By now you probably know that I am not wild about Second Life. I have come to consider it an escapist exercise and the more I observe of it the stronger my conviction becomes. As with any effort relying on getting people to spend money, the limits must constantly expand to keep the hook in the participants.
An article in today’s NYTimes discussed the trend of designing, building and decorating homes in Second Life. Interesting in that is gives people a creativity that perhaps finances doesn’t permit in real life. However, what startled me was the references to marriages - and divorces and remarriages - that occur in Second Life. Various quotes:
- The two, who are married to other people in real life, met in a Second Life club, hit it off and were married six weeks later in a Second Life ceremony — a more or less common occurrence (as are Second Life marital spats and Second Life divorce) that often occurs with the knowledge and consent of real-life spouses.
- They met while she was still with her first Second Life husband and became fast friends, then married shortly after her “divorce.”
- For his part, Mr. Roy, like many real-life spouses of virtual bigamists, seems unworried by his wife’s extramarital marriages. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” he said. “You are a completely fictional person in Second Life.”
Well, the characters may be fictional but are emotions fictional? Doesn’t the effort to create virtual relationships not need real emotions behind them? What occurs in persons who channel their emotional efforts toward a fictional existence and character rather than to the humans who are alive around them?
If someone is in an actual human relationship, I cannot see how dating, getting married and having sex with your partner (married or not) in Second Life can be considered anything but a form of emotional adultery.
Not surprisingly, the article just ignored the ramifications of this moral and cultural affront.