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Seven days in Second Life

Posted on 27 Nov 2006 at 11:35

It's for the best: I only plan to be in Second Life for another day and the last thing the world needs is another single mother.

Day 7

It's my final day as Bozza Bayliss, and considering that I've spent a fair portion of the week gambling, womanising and contemplating becoming an estate agent, it's time to seek salvation. I notice a women's bible study group on the event list and, although I fall at the first hurdle in that group's description, a church surely can't be far away.

My hunch pays off and, even though I've blundered into the middle of a women's group, a delightful woman called Hensonian Pennyfeather takes pity and gives me a guided tour of the religious camp. She guides me around the most intricate and beautiful architecture I've seen all week, including a magnificent stain-glass window that must have taken weeks to complete with Second Life's rudimentary creative tools.

She also shows me a "secret underground entrance" (God's bat-cave, if you will), where there's literally a light at the end of the tunnel, silhouetted against which is an image of Jesus. Hensonian rushes into the Lord's arms and beckons me to follow. Given my earlier sins, I fear the Lord will send me hurtling back into the darkness, but to his immense credit, I'm welcomed into the flock. And what better way to bid farewell to my Second Life?

I don't mind admitting that I'd become rather attached to my alter ego. I shall miss the good-humoured folk at the Three Lions pub, the decency of the many people who showed considerable patience in helping an idiot who couldn't be bothered to complete the training camp, the opportunity to sit in a lecture hall listening to a masterclass in Excel formatting one minute and discussing last night's TV with people in a coffee shop the next. Most of all, I'll miss my dragon.

However, there's a part of me that's glad it's all over too. In the seven solid days I spent in the virtual world, I estimate that at least half of the people who became my "friends" were there each and every day too. Second Life is desperately addictive, and with daily email reminders of upcoming events, the pull is relentless. I spent more than 20 hours in Second Life and if I didn't have real-world family commitments I could happily have spent double that. And there's the rub. Second Life is brilliantly imaginative, engaging and fun, but it's no substitute for a real life.

Author: Barry Collins