Do We Need A Second Life?
There has been much hype about Internet applications such as “Second Life”. It’s not as exciting and fun as they make out at all and I find it somewhat unnecessary. It puzzles me why anyone would prefer SL to the offline life, even if you might have a real boring life and escape to SL for some adventures, playing in for days and weeks in a row would leave me utterly exhausted, frustrated and bored. It’s sad though that it attracts so many people and they rather spend their time walking around, buying virtual cars, clothes and gadgets. Hard to imagine that this activity could possibly be satisfying for some individuals.
Do we need a second life? IMO, no. People pour their time and money into their virtual life and let their real life go to waste, it might be a way to virtually enact their fantasies, but does it leave you with anything when you shut down your computer?
First, I understand that SecondLife doesn’t work for you. That’s your choice.
Second, yes, there are some number of sad folk who wander SecondLife wasting time and doing nothing that develops them for their real life. When I say, “sad” that’s a judgment on my part. They may not be sad, at all.
Third, there are plenty of positive, developmental things one can do in SecondLife. Learning to build the ideas you have into “real” form is much easier and less expensive than in real life. You can gain access to live music and other forms of performance from around the world, beyond what you can reach in your home city in real world. There are friendships one can form — in depth, with an investment in common interests — with people one would never meet in the real world due to geographic distances.
…and in any case, if one spends so much time in SecondLife that ones real life suffers, that’s a problem that isn’t unique to SecondLife or other virtual worlds. It is addictive behavior.
So, the transfer of benefits in personal development from SecondLife to real life depends on how one approaches each.