Virtually Valuable

While reading the comments on a friend’s blog post about Freebies, I came across the standard comment (and from a Second Life resident no less), which goes along the lines of “it’s all just play clothes on virtual dolls, why do you all give a crap?”. I was going to reply to it but realised [...]

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The Future of News…

“Getting the story out first” often means what you’re getting is improperly researched half-truths. Take the swine-flu for example: Every day the news stories I watched and read would contradict their own announcements the day before, the media built up its own hype until it got to the point that the only real news left [...]

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Of Creation, Trolls and Griefers

It is exceptionally easy to destroy things, it is a lot harder to create. One of the things that used to annoy me about the post-modernist movement I had to study as part of my Arts degree, was how so very ready it was to destroy other theories, and yet provide nothing in its place [...]

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Anxiety and Paranoia in a Virtual World

I have had Second Life friends who frequently suffer anxiety attacks – I can think of four people off the top of my head but there may be more. I always encouraged them to be open about the way they were feeling so I could reassure and comfort them. I did this primarily out of [...]

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“Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy”

Found this wonderful, and very funny little snippet today on YouTube, of comedian Louis CK being interviewed by Conan. I thought it was very apt to the sorts of things we complain about every single day in Second Life. So next time someone in whinging at you or you’re feeling a bit grumpy about current [...]

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Sexual Perversion and Deviance, in Second Life

Replies to my recent post about Virtual Illegalities, and reading this very entertaining item (“Vaginas with teeth and other sexual myths“), got me thinking about what we can learn from Second Life about sexual “perversions” and “deviance”. This post brings together a lot of thoughts I’ve expressed over previous blog entries, specifically as they relate [...]

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Virtual Illegalities: Drugs, Prostitution, and Paedophilia

One of the great joys of Second Life is the ability to try-out and live-out things that you can’t do in the real world. It allows you to safely experiment with activities that you might otherwise be too afraid or unable to attempt. And it lets you do things that might be considered illegal in [...]

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My Top Ten Second Life Photography Locations

This is a current list of my top ten Second Life places to take pictures. Slurls are attached to the names of each place. Each description also contains a link to a picture I have taken of it previously on my own stream, feel free to click through to get a feel for the place. [...]

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Second Life Addiction Quiz

A recent commenter on my blog claimed you can’t be addicted to Second Life. I countered with a “oh yes you can be”.
It doesn’t take much of a Google search to find people making the claim that it’s possible (examples of relevant links include this and this and this).
Inspired by my good friend Rrish over [...]

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Facebook Free Day!

If you’ve been reading my blog regularly you’ll have a good idea of my opinion on social online media like Second Life, Facebook, Twitter etc: Yes they can be entertaining and have a lot to offer some people, but many people are wasting their lives to the tune of very many hours a day doing [...]

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