Part 1: The Beginning

On the 5^th October 2011, I found myself sitting in a room with some sort of Unicorn-Human hybrid and a man who was my mirror image. I am not whoever I am in the real world, he's taking a break. Instead, I've become Blade Cayke. It didn’t take me long to figure out that this would be an interesting experience to say the least. We were all going to be learning inside Second Life, having lecture and discussions as these characters we had created.

I didn't know all that much about Second Life when I first joined, but after some research I have found some interesting facts. In Q4 2010 alone, over 750,000 unique users from around the globe spent more than 105 million hours experiencing Second Life while exchanging Linden dollars, Second Life’s currency, worth more than $165 million (USD) in its economy. Today, Second Life's virtual land mass in the real world would be roughly twice the size of Hong Kong. [1] 

Coming into Second Life, I was optimistic about what I would find. I believe  Second Life is a place for real escapism. I'm a gamer myself, so I'm no stranger to using electronic media as a way to escape from real life for a few hours. But Second Life is different. In games, no matter how customizable your character is, no matter how many decisions you have to make for them throughout the story, they are still a character within the game. In Second Life, people create a second identity for themselves. They choose how they want to look, how they want to speak, construct an entirely new personality for themselves if they want. While it may not be the personality they have in real lives, it is still a side of that person. A side that no one has ever seen before.

This is what I'm interested to discover more about. What makes people immerse themselves to such a huge degree on Second Life? If a person creates a character that is completely different to themselves, is it because they aren't happy with their real lives or do they simply wish to explore a side of their personality that they know is there but they've never been able to express before.

I am fascinated by internet psychology and I'm sure discovering what makes the inhabitants of Second Life tick will not disappoint me.

Source:

[1] http://lindenlab.com/about