No More First Life

Written 18 May, 2009

No More First Life

The more I spend time in Second Life, the more I become convinced it’s a world of its own and the more I become convinced Second Life was an unfortunate choice of name.

Why unfortunate? Because the word Second defines this world in relation to the virtual reality we call real life. It implies there’s something inferior or secondary about SL, that it’s less “real” then first life, that it’s less important.

Second Life is certainly rudimentary in many ways, but the lives many of us spend there are as important and in some cases even more important than our real lives. We’re not participating in a game; we’re living genuine lives in a new medium. Our lives in SL are separate from and in someways dependent upon our first lives, but they’re no less real, unless we want them to be.

And so, from now on I will no longer define Second Life by its relation to my first life.

And because Second Life is a fixed name that I have no power to change it, I’ll henceforth be referring to what I’ve until now called first life or real life as Earth.

So I’ll be saying and writing things like:

I have to go to Earth.

Sorry. Earth calls.

My place on Earth isn’t nearly as nice as Whimsy.

I wish I looked this good on Earth.

From now on, the term real life will refer, at least so far as I’m concerned, to both Earth and Second Life.