Second Life's a Charm

I pride myself on having few addictions. I started in smoking in Catholic school grade and smoked for non-religiously ten years switching brands according to fashion and marketing. I began with the obscure, Yves St Laurent ultra lights, and progressed to a more predictable pack-a-day habit of Newports in various permutations. I smoked only when I had extra money and in social situations. I rarely smoked alone and frequently put out half smoked “chokes” if I lost the feeling. When I moved to Europe I started rolling my own and sampled shag cut tobaccos from all over the globe. I puffed on the odd Cuban, but only because it was considered contraband back home. When I returned from abroad and found that the price of cigarettes had skyrocketed from $2 to $7 a pack, I promptly went cold turkey out of a strong fiduciary responsibility to my future self. I haven’t smoke reliably since the millennium. My affair with smoking is the closest thing I think I might have had to an addiction and it was easily snuffed out.

Addictions take dedication and follow through, two qualities I struggle to foster even within activities that enrich my life. I wish I could get hooked on exercise or writing daily or even taking vitamins. Nothing becomes automatic for me not matter how many times I do it. I can never follow a schedule for long or develop habits or even fall into a rut. Sameness bores, I lose focus and lapse into inactivity as a result have survived many fads untouched by their accompanying mania. My disdain for fads was always accompanied by a smug sense that perhaps I was above the fad, too unique, too much of an individual to jump on the bandwagons. I fancied myself a truly free thinker, not one of the masses but not above the masses either just slightly to the left of the masses probably drinking a coffee and reading a news paper about the masses. I certainly never thought I would be reading an article about a mass I was about to get into.

I made it through childhood and adolescence without getting into video games. My first computer came in the early eighties replete with a big 10 inch monitor and a tape recorder to play programs, which then came on cassette tapes. A year or two later I upgraded to an Apple with a bigger monitor, disk drive and truly floppy disks. I was then presented with my first video game. While my neighbors delighted themselves with Pole Position I was working on blue and white grid paper mapping out the terrain in a “choose-your-own-adventure” words only computer role play. Hours of fun. After a month or so I swore of tech amusement and went back to reading, at least the classics had an illustration every chapter or so.

Arcades were not my thing which was good because my town’s only arcade was in the Laundromat a car ride away. Any kid who wanted to play Space Aliens had to consent to accompany their mother to the laundromat and risked having to do actual laundry in order to get a few lousy quarters. I didn’t mind doing the laundry but I didn’t like putting money into a machine just to see the words - Player 1 is over- after 10 seconds. I could not imagine skipping school with scammed or stolen money to shove it into noisy electric boxes. Even after technology had improved video gaming held no attraction for me. I never wanted to know what it felt like to be behind the wheel of a fast car or space ship. I didn’t care about trouncing and finishing my opponent in mortal combat or saving the planet from Teutonic alien mutants. Surprisingly, I was not even interested in the civilization games that allow you to play a god. All of these games lacked the one thing that I might have been looking for, anonymous human interaction.

Enter Second Life. A few weeks before the holiday I caught a piece in the Wall Street Journal about Second Life, a virtual reality universe that businesses with international offices have been using to have meetings. Second Life, or SL, is not only for corporate use it is also a social site for the masses. SL members create a customized avatar and use it to interact with other avatars and to navigate the incredible computer animated landscape. It is hard to explain. Check out Second Life for yourself.

Caution: SL it is addictive, especially for the underemployed, agoraphobics and those who wish they had a wilder side.