What the hell is "Second Life"?

[meowhouse]

I've been reading someone's entries about it and well um it's really fucking weird.  It makes Stephen/Jon gay bdsm porn  fanfic seem almost completely normal.  (Almost, I said!)

I gather Second Life is some kind of role-play game?  But people are responding to this other person's entries with comments--not "in character" comments; the people

Comments

[here_inmyhead]

I've never heard of this before. I checked the Wikipedia entry for it and I can't understand a fucking word they're saying: See what I mean?

[meowhouse]

I know, I don't get it either! This person, whose entries I've been reading, is a character that is ... a cat. A human cat. A cat that is also human, somehow, and, I think, Japanese. But she (the real person) is not Japanese. There is apparently an entire "world" of these Japanese human-cat characters in Second Life. They're some kind of humanoid Hello Kitty / furries thing. (Furries are people who get sexually excited by pretending to be animals, although I'm sure they'd say there's a lot more to it than just getting one's rocks off. Uh-huh.)

I thought D&D people were a little strange (sorry Stephen but even you admit you were a bit weird!) but this Second Life thing is just not comprehensible to me.

Really, doesn't it make slash seem to actually make sense by comparison???

[here_inmyhead]

D&D and other role playing games are a little strange (and people that play them probably would also admit this), but this is like a whole new level of weird.

And yeah, this absolutely trumps slash. At least when it comes to slash I can at times sortakindamaybe see where the author is coming from. This, not at all.

[meowhouse]

Yep, I've seen references to the fact that characters are actually "real" or can be "real" in the sense that they're characters but really are a doctor or librarian, etc. Like this Hello Kitty cat-lady was going to talk to a therapist who in the game might be a Martian or a talking tree stump but was ALSO actually a therapist in the real world out here.

Man it hurts my brain to think around that! I guess I don't understand, in your case, for instance: what is the advantage to having "info island" with real librarians pretending to be some kind of characters on this imaginary island, instead of some kind of reality-based online community with real librarians exchanging information? What value does the "Second Life" aspect add to any of this?

This is the kind of thing that makes me feel, by comparison, like my mother feels when I talk about using a computer instead of a typewriter: verrrryy old.

[meowhouse]

I can see how that would make sense--something reality-based for unserved populations--but I don't understand the role-play part. Not that role-play can't in itself be fun or a diversion; it's more that in this particular case (the entries of this person that I've been reading) she is an imaginary non-reality-based character but is having "problems" that are causing non-playing real-life people to feel bad for her. Her kitty-cat character got into a fight and SHE is upset about it and needing to talk to a therapist. But it's not real! She just wrote a story about a cat getting into a fight