Understanding what Second Life is
MaynardBefore joining SL, you might want to check for yourself, what SL is and what it is not. Many believe that SL is some kind of sandbox, where you can do whatever you please and live out all the things you wouldn’t do in real life. In fact, there are areas which ARE sandboxes to test out the environment, have fun and do things that are not possible in other areas (sims) of SL. In general, there are rules (just as there are in normal life) to make life work for all the many residents in SL - else we would have anarchy, even more bugs and lag and crashes and no fun at all.
Let’s put a small list here what SL is and what it is not:
Second Life is…
- a massively multiplayer online game world
- the nowadays realization of sci-fi concepts of cyberspace of the 80ies and 90ies of the past century
- one of the most immersing and massive social networking and social interaction platforms ever created
- a place to find new friends and exchange opinions and world views
- a multi-game universe where you can find interesting things to do day by day
- and much much more!
Second Life is not…
- the place to take your everyday griefs and worries
- a place for racism, homophobia, xenophobia, child abuse, drugs or criminal behaviour
- some kind of game where your main goal is to harass others, cause trouble or just be an asshole
- a dating or cybersex platform (at least not primarily - you may find sex and dating, but not solely)
We can continue this list for some hundred pages maybe, but I think you get the idea behind all this…
