A Parody on Second Life - Get A Real Life

As you may know from my earlier article, "Second Life: What Ever Happened To Real Life" that I've been exploring possible uses for the game - both gaming experience and business experience - in the Second Life World.

This is how I felt after playing my second session of Second Life:

I think the game has a lot of promise. But, as an avid gamer, I'm a bit lost as to the value of spending hours away from my real life to see billboard after billboard of goth, clothing, widgets, cartoon buildings and trees, and other geeky graphic design stuff pawned off on me in the form of Linden dollars.

In my second session, a gamer within Second Life asked me, "how do we do it?" What? I did a second take. Then I realized! Ah. Yes, of course. Any new medium must have that involved at some point, right? I watched a show on HBO last night that showed pornography as early as the second year of film-making. So, clearly, it makes sense that someone would want to know this. But I was just trying to learn what it was all about! Rather shocking.

Now, that said, I do think that SOMETHING amazing is happening at Second Life. People are getting into it. But it isn't for the "GAME" aspects. There isn't much to do at Second Life. More than that, the graphics kinda suck. And, it's user interface is slow and difficult to manage. It isn't VISTA compliant, yet, so that eliminated several people who wanted to try it. Other people couldn't access via dial-up. So, everyone I WANTED to play with me couldn't, it seemed.

So, as a GAME, I drop it, for now. However, as a social media, or as a MODERN CHAT tool, it has promise. I might prefer the speed of NOW LIVE, where the old-fashioned AOL streaming chat can happen WHILE people host radio shows. That's kind of cool, because you're blending visual with audio. I like that a lot.

Second Life might come up with more in this regard, though, so I wouldn't sell it short.

I just read a very funny parody on Second Life through "Get A First Life" - a site selling CafePress t-shirts. They're poking fun at the world of avatars vs. the world of real people. Darren (the guy who wrote the parody) has a good point: why spend hours in front of a computer for something that MIGHT hold promise as a game or tool when there's all this REAL world of REAL PROMISE out there beckoning to us?! I still think the slogan they ought to print at Get A Real Life is "fornicate using real genitals" as their parody slogan, but they haven't adopted it, yet. The site is funny and the subsequent blog posts are pretty brilliant - especially the letter to Darren Barefoot from Second Life's legal department that represented a rejection of invitation to cease and desist! Amusing and yet a cunning-edge legal work by Second Life.

If you can see other uses for Second Life because a game, a chat tool, or a very S-L-O-W conferencing tool (with considerable technical challenges), please let me know, as I'm still investigating this phenomenon. I'm open to where this type of medium can go, but still unsure as to how much time I want to ESCAPE from reality in Second Life from my ultra-exciting REAL FIRST LIFE! :)

Are you building the REAL LIFE you want to build? If not, try to start using this mantra:

DREAM. LEARN. BUILD. DEVELOP. EXPERIENCE. EVALUATE. REPEAT.


See how your own life begins to manifest more and more of what you seek to attract from your dream life into your real life. You might, like me, just find that your real life no longer requires a virtual life in order to be happy and living on purpose.

If you're an avid "player" in SL, investing hours per day or week, I hope you don't take my evaluation as an insult -- none is intended. If you're enjoying Second Life, I'm not saying you don't have a REAL LIFE. I'm just asking if the time invested in that world is worth the return you're getting. If the answer is "yes" please share how you benefit!

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This article is written by Scott Andrews, Founder of AspireNow. Copyright 2007. Second Life® and Linden Lab® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No infringement is intended.


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