My experience on Second Life.

My first impression of Second Life was a rather difficult one, although I was still impressed. Foremost, I struggled through the log-in process because I falsely identified my fake last name being spelled with an uppercase ‘I’ and not a lowercase ‘l’. After successfully determining my mistake, I logged in and watched my avatar get taken to a virtual community center. Almost immediately, I was greeted by numerous people (as if I had previously chatted with them before). I said hello back to them, then began my mission to find the Penn State Campus. I searched for it’s name through the map-feature and found it easily. However, after transferring myself there I found it difficult to control my avatar into walking towards my desired direction. Not because it was difficult to understand, but because I was not used to this kind of advancement in online-activities. So I virtually stood there for two minutes, clueless and aimlessly jumping up and down. After I was greeted by ‘ProfessorMaryBock’, I eventually figured out how to fly towards where I wanted to go.

Although Second Life takes getting used to for newbies like me, I can understand why people like it use it on a daily basis. It makes meeting new people with similar interests seem effortless and is graphically equivalent to modern day video games. The communication factor is primarily what makes Second Life somewhat addicting; it gives people the ability to be anonymous and multiphrenic or to simply be themselves, without having to endure realistic criticisms and judgments from others.