1. The topic of the week is cyber-cultures and virtual communities. A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographic and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Second Life builds on this idea because it allows users to find other people who share similar interests. Users create a avatar who will essentially be them and go about different areas and interact with other users. The possibilities in Second Life are almost unlimited. People will most likely be able to find similar interests with other users.
2. Second Life is very similar to the video game, The Sims. It uses avatars to allow people to express their ideas and interests with anonymity In my use of Second Life I found that most of the people that actually chatted with me were very open. I wasn't comfortable sharing personal information, but some people were extremely comfortable doing so. Second Life is a social media tool and its main function is to allow users from different areas to converse via avatar and share beliefs and interests. Second Life allows users great customization with their avatars. This is something that sets Second Life apart from other social media tools. Facebook and Twitter don't allow for much customization other than a profile picture. Second Life lets users be anyone they want to while still sharing their real interests with others.
3. My experience with Second Life was definitely very different than other things I have done. The main factor of this was the ways users were able to customize their avatars. There are a few different categories of which people may choose their avatars. Vampires was one of them and I had the strangest encounters with these avatars. Eventually I just avoided chatting with these avatars haha. The other choices were humans, animals, robots, and vehicles. My avatar was a robot. I'm not to sure why I choose a robot, but it did look interesting. People customized their avatars in really intriguing and impressive ways. My avatar was just a robot from the list of avatars you can choose from. I'm not the most artful person. This was what I found most interesting about Second Life.
4. There were some things that I found difficult about Second Life. One was that it was hard for me to go into some of the worlds because of lag. I'm not sure if it was the Second Life servers or just a bad internet connection. This is something that can probably be fixed fairly easily though. The main issue that I had while exploring Second Life was finding people who actually wanted to chat with me. It seemed like most of the people were either not interested or just jerks when I tried to talk to them. In my whole experience of using Second Life I was only able to intelligently communicate with about 8 people. All of the others just typed obnoxious and mean things. I feel as if the creators of Second Life can take some kind of action to make sure that their users are using the tool properly. This was my main issue with Second Life.
5. I feel that when Second Life is used properly it can help people communicate, but when used improperly it complicates communication. Second life makes it easy for users to find niches that they are interested in. For example, if somebody id interested in playing pool, they can go to a bar in Second Life and find a pool table and play with others. In this aspect I think that Second Life improves communication. It may be very difficult for people to communicate effectively with others while using this tool. Most of the users seem to not care about the others and just do whatever they want. This makes it hard for the users who are using Second Life for the correct reasons to find other people with common interests. In this way I believe that Second Life only complicates communication. Also, Second Life uses a great amount of anonymity, which can also lead to complications in communication. It is hard to have a personal conversation with other users in Second Life because you don't know who you are talking to. I also think that this only makes it more difficult for communication.
6. My experience of using Second Life was interesting, but also disappointing. I initially thought that my experience would be mostly positive, but after a few hours of exploring Second Life I know that it is something I will most likely never use again. I hate when people can hide their real identity behind things and Second Life allows just this. It just creeps me out to not know who I am talking to. When used properly I think that Second Life can be an effective way of communication and be a great virtual community. Unfortunately most of my interactions with others within the tool were negative and I have a hard time recommending it to others.
I have to agree with you that second life is like a videogame. The game allows you to find people that have things in common and that's what I had in my experience with Second Life. But finally I also agree with all the different worlds that I played in that it was a slow pace with my computer it could've been the Internet connection or so many people were in that world at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the idea of all the customization it allows you unlike Facebook and Twitter. It is just like Sims except you don;t know who you're talking to which is creepy because people can hide behind these avatars and be whoever they want.
ReplyDeleteI agree that people's choice of avatar was interesting to say the least. Their avatar, even though you can't see who they actually were, normally reflected by their what they would say via chat. I also see your point of not know who you're talking to. It shows that communication must have visuals to create trust.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was very difficult to move around because of the lag and the anonymity provided by the game can hinder communication. I think it overall does improve communication though like you said because you have more capabilities with your avatar than you do on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the difficulty of moving around because in some places there seem to be so many objects that it just takes a long time for your avatar to even load. I also think that it is a little weird that people create a different version of themselves and can pretend to be and do whatever they want.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit it right on with Second Life being just like the Sims. I also agree that the people were more than willing to hold a conversation with you even if your a new-be to the site. I agree with Kelly that the objects get in the way but on the flip side of that it is fun to create new items. i had a person teach me how to make basic objects so you guys were probably tripping over my lame shapes that i was randomly placing about.
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