'Herculean Bunny Firethorn'

Being an avatar is not as cool as I thought it would be. I never played Simms as a kid, but Second Life is what I imagine Simms would be like—kind of boring and pointless. I was expecting my avatar to be sent on missions and challenges and to rack up points and move on to new levels, but unlike WOW and similar computer games, Second Life doesn’t have a clear objective or rules, so you are never really “winning” or “losing.” Apparently certain competitive activities are available to participate in, such as various sports and other video game-like scenarios, but these activities are voluntary and Second Life itself is not competition-based. Second Life is more of a creative tool where you can buy land and customize your own islands, build the house of your dreams, create a business, construct a water park, etc. You can pretty much create and build anything that your heart desires.

I started off Second Life with the name ‘Bunny Firethorn’ and at some point I managed to become ‘Herculean Bunny Firethorn.’ Though I’m not exactly sure how this name transition took place I’m ok with it since ‘Herculean Bunny Firethorn’ sounds way sweeter than just ‘Bunny Firethorn.’

My favorite part about Second Life was designing my avatar. I spent an awkward amount of time attempting to make ‘Bunny’ attractive, which proved to be a bit more challenging than anticipated. In the end I think I pretty much accomplished my goal. At least now when my avatar wanders around aimlessly she’ll look relatively hot doing it.

I think the coolest part about Second Life, and the aspect that makes this virtual world entertaining, is that your avatar can teleport to any place that exists within the second life “grid.” You can literally type in any word/place and a list of places to teleport comes up. I typed in “Mexico” (I was in a pre spring break mindset), chose a location from a list of hundreds of options and teleported there. My avatar arrived at a place filled with bars, hanging piñatas, and a big board walk overlooking the ocean. On the boardwalk there were different buttons labeled with various dances such as “line dance.” When I pushed the button my avatar bust out into an intense tropical dance. You could also push this balloon looking object that caused fireworks to explode in the air.

Anything you can imagine is available for sale in Second Life, but in order to purchase most things you need to have Linden dollars ($L), the currency of Second Life. In order to earn $L you can either purchase them with U.S. dollars or you can create things to sell. I think that Second Life would be much more interesting and fun if I had $L to spend. Just like searching for places to teleport, in order to find things to buy you just type in whatever sort of thing you’re looking for in the search bar and a list of tons of stores appear. I typed in “bikinis” and teleported to a store selling tons of bikinis and lingerie.

There is definitely a community aspect to Second Life. Your avatar can make friends with other avatars and can chat with them as well. You can chat with people nearby by using the local chat box, or you can send IMs to your “friends” in Second Life no matter where they are. There is also a voice chat option, though I never used this. I tried to chat with other avatars that I ran into (literally), but all my conversations were rather minimal. You can search for specific avatars to find their location and you can teleport to that location to meet up with them.

Since I spent most of my time in Second Life figuring out the ins and outs of the virtual world I wouldn’t say that I necessarily had a chance to feel a connection with my avatar ‘Bunny.’ I can definitely see how overtime someone could form a strong connection with their “second life” because your avatar has the opportunity to act how you would in real life, or your avatar can experience things that you can only dream of experiencing in your real life. If I had had more time and $L I would definitely have purchased some sweet clothes and items for ‘Bunny.’

Altogether, I’m glad that I participated in Second Life. It was cool to experience living in a virtual world, and I suppose part of my fantasy of ‘being an avatar’ was satisfied. Although it was cool to briefly engage in Second Life, I can’t imagine logging hours upon hours each week exploring the virtual world, but to each his own.