Only Pointing Out The Bad
Tell A Friend About This Post.
Stumble it!
Mainstream media keeps heading right down the same path, it seems. Just as I thought that Second Life bashing was about to end, another “SL Doomsday” writer points out all of the evils that she can find with the platform (which she refers to as a “Web site”). Scripps Howard News Service writer, Bonnie Erbe writes her latest opinion article just like most of the other people who have never stepped foot inside of it… or if they have, made their decision about the whole world in less than two hours in-game.
The fact that she calls it a “web site”, aside, many other things about her account of what Second Life is are off the mark. She bases her whole opinion as if conversations inside SL are all one-on-one, saying that “two people can interact unrealistically with each other, both posing as someone they are not.” I actually can’t remember the last time I was in a room with only “one” person. I do remember times that I was interacting with another person, though, and I will say that it was anything “but” unrealistic.
She continues about how Second Life has “caused” divorces and break-ups in the real world, saying that if people put all of the time and energy into real life relationships that they put into relationships online, everything would be all better. Of course it has! Blaming SL for the lack of communication between RL partners is “easy”… that’s why! If the communication and time spent together was good between people, they wouldn’t look for something else… be it Real Life or Second Life.
I have met some amazing people in Second Life, as well as in real life. Meeting people and getting to know them in Second Life is much different than getting to know somebody in the flesh, however. Bonnie says, “…just because your avatar mate is physically beautiful doesn’t mean he or she is a good person…”. Does she actually think people are that stupid? Everybody who is a resident of SL “knows” that the avatars aren’t “real”.
I honestly don’t even pay too much attention to the avatars of people that I talk to in Second Life. It’s more about a meeting of minds. You can tell a lot faster if somebody is a “good person” by how they communicate. The same holds true in RL, but in SL, the communication is “all” you have, so it’s actually a lot easier to make that determination, earlier.
Sure, there’s a lot of “LOL” and “afk”, but for the most part, people usually talk in complete sentences, rather than talking like 13-year-old girls in a Yahoo chat room. If Bonnie had ever stepped foot into Second Life and actually met a few people, she would have realized this. She would have met some interesting people and maybe even became friends with them. Well… she might have. Going into something with such a pessimistic attitude, she would have probably turned into a griefer.
