Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: Orientation Island

I recently created what SL players call an “alt,“ or alternative identity, and I had to endure, for a few minutes at least, the indignities of Orientation Island.

While Ignatius’ arrival went unrecorded, this time I got a snapshot of the my alt’s birth: naked he and others arrive in-world, waiting in line until their virtual clothing “rezzes.“ Then a new SL resident is born. 

And how cruel is that world when compared to ours? Over the weekend, I was in another line, picking up supplies for a luncheon. The cashier, clearly having a terrible day, cast a sad glance at the man in front of me.  He’d teased her about a newspaper he wanted to buy; when she didn’t know the price, he said “free!“

She replied, “Ain’t nothing free in this life, not even a smile.“

At that moment in the market, her words struck me as poetry. And in an instant, I knew clearly why so many of us like Second Life.

In a recent reply to a post here, Ida Keen corrected me; Second Life, Ida notes, is not a game. It’s an environment, a world.  And unlike our world, many things are free.  The volunteer work on Info Island, my friendship with Dianna Defiant, my collaboration with Beeble Baxter on an academic article, Ida’s and Dianna’s kindness to newcomers even more bumbling than Ignatius: all these things have been free of charge.

Sadness, in-world?  Other than what we bring with us, such as for the Tech victims, I’ve not yet found sadness in Second Life.