Real Life Consequences

I just finished reading the article that DeDe sent around about the woman who was arrested in Japan for killing her virtual husband's avatar. I found it interesting in light of the converation we were having last week in class: most people were dissapointed with the lack of people within virtual worlds. So far, it doesn't seem like any of us have really been able to spend enough time in SL to be able to make any connections; however, this Japanese woman is proof of how much SL can mean to someone. She is also an interesting example of how SL can spill out into RL. 

I tend to think of the two as separate: you go about your RL, and in your spare time, you play around in SL. But the thing that links the two is the money. Once there is real money in a virtual world, virtual actions have real consequences. That can be hard to remember sometimes... that people can put a lot of money into SL. When we walk around some of these beautiful deserted spaces, it makes me wonder, "Why would anyone put so much time and money and effort into something that is so empty?"

Do people put so much money into SL that things in RL are neglected? Do they fail to spend money on their own appearance while buying Nike clothes for their avatar? Do they stop doing the laundry or cleaning the bathroom because they are busy building their virtual house? Obviously this is not true for the majority of SL users, but it could be true for a few people who find it much easier to escape into SL than to deal with RL. And that disconnect has the potential to make actions in the virtual world spill out into RL when we forget that they are very much connected.   

There

I've just been playing with There.com. So far, I think I like it better than SL. Within a few minutes of being signed in, I was randomly invited to a party. There were lots of people there to talk to, and there was a dog play area with several dogs! I definately thought that was cool.... There runs a LOT faster than SL, which is nice.... The graphics aren't as good, but I've never really been too much of a stickler for graphics. The very fact that it runs faster makes it about a billion times better, in my opinion. SL can be so slow sometimes that it gets frustrating and annoying. I haven't made a full comparison yet, but these are just my thoughts so far...

Update: I just played a game of virtual hearts with 3 other people! My avatar was sitting at a card table and playing cards! And the music here is cool.... 

It seems like the organized fun in There is much better than SL..... Maybe SL seems to anarchist to me?

Update: I was just trying paintball! It would definately be more fun if I had a real mouse instead of a touchpad....and if I actually paid to buy a gun and more painballs instead of using the trial gun...

Update: So far, it seems like SL allows more user interaction and input into the world... objects, spaces and avatars are customizable, but There seems more focused on the social interaction. If you're not too worried about creating your own space or your own look, you can just focus on hanging out and having a good time. So, in that way, it has less potential as a true representation of this world, but it seems like it has more potential to be fun (at least to me...)

Update: There is so much more user friendly, and much nicer to look at! It may not be as sophisticated, but so far, it's more fun! I guess it's more like a game in that respect, but it has more potential for me to spend time here...

I keep discovering new awesome stuff.... like dunebuggies! You can try them for free! It seems like so much more fun here! Well, clean fun, at least....

So I decided to try to build a flower... I found that the most difficult thing when building was trying to rotate the prims to the correct angle. I also had trouble joining the prims, but by the end I got a hang of changing the camera angle to be able to see that they were actually touching. I decided to build a flower because I wanted to build something whimsical instead of something practical. Since SL is a fantasy world, I wanted to have a fantasy object. Plus, I was thinking of the line from Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds: "Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers that grow so incredibly high..." Hopefully the next one I make will be a little more natural looking.

While I was building in the Sandbox, some obnoxious person decided that it would be funny or cool to create a swarm of flying swastikas. Talk about doing something that you wouldn't do in real life! The cubes swarmed around everyone and cluttered my computer screen, and then continued to hang and spin in one spot. It took about 15 minutes for their creator to be kicked out. I don't know if the person was actually a nazi or if they were just trying to get attention, but I was fairly shocked and surprised.