Second Life – you may have heard of it. A 3-D virtual world online where people run around, eat virtual food, have discussions, do business and in fact do everything and anything they could possibly want to do in the real world but perhaps are unable to. The difference is that this world evolves and is created by its users and their imaginations.
There are over 10 million user accounts registered with Linden Lab, the company behind the project. Based initially on sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, Second Life has no game elements built-in, no roaming artificial characters and no pre-existing landscape. Everything that you see, touch, buy and move through has been created by your fellow inhabitants.
And Second Life is my new home. Why? No, it’s not because I am a fan of fantasy novels or role-playing games. Neither is it because I don’t have a good social life or friends in the real world. Nope, the reason is far more creative. Second Life is my new home because it allows me to be a woman!
Shocked? Don’t be. It seems gender identity swapping online is a big trend. And in fact there are more women in Second Life who opt to recreate themselves online as male characters than vice-versa. A recent survey of online gamers by psychologists at the UK’s Nottingham Trent University found that a majority of them had switched gender while playing. The research, in which 125 players of complex computer games were questioned, found that women were more likely to switch their gender than men. So I’m not some nut!
For many, identity swapping is one of the most liberating aspects of living in Second Life’s world – a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. The reason I like portraying myself as a woman in Second Life is that I get to explore a different side of my personality and can flirt with people in an alternative way. It’s crazy stuff.
How do you do it? Once you sign up to Second Life you pick a gender and then slowly build your character in terms of looks and style – there’s a basic avatar (representation of a person in a shared virtual reality) when you start but after you build up your stash of Second Life currency, the Linden Dollar (L$), you can then buy stuff, customise yourself choosing clothes and looks. Currently I have gone for a bad-ass brunette in body-hugging leather and pair of Adidas Stan Smiths. My name? Naaa… I won’t tell you but come seek me out at one of the nightclubs where I DJ.
See I can also get paid and work in the virtual world of second life. Real life Djing translates to online Djing, and when I have made enough L$ I am going to buy my own parcel of Second Life land and build my own club-business. Can’t wait. And while it’s nice to earn my L$ online I don’t have to. You can actually swap your real world money for L$ and vice-versa, which is how you can make money online and actually see it translate into cold hard cash offline.
The Second Life marketplace as a result currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions that can be converted into L$ at several thriving online exchanges. The current rate of exchange is about L$250 to 1 USD, which has given rise to a thriving economy based mostly on property development, small-scale manufacturing and craft, and gambling.
Create your own company in Second Life or even translate your real world business online and you could be in the money. There are hundreds of companies who have already moved in because Second Life is a new world and like any new world is a land of opportunity. It’s constantly being built and evolving and so needs things – goods, services, entertainment and all. If you can provide a service or a product you can rake it in.
Apart from financial haggling and gender swapping there is a lot to do in Second Life. There are classes and lectures to attend at universities, including Yale and Harvard, news coverage and discussion from Reuters, design and architecture experiments, films (both showing and shooting), art galleries and a shape-matching game called Tringo that was developed specifically for virtual world play. Big-name companies are using the space to promote products. Toyota, Adidas, General Motors and Sony BMG all preview their latest offerings there, and IBM has commandeered a huge space – largely cut off from the outside world – for internal communication. There are even real world countries with a presence online.
The Maldives has an officially sanctioned embassy in the world located on Diplomacy Island and there you can talk face-to-face with a computer-generated ambassador about visas, trade and other issues. More than any other virtual world, Second Life feels like a digital version of reality, albeit one in which everyone is thin, tall and beautiful, can fly and is able to teleport wherever they choose.
But back to being the hottest female DJ online. So I have managed to manipulate my gender and I love the reaction. I meet people and they treat you in a completely different way to if was a man – as you’d expect I suppose. But it’s interesting to experience online and therefore in a non-invasive, protected way. My days of dressing in drag for kicks in reality are long gone! It’s great to be a girl and flirt with girls too!
See the thing is in my offline life there are obvious boundaries and limits but in the synthetic world of Second Life I can explore all aspects of my personality that I can’t otherwise do. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Right, I’m off to DJ at the newest club space in Second Life. Come meet me there!
HYPERLINK "http://www.secondlife.com" www.secondlife.com
