What the hell is "Second Life"?

[meowhouse]

I've been reading someone's entries about it and well um it's really fucking weird.  It makes Stephen/Jon gay bdsm porn  fanfic seem almost completely normal.  (Almost, I said!)

I gather Second Life is some kind of role-play game?  But people are responding to this other person's entries with comments--not "in character" comments; the people

Comments

[meowhouse]

I can see how that would make sense--something reality-based for unserved populations--but I don't understand the role-play part. Not that role-play can't in itself be fun or a diversion; it's more that in this particular case (the entries of this person that I've been reading) she is an imaginary non-reality-based character but is having "problems" that are causing non-playing real-life people to feel bad for her. Her kitty-cat character got into a fight and SHE is upset about it and needing to talk to a therapist. But it's not real! She just wrote a story about a cat getting into a fight.

A virtual world where people are people and exchange information I totally get; and a virtual world where people pretend to be aliens or witches or rocks and have their whatever fantasies I totally get; but I do not get a virtual world where rocks have feelings that transcend to the actual human being pretending to be that rock, to the point that non-playing people offer sympathy that the rock had his feelings hurt by another rock.

I must read up on this just to see if I can figure out the allure of this game!