For those of you that don’t know, Second Life is a giant online video game where people can establish alternate realities for themselves. I don’t like Second Life. I don’t get the appeal of it, I don’t want to get the appeal of it, and I have open disdain for it. We were talking about a couple in class the other night that was having marital difficulties because the husband was married to another woman in the game Second Life. While it could not be considered adultery, even though their avatars were having sex online, it could be considered grounds for divorce and in some cases it has been. (And really if you haven’t had avatar sex with someone with a horses head, well I guess you haven’t lived.)
There have been articles written about this (like this one) that talk about people getting things from these cyber relationships that they can’t get at home. I get that, sometimes you need an outlet that you might not be getting at home. Your significant other might not have the same interests, so it is good to discuss certain topics with people online, establish some friendships. That is totally logical, but when it gets to the point where you are getting married to another character and banging them, well haven’t we crossed the line a tad? Don’t you think you may want to disconnect from the internet for awhile and talk to your partner saying something like, “Honey, you know how I always ask you to use the feather duster to tickle my anus while hooking the car battery up to my testicles and you refuse? Well I found someone online that will do that for me on Second Life. That is why I go on there every night after work for 8 hours, you see I am not balancing our stock portfolio. I think we need to work something out, like maybe just using Duracells instead of a car battery”
How do you get to a point in your life where you are basically so disillusioned with your relationship that you decide that having a fake one with an image onscreen is the way to go? I think this makes real cheating so much more logical. Let’s take that crappy Zack Braff movie “Last Kiss” as an example, in the movie he cheats on his pregnant fiancé with a hot college chick. The fiancé flips out when finding out about this, understandably so. Now the girl Braff cheats on his girlfriend with is played by Rachel Bilson.
While her hotness doesn’t make the cheating right or forgivable, at least you can somewhat wrap your head around it. A young college seductress that probably invigorates him and makes him feel free on some level. Versus let’s say a Second Life avatar:
Plus you have the added bonus that the avatar could be run by a dude, so your boyfriend has been having online sex with an avatar after building a relationship up with a “woman” that is probably actually another guy at the end of it. What makes you feel worse? If this happened in the movie his fiancé would probably have shot him.
If it were me and I was married or dating someone I would personally rather have her getting split into two by her personal trainer rather than her coming home getting on the computer for hours and having cyber sex with another cartoon character. Throw in her getting married in a game because she feels like I can’t give her what she wants emotionally and you have the worst possible situation ever. In fact this makes me want to never have a meaningful relationship so I don’t have to worry about it, so um who wants to go bang on Second Life?
Which do you think is worse, someone cheating on you in real life or someone cheating on you in an online video game?
Anyways, being in grad school I run into a lot of people that drop the reference that they don’t own a TV. When people announce that they don’t have a television in their home they act so morally and culturally superior that is drives me insane. Like I am a lesser person because you decide to sit at home and read War and Peace while listening to Ella Fitzgerald records. While I sit on the couch and watch Supernanny thinking to myself how I would totally do dirty things so Jo Jo would give me a stern talking to.
I had him walk out onto the screen, squat and poop… Not only did he poop but flames shot out of his ass while doing so. I figure you should always write what you know and that goes for design, there is nothing that I know more about in the world than poop. The professor walked by and kind of looked at it and giggled then mentioned something about me being disturbed. I wanted to say, “Well at least I didn’t have my stick figure spitting the poop back into another stick figures mouth.”
I write about the stuff we all think but don't like to talk about.
