Second Life? No, thanks.

Over the past few months I've been reading a lot of articles about a virtual reality (love the oxymoron) called Second Life. If you're not familiar, basically this program is a 3D "world" where people can create an alter ego and live out a "second life" complete with a second home, a second family and second jobs.

I am really intrigued with this program, partly because it's programming genius but mostly because the technology makes me quite nervous - the idea of people spending more time living a virtual life than a real one shocks/scares/saddens me.

Today I read this article which discusses the effect that escapism to online games and virtual realities could have on those people living real lives in real societies. The article is short and sweet so I recommend you have a look rather than me trying to sum it up here, but I did want to mention the end of the article in which Dr. Castranova describes the kinds of people for whom it would be socially acceptable/understandable if they were to escape into a virtual reality:

"A father of two spending 90 hours a week in a virtual world because he doesn't like his wife - I would say that's escapism, and it isn't anything you would say is good.

"But if it's a heavy-set girl from a small town who gets victimised just because her body isn't the 'right' kind of body, and she goes online to make friends because she can't get a fair shake in the real world, then I would say the virtual world is more of a refuge."

While I understand the point Castranova is trying to make here between escapism and retreating to a better place (to be extreme, a man with responsibilities is more of a loss in our world than a girl nobody notices as existing in the first place), I have to say I completely disagree with his assessment of the acceptability of one retreat versus the other.

In both cases the people in question are unhappy with their lives. To argue that it is unacceptable for the man to retreat to a virtual life and appropriate for the girl to find solace in the same is crazy. Sure, the grown man has more obvious responsibility than the girl - his family, his job, etc. - but that's not to say that an unhappy teenager doesn't have responsibilities to attend to such as schoolwork, family obligations and so on. Why is it acceptable to teach a young person that retreating to a refuge is ok? One day she'll find herself in the same position as the older man with responsibilities to a family and a company, and how will she deal with her hardships then if she has turned to escapism in the past? Or, to paint a possibly more tragic scenario, what if she never has a life because she has only fostered relationships in virtual situations? That's a tragedy.

Don't both the man and the girl deserve the opportunity to be happy in their real lives? I think it's sad that more and more people these days turn to virtual realities when they are not satisfied with the lives they've created for themselves. Rather than paying programmers the big bucks to create alternate worlds perhaps we should be investigating what we as a society can do to be more inclusive and more accepting so people don't feel the need to escape in the first place.