hey. did you ever play second life? i did. but only once. now i will tell you the story of that time i played second life.
for those of you that don't know, second life is a MMORPG which stands for lots-of-people-play-it-online-and-you-get-to-interact-with-real-people-in-a-virtual-world. it's kind of like world of warcraft but without a point or a goal. i first heard about it in the new york times (which by the way is a great thing to read if you want to learn about brand new stuff on the internets. another great source is my mom). the article writer interviewed a bunch of second life users and they all talked about how freeing it was to be on second life. they could look and act anyway they wanted without being judged by others. i thought to myself, you know, that sounds pretty good. i'd like to see what it's like to get away from the pressures of society. all the people in the article made it sound sort of like an online utopia. count me in.
so i signed up and created a character (or avatar if you are a geek). at first i wanted to make a really cool looking guy with a mohawk and one of those mustaches that connects to your sideburns. i quickly got frustrated with the controls and i was eager to find a gun so i decide to modify my avatar later. things went downhill from there. fast.
not 5 minutes later i'm wandering around in the forest, lost and confused. then these three guys come up to me and thy're like "do you want a gun?" i was like "do i?!?!!? fuck yeah i want a gun!" so this thing comes up on my screen that says something like futtbucker69 has offered you the item "gun". accept? hell yes.
*click*
and then...
i'm humping a water buffalo.
my avatar is humping a water buffalo and there is nothing i can do about it. these three guys are all laughing their asses off at me. i start to run away but they just followed shouting profanities at me and ridiculing me. i finally come to some sort of town or something and still i can't stop my avatar from humping the water buffalo. i'm trying everything, pressing all these buttons but i have no idea what i'm doing. then out of nowhere all these other people in the town come out of their houses and start laughing at me and making fun of me. at some point i pressed something that made the water buffalo come out of my head. that was a slight improvement but my avatar was still making these humping motions and everyone was still laughing at me. then mike and matt who i work with come in my room and they start laughing at me. what had started out as anonymous online embarrassment had crossed over into genuine real world humiliation. i felt like i was in high school again.
anyway. i don't want to talk about it anymore. the picture above is my poor avatar in his underwear with a water buffalo coming out of his head. ugh.
