Icarus’s Weblog

While exploring Second Life I have had some trouble finding some interesting groups to research, but I have still been able to find some groups of interest.  It certainly seems that about 95% of the content in second life is for enterprise purposes — everybody wants to turn a buck from their Second Life experience, and I certainly do not blame them, buying land can be a big investment and it only makes sense to try and get some of that back if you have the skills to be a designer. 

The first group I have found is a group of people is a lot set of people who dress up like pirates.  It is an aspect section of second life called sims.  When I asked the pirate what they did, he responded with “we battle with other people, through sea and air.”  This idea was completely foreign to me because I didn’t see second life as a place where you could ‘die’, and if you can’t die battle seems to lose the purpose.  He also had a 100% in green above his head, next to his name so I imagine that was his life meter.

I belong to a social fraternity on Bradley’s campus so it seemed only natural that I peaked my curiosity and put my letters into the search box.  Imagine my suprise when I found other people in second life who belonged to the same Fraternity.  Now the idea of hanging out and dancing in SL is still too strange for me to really understand a need for a digital Frat house, but the concept that it is possible to meet other people who are members of the same national organization as myself through second life is a use I certainly had never considered before. 

The next place I found was the first place I could ever see myself maybe getting into as a subculture — there were games that you could play and skydiving and a lot of other things that if nothing else could be fun to use visually.  While I was there late Sunday night there was nobody walking around, but I could imagine a lot of work went into creating this small carnival of sorts and work is usually rewarded.  That being said I’m sure that there is quite the number of other plots exactly like the one I witnessed all around second life. 

Overall I have found a lot of places that are either large malls or big dance clubs, and not a whole lot in between. I found a place that had boats and those were new, Perhaps if the owner is around they can move but I certainly couldn’t.

This blog will record my time through my MM333 class and track my progress.