Two Major Articles on Second Life

The dead tree media have been paying attention to SL for a while now, but last week brought major articles from arguably the two most important East Coast papers. The first was in The New York Times. Reporter Seth Kugel offered readers an inside look at SL, introducing the uninitiated to such things as avatars, virtual architecture, and Linden dollars.

The second article dealt with the more salacious aspects of SL. It was published in The Wall Street Journal, and focused on the sexual content available in this most popular of virtual worlds. I, along with others, have long maintained the main portion of SL is inappropriate for K-12 educational use due to the unregulated “anything goes” atmosphere. Author Alexandra Alter focused on a married man who engaged in an affair of the heart (and avatar) with another person in the virtual world. Edward Castronova over at U. Indiana, Bloomington, gets a prominent mention as does Nick Yee from Stanford.

Wrapping up the article, and summing up the virtual affair, Alter keys in on the RL wife:

Sitting alone in the living room in front of the television, Mrs. Hoogestraat says she worries it will be years before her husband realizes that he’s traded his real life for a pixilated fantasy existence, one that doesn’t include her.

 

“Basically, the other person is widowed,” she says. “This other life is so wonderful; it’s better than real life. Nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray. The person that’s left can’t compete with that.”

I sympathize with the SL widow, Mrs. Hoogestraat. But, I must say, nothing is better than RL. Hopefully her hubby will figure that out soon.

References

Kugel, S. (2007, August 9). A house that’s just unreal. The New York Times. [Online]. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/garden/09second.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

Alter, A. (2007, August 10). Is this man cheating on his wife? The Wall Street Journal, (pp. W1).