Second Life

Meadows, argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. “People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”.

Referring to second life, the question is, is this statement believable?
It is easy to see how one can become addicted to such a program and how it can be easy for someone to suspend belief, the second life website in their introduction even makes this virtual reality world sound like dream, they do it in such a way that it makes you want to be part of this new world. When looking at the introduction to what Second Life is about the website, wwww.secondlife.com describes it as, 'what is second life?, A place to connect, A place to shop, A place to work, A place to love, A place to explore, A place to.. be different, Free yourself, Free your mind, Change your mind, Change your look, Love your look, Love your life....'

It is believed when someone suspends there belief it is 'a semi conscious decision, in which you put aside your disbelief and accept the premise as being real for the duration of being engaged in something' (www.mediacollege.com). Second life as the name says it itself allows for someone to be involved in a second (virtual reality) life. Meadows statement describes exactly what second life allows you to do, people can build things, such as there own business or houses, people can sell them to other people for money, people can use everything they create in second life, people can fall in love and get married in second life, it is really a place that has few limits. It can easily be seen as an escape from reality, you have almost complete control over this second life of yours and you can become so engaged in this life that your avatar becomes apart of you, you can feel yourself get emotionally attached to it.

But the question I would like to pose is, can all this attachment to something that is virtual be healthy? To be able to have a second life, one has to have a first life, the first life being of actual reality. If someone spends majority of their time in second life, what happens to their first life? When someone suspends there belief for so long how can they un-suspend it? People in second life become so attached to their avatar that they find themselves talking about them to people in real life, how can one say that they have fully stopped suspending belief then? When someone becomes so involved with second life and they become obsessed with it in their real life I suppose one can agree with meadows that the suspensions of disbelief has become grounding for belief, and I agree with meadows statement. That a second life can become some what a reality life as well to people become attached to it, how ever I do not agree that living a second life should out way your time spent in your first life. Being able to do everything that you can in second life allows people to dream and experience things that they would never do in real life, through a computer, people can become so transfixed, just like when reading a book become so involved with the character that has been created that it can in some ways determine their life. How ever when saying this, I believe that this is what happens to a lot of people their second life, it does become their first life and that suspending belief and living in this disbelief makes them believe that are greater things in life and those things are possible. Nevertheless I do not agree that this is a healthy way of living. The reality of second life is that it is just a computer game. A game that you have the controls over and a game that you can create, but instead of doing it through a computer, one can actually do it in real life.

If one can master the game of second life why can’t one master the game of real life, suspending your belief and engaging in a long amount of time in this disbelief is really just people using their imagination and fantasizing, but, people need to realize that their first life is not a fantasy but a reality and that their first life can not be deleted or easily changed like their second life. Although meadows statement allows for people to dream big and second life does support that, the suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief, it does not aid any one when someone needs to face hard reality.