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: Near Memory Bazaar

I am astounded by the amount of outrage Second Life has generated, once it got the attention of mainstream media.

Consider the wide range of responses, from earlier this year, to Business Week’s “My Virtual Life”, part of a series of articles written after one of their columnists went in-world, much as Ignatius has been doing. One reader replied:

Don’t let the SL [membership] figures fool you. . . Most people leave after realizing SL is a virtual world rife with cyber-sex, exploitation and a false economy. I have yet to read an article on the true SL, which needs to be revealed. It’s a playground for pedophiles and losers.

While another wrote this:

I allowed my son to play Teen Second Life. . . .A week later I joined Second Life too! Now we are both having fun on the computer. It is like a little retreat from real life. But don’t forget there is a real life too guys. Keep the real life and Second Life apart. “What happens in Second Life, stays in Second Life.“

I encounter a lot of venom about virtual worlds; people are afraid of the online sex, the addiction to a screen, the loss of contact with reality.

So how much should newcomers be afraid of this “little retreat”? After all, the entries here show that in-world one encounters both the tawdry and the philanthropic, the creative and the banal. I have yet to encounter a pedophile or even a child-avatar. Still, it may be time to address the most controversial aspect of SL: sex. Violence is not a large part of SL, aside from specially designated combat areas I have yet to explore. Yet most sims are rated “mature” so sexuality could be a part of the experience there.

Though I have not participated in cyber-sex, I learned a lot about why people seek it in SL. My education all began at the Starlight Supper Club. . .