Today's WSJ has a profoundly sad article about the real life of some Second Lifers. It's worth a read, especially the end of the article, where you find gems like this:
Back in the world of Second Life, Mr. Hoogestraat's avatar and Tenaj have gotten bored at the beach, so they teleport to his office, a second-floor room with a large, tinted window overlooking the stage of the strip club he owns. Tenaj plays with her pug, Jolly Roger, commanding the dog to sit and fetch its toy. Dutch drinks a Corona, Mr. Hoogestraat's beer of choice in real life, and sits at his desk. For a while, Mr. Hoogestraat, sitting at his computer, stares at an image of his avatar sitting at his computer.
[...]
Sue Hoogestraat thinks her husband Ric spends too much with his Second Life wife.
From the kitchen, Mrs. Hoogestraat asks if he wants breakfast. He doesn't answer. She sets a plate of breakfast pockets on the computer console and goes into the living room to watch a dog competition on television. For two hours, he focuses intently on building a coffee shop for the mall. Two other avatars gather to watch as he builds stairs and a counter, using his cursor to resize wooden planks.
At 12:05, he's ready for a break. He changes his avatar into jeans, leather motorcycle chaps and motorcycle gloves, and teleports to a place with a curvy, mountain road. It's one of his favorite places for riding his Harley look-alike. The road is empty. He weaves his motorcycle across the lanes. Sunlight glints off the ocean in the distance.
Mrs. Hoogestraat pauses on her way to the kitchen and glances at the screen.
"You didn't eat your breakfast," she says.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see it there," he responds.
"They probably won't taste any good now," she says, taking the plate.
Over the next five hours, Mr. Hoogestraat stares at the computer screen, barely aware of his physical surroundings. He adds a coffee maker and potted palms to the cafe, goes swimming through a sunken castle off his waterfront property, chats with friends at a biker clubhouse, meets a new store owner at the mall, counsels an avatar friend who had recently split up with her avatar boyfriend, and shows his wife Tenaj the coffee shop he's built.
By 4 p.m., he's been in Second Life for 10 hours, pausing only to go to the bathroom. His wrists and fingers ache from manipulating the mouse to draw logos for his virtual coffee cups. His back hurts. He feels it's worth the effort. "If I work a little harder and make it a little nicer, it's more rewarding," he says.
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."
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These people should get a first life before they get a second life. Just a thought.
This reminds me of an incredibly bad novel I read in the late 90s about people getting addicted to their virtual lives. Hmph.
I don't mind being an occasional, temporary "WoW widow", but I don't think the problem here is Second Life.
Part of what is so shocking about this article is that it becomes apparent that the reporter is sitting in the room w/ Hoogestraat the whole time. So, not only does he act this way, he's willing to do it in front of a stranger...who is no ordinary stranger but a reporter for WSJ!
Do you feel different, Chris H, when you hear that the reporter told him that the article was about his thriving SL business, and that her usual "beat" is as a religion reporter for the Miami Herald, and she found these folks through the EQ Widows support list but didn't tell the husband that?
He spent his entire weekend showing off his virtual business to the WSJ, while his wife presumably stayed out of the way watching TV.
I'm blogging on this, but it will be a few days research before I have it done.
@Shava, yea, a little different. You're right, the reporter could be there on a pretext. Nevertheless, I wouldn't completely ignore my wife like that!
I wouldn't completely ignore my wife like that!
Gotta have context, though.
I've all-but-completely "ignored" my wife for days in the past when I've been away on observing runs, for example.
If this is how the guy lives his life, yeah, he's got serious issues. If he got sucked in by a reporter who told him one thing so as to intensify the behavior that made for the story she wanted to spin, that's another thing.
-Rob
Doesn't the journalist have to get consent to publish the article? What sort of people would consent to this humiliating description of their marriage?
The graphic accompanying the article with the images of the avatars and portraits of the real life people is too too much. I think it's all BS.
Snort! I could get that dragged into *just* coding software, and still do some times. Eventually you finish. The real issue here is that **for some people**, there is no such thing as "finished". Such people need jobs/hobbies that "don't" allow them to spend 10 hours on fiddling with something like that. As for the reporter.. This is what @$$@#$ bugs me about **all** reporters on every subject. And I mean, *every subject*. They are not interested in the 1 million people that *may* be playing the game 1-2 hours a day, or even 1-2 hours a week, they have to intentionally look for the nut that spends 10+ hours a day on it. Mind you, if it was someone spending 10+ hours **praying** every day, you wouldn't hear a damn thing about it. Its only the "shocking", "unusual" or "horrifying" they look for. Things like, slow, but real progress on something (say, how many bridges they "have" fixed some place, for example), instead of disasters, people being helped, instead of hurt, people playing games in a normal fashion, instead of obsessively, someone being born, instead of murdered, etc., only get reported when a) the news is slow, or b) the management decides that too many people are writing in letters that contain things like, "Why don't you report some nice news once in a while.", and they get scared that they might lose money. Then they usually have one or two stories, that take up 1/50th of the time spent on the disasters, etc., talking about something that went right. Its no wonder some times that the fundie end of timers think their insane prophecies are happening.
Worse, those news sources that try to be different often inevitably either cave in and start publishing the same one sided crap, emphasizing only the negative, or get bought up by someone who has already caved.
Doesn't the journalist have to get consent to publish the article?
No, not at all. He has to get consent to do the interview, but he can then publish anything. If he says anything that is blatant and factually incorrect, the paper can be sued for libel, but there's no need to get consent from the guy before publishing the article.
-Rob
I think this parody site could be relevent.
Every time I feel the urge to wisecrack about Second Life, I remind myself to mentally replace "Second Life" with "ScienceBlogs.com". Just how transparent are the glass walls of my house, anyway?
A New York Times article about Second Life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/college/coll09second.html
I don't understand the judgmentalism. People have different tastes and should have the freedom to pursue their own interests, even to the point of obsession if they desire, as long as it is not an imposition on others. Yeah, if it is negatively affecting family members, then that issue needs to be worked out between them, but otherwise, who is anyone else to judge them? The condescension seems too much like a call to moral panic. Personally, I have never been interested in playing one of these role-playing universes (although I did spend a weekend playing Halo non-stop once), but I certainly don't look down my nose at those who want to organize their lives around it. As Joseph Campbell said, "Follow your bliss."
Judgmentalism? I just said it was profoundly sad. I mean:
Okay, you're right. I judge it to be profoundly sad.
Undoubtedly the finest quote in the whole article is this one:
"You try to talk to someone or bring them a drink, and they'll be having sex with a cartoon."
First off, addiction to playing *anything* on a computer can be a real addiction, and a problem. One of my husband's friends lost both his job and his wife because he was calling in sick to work, then spending all day every day playing Everquest. He used up all his holiday days playing Everquest. His wife eventually just got fed up and left.
Having said that -- Kagehi is absolutely dead on right. There are people out there who will find something to get addicted to -- Second Life, Everquest, online gambling, real-life gambling, pachinko. And it will be these people that the media focus on, while ignoring the non-news millions of people who play for a little while each day, then go off and have normal lives. Sensation sells.
Secnd Life is rather addictively fun, and it is possible to both spend and gain stupid amounts of real-life money if you do it right. The exact same can be said, however, of a number of activities.
And...wait, this guy's wife is just sitting around watching TV all those hours? How the heck is that LESS sad?
Just because a lot of people spend all their free hours parked in front of a TV makes it more socially "normal", but it is still deeply dysfunctional behavior.