Now, it's so much harder to talk to strangers... Yes, there are skype and facebook, but most people are quite suspicious to people they don't know, me included. I don't add tones of friends just to look popular. I have added only people I know fairly well. So it's hard to randomly chat.
In Second Life, there is such possibility. You just walk in world and look around and if you look like a normal person it's quite easy to find someone to chat. Sure, most of them are freaks, but there are some normal people too. Or even with the freaks, you could enjoy the chat, if you're not too much of a moralist. You just shouldn't take anything too seriously. And I must say I like that.
Now, after I started using SL more often, I discovered something else. For some zones, they want your ID information! They call them Adult. But not all of them are adult - some are just classified like this. And you get more and more limited if you don't share your personal details. Which I don't understand.
People go to SL, because they want anonymity. If someone, even if it's a computer, knows who you are, it's not fun anymore. It becomes like Facebook. On the other side, I also find some peace when I read that the age of someone I talk to is confirmed. Because I don't mind talking with people much younger or older than they say they are, as long as they are adults. It's not very good idea to talk about some stuff with minors. Even though when I was a minor I talked about sex with people online, but then I never lied about my actual age. While I'm sure many people in SL lie about their age.
Anyway, I still don't think that anyone, even SL has the right to require your personal information, like address or credit information and so on. There is too much risk of abuse. Because they don't tell me how they are going to protect my privacy and what are my rights in case of a leak. I don't do or say anything I wouldn't do in real life, but that's not the point. Some things are not to be shared with everyone and if a leak occur, a lot of people wouldn't like it AT ALL. So there must be another way to confirm age, or simply since all the conversations are recorded anyway, to be sure that in case of interest by the police, they will prove if someone lied about his/her age. And that should be enough.
But what impressed me was something else. First - how quickly one manages to identify him/herself with the avatar. It is simply amazing. I remember that article where scientists attached false arm to a monkey (and then to a man I think) with two healthy arms, but one of its arms was held in a bandage. In no time, the monkey started to feel the false arm like a REAL one, to use it and even react to some visual stimuli as though it feels them. It was AMAZING! I think the same happened to the man who had a prosthetic arm for 3 months - he started to feel it as his own! I wonder if this isn't one of the evidences we're much more than just our bodies. Because obviously our brain is wired to accept changes of the hardware. As funny as it sounds, it looks very very true. And my feelings with the avatars in SL were just the same. My avatar doesn't look a lot like me, because I couldn't make it to look like that but still it's not that different neither. But the thing is, at some point, you just feel what's going on with it. True, I'm quite empathic, but this is creepy! And fun
The second thing I was impressed was the way people relations change in such a virtual world. Someone recently spoke to me of the other planes where human beings lived in eternal love and that rape is something unreal that is a product of the chains of the society. As much as I completely disagree with this statement, because abuse is abuse no matter what, still, it's easy to see something like this in Second Life. Because if you can't feel pain or threat, you can let people do anything with your body and not be a problem. Of course, you won't feel pleasure neither, but the point is that it won't matter for you.
I still can't figure whether the last thing will have good or bad side-effects on our society, but if we make the analogy with video games where people kill other people without feeling pain or fear, maybe it is more likely a bad effect. Because as good as it sounds the eternal love thing, in reality people do feel pain and fear and threat and they can be physically harmed. And you have to act according to the laws of reality and not according to some other ideal you have in your head which sounds cool, but it isn't. Because ok, it's clear that in around 70% of the situations, we can have sex or do a lot of stuff in much freer way than we do, because of society and internal limitations we have. But we fight with those limitations already and I think we're going a good job on this. The problem is that in the other 30% people can get seriously harmed and humiliated. And maybe I'm optimistic, maybe the percents are not 30 but 70%, because the internal limitations for many people even if stupid and wrong, they will make them feel as they are harmed when they shouldn't feel like this. Thus...I think we have to be very careful with virtual realities like SL. To know where the boundary is.
And so far, I'm not sure that if people didn't feel the external pressure of the society to behave, they would put that boundary on the right place. For example, I don't see anything bad to go and offer someone to have sex. The boundary is when that someone tells you "No". You have to know this answer is possible and even probable, because humans tend to not want to have sex with disgusting people, or with people interested only in the sex itself, or when they are tired, miserable or simply hungry. Our bodies are complicated and this must always be accounted for. And not only our bodies, but also the world we live in. Most people need desperately a shoulder to cry on, not another dildo. To get them in playful state they need to be happy or at least relaxed. So for me, it's very important that people realise the difference between VIRTUAL reality and real life. And the difference is simple - in real life, we are very dependent on our bodies. And our bodies have to be satisfied with food, water, relaxation and good emotions, before we're willing to have sex, to jump with a parachute or whatever other fun thing you come up.
But I must say I like so far my stay in SL. Sure, I met some men pretending to be women, also some men pretending to be men but I guess this is normal. If you're there for the fun, you can have it. And I like that. And also there are so many pretty views to enjoy. People really put a lot of work in it. It's like Sims but with people. Quite fun
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