyl raveup, my second life alter-ego (you have to pick a canned patronym). i'm gonna quit second life. this time, i'll stop. i can do it. i'll quit tomorrow. :)