Second Life, Virtual reality worlds and Stigma

Am I a bigot? thats the first question I asked myself prior to my multitude of attacks on the concept of 'Second life.'

Prior to Monday's lecture, I had neither heard of, nor seen 'Second life', and therefore once I was informed of it I initially found this website, and its entire concept, well, odd.

I didnt understand why anyone would want to have a virtual reality 'life', and virtual reality 'cars' and pay real money to purchase CGI houses and land that literally, doesnt exist. The icing on this cake of absurdity (for me anyway), was the fact that a woman became a millionaire on second life! what!?....It was all too much.

The discussion did make me question my views, because I like to think of myself as an open minded person. Why do I find a virtual reality existence ridiculous? Why does this concept shake my foundations of thought? Does it scare me? Am I curious?

A point was made that the world is what we make it, us as individuals, some people read, some people paint, and some people use the web, as means of escapism. 'Art is life' is what someone once quoted (somewhere...I have heard this quote several times so i definitly am not making it up!), so if art is 'life', why cant the web be life? If your main medium of escapism becomes your 'core' why does it have to be tangible?

The surrealism movement involved a whole bunch of people doing all kinds of bizzare things in excess to get closer to their subconcious (drugs, starvation, lack of sleep, alcohol), and thats how they lived, as close to their subconcious as their physical bodies would allow. We admire and praise the surrealism movement as one of the great art movements of our time. I guess the point I'm trying to make is, who is it who decides how people live? whether it be in a virtual reality world, on high on drugs trying to get close to their pysche! If people see 'Second life' as their existence, as their source of reality, as their 'art', fine, why am I attaching stigma to it??

Certain things came up in our discussion as being 'dangers' of 'Second life', and other social networking sites, (in fact I am the main culprit for harping on about pyschos and paedophiles using the web to kill people, aren't I melodramatic!). Then the very valid point came up that we're just as likely to get killed, stalked, abused in real life (if not more) then on the net.

Someone mentioned the idea of meeting people on the internet, and this also created a rather animated discussion. Why do we ussume those who use the internet to meet people are loners, unattractive and wear glasses? I use msn to talk to my friends, I use facebook to keep in touch with those who now live in Birmingham etc, and I use forums to voice my opinions (usually rants) on music, movies etc etc, so that means i'm using the web to correspond with people all the time. Why does it become socially frowned upon when you 'meet' someone online??

The idea of meeting people online becomes a real 'thing' because we cant see them, so they may not be who they say they are. However on the other hand you could be living with norman bates jnr as your other half for 20 years and not know...its all relative. I find this thought really interesting, so I'm going to use it as a focus in our identity Wiki, (the others are getting some stuff together on some other points raised, so we're gonna put everything forward to one another on friday and see what happens).

I was also rather annoyed that nobody agreed with my facebook/myspace concept!! the class fiercly disputed my views on facebook as being for friends and myspace being more for numbers by claiming they get added 'all the time' by people they dont know. I'm gonna stick to my guns (and STATISTICS) and say i STILL think that people are more likely to add friends and aquaintences on facebook, and randoms on myspace. (i've asked my friends and they agree! maybe its just in my network of friends?)