The virtual world
So before i started taking this class I was a tad technically challenged, didnt exactly do anything too exciting on the internet. Just used it for things i needed in reallife like email, internet banking, facebooking my 'real' friends, trademe and ebay, etc. Now after every class I seem to get all excited about exploring the different possibilities in the virtual world. I was on chatroulette last night, its quite amazing the way you have the oppotunity to just openly chat to people all over the world and it's so random like who you'll get next. Since my last post talking about how I joined Second Life I spent some time with Emily who's also taking this paper showing me around all the different things and different people on Second Life (seeing as I myself still havent mastered how to work it all quite yet). Second Life seems in so many ways that if it was real it would be better than real life. I can see how some people get stuck in it and start living through their avatar. Things like flying are possible in Second Life. It's just as easy to fly to the otherside of the room as it would be to walk, and I mean what person has never wished they could fly? Because its anonamous and you can make your avatar who ever and what ever you like we noticed there are places on their that are pretty disgusting and unethical that are pretty busy with people like themed brothels etc that maybe because of the fact that people are playing with a character thats not necesarily anything like themselves perhaps they feel that its ok to explore things they wouldn't in real life. Another thing that is popular on second life is tp which is teleporting. Second Life is so huge it would be a mission to walk/run/fly everywhere so you can just tp, you can also tp other people on there. Say you were chatting to someone and you wanted to show them something you send them a sort of tp link and the two of you are both teleported to the next location. (it was through this someone teleported us to the places mentioned above.) Back to the idea of this weeks question involving trust I'd like to add that I thort because Second Life is annominous people would chat so they could meet others and trust that they are hinding behind their Avavtar, but we tried to talk - as in actually not just typing chat - and only one person would talk back. And even when using the 'chat' function people wouldn't even tell us where they were from. We would be like "Hey! I'm from New Zealand, where are you from?" and majority weren't even interetsed in answering that, I'm not sure why, I mean I wouldnt think your country would be considered too personal but perhaps people might want to get their Second Life seperate from their real life and i suppose with the talking thing their voices might not match their Avatars. It would be embarrising if your Avatar was a young beautiful girl with an old mans voice, so I guess thats another idea of on the interent you can be whoever you want, so people exploring and taking advantage of that and dont want to give away their real identities.