Second Life, the Dreamed Life of Ours?

Through the documentary “Life 2.0” by Springarn-Koff, I understood that there are a lot of people out there prefer to live in their virtual life, which is more likely known as their ‘second life’. These group of people are living through an online software named Second Life (SL) with their customized avatars that represented their identity. It doesn’t mean they are lifeless, it is just the way they wanted to live, said one of the interviewees; as some of them still have their connections with their social life in reality, though it is limited. All the interviewees said that they are feeling real in the SL, even if it is virtual. This is because they can have all kinds of social activities in their SL as in the real life, for example, meet a ‘life partner’, build a ‘family’, having sexual activities, have your own business, commit suicide at the same time kill others whom are innocent, and also choosing your sexual identity and orientation. Of course, all the activities above are done by just clicking and communicating with the avatars that are being created.

When they are asked on how they could just closed themselves in the room, especially in the dark one, to enjoy the SL with those avatars; other than feeling it real, a woman, Detroit said that nothing could be more than earning money by just clicking on the screen and playing the online games; while living in squalor in her parent’s basement, working in her pajamas 20 hours a day. Another man, Ayya, even lost his girlfriend in his real life due to his SL avatar as an 11 year-old girl, yet it was because of his emotional trauma of being molested or raped when he was 11. Even married couples could divorced on the reason of they wanted to live with their SL life partner for real, which ended up with an argument when they started to live together and the guy went to India with unknown reason. For me, this documentary is less about the realities of SL, an immersive online world, than it is about the offline pathologies of the people who had chosen to live there. “Life 2.0” would have been more interesting and original if it, like its subjects, had dwelled more in the virtual world, and if it had told us more about that world’s mechanics and folkways.

The stories are interesting enough on their own terms even though they are just typical as 20 million registered members, even more than that of the service; which most of this is harmless. For instance, Detroit had primarily gave us a shock with the visual contrast between her SL avatar and her actual body. It’s way too enough to make us feel want to escape from the real world. Ayya, whom previously profiling himself as an 11 year-old girl, too one of the members that had tried to escape from real life, escaping from his emotional trauma particularly; had finally re-profile himself with a new identity after he had come across and face his trauma during his childhood and realizing he had lose his love ones. It could be said that this SL had directly influenced the members of it service by providing the satisfaction creating a new identity that they wanted to present themselves through online virtual world and doing what they wanted to do freely. They entered a new reality with that new identity, virtually yet more likely like our own; with digital altered egos that can be sculpted and manipulated to the heart’s desire, reality, fantasy, or a healthy mix of both. Within this alternate landscape, escapism abounds, virtual relationships are formed, and a real-world economy thrives; had effectively blurred the lines between reality and ‘virtual’ reality.

The director had successfully managed to create this drama which lead us to question not only who we are, but who we long to be, by assuming his own avatar and immersing himself into the worlds of SL to find out the core of basic human interaction deeply. Indeed, after watching this documentary, I found out that profiling ourselves into another identity, of course more or less, it created contrast between the ‘us’ in real life and the virtual ones; yet at the same time, it had gave us chance to explore who do we really wanted to be. People tend to escape from the reality mainly because they found themselves lost with attitudes of people (stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination) around them. At least for them, the virtual world, their second life, could have less problem of these. However, this kind of idea wasn’t, or isn’t, truly being accepted in the society, voices of objections are somehow a huge forces that this group of people that wanted to run away from the reality more with the thought of  "I'm real. He's fake".