Upon hearing of the combination of interesting and annoying inherent in operating on the plane of existence known as Second Life, I was tempted into trying it, despite my aversion towards 3D games that operate online (yes, WoW, I’m looking right at you). My inkling had little to do, of course, with the fact that to create an avatar on Second Life was an assignment in the experimental course in which all contributors to this blog are enrolled. Little at all.

My aversion towards such games is not utterly unfounded, by the way. I’ve tried a variety of 3D games and found the lag ultimately frustrating enough to cause me to quit. I love the social networking and communicative aspects of the Internet, but slow-loading pixels are enough to drive me away from certain facets of that world. This is precisely the reason why back when I was a bored high school student, the bulk of my Internet time was spent on messageboards, forums, chatrooms, and the like: all of those helped me to meet people without forcing me to wait as my inevitably slow computer and dial-up connection took their sweet technological time.

Still, I tried to approach Second Life with an open mind. I figured that it had been several years since I’d tried anything like Second Life; the design must have improved in that time, I reasoned, since in that time my own computer had improved despite the fact that I’d bought it quite cheaply, and I’d upgraded from dial-up to DSL. If my cheap self and equally frugal family could move forward, I thought, designers of 3D games, with their technological obsessions, must be universes ahead. Plus, Second Life seemed popular enough to warrant smooth operation.

In order for me to avoid any possible caveats associated with the cheap technology that I own, I operated Second Life on the Mac in the Langson Library’s Multimedia Center. I logged in with the computer’s attached industrial-strength headphones blocking me off from all reality bu t the virtual kind. The character I created is named Khayyam Jehangir. The first name is a reference to my favorite philosopher/mathematician/poet (or pretty much the only person who can claim all three titles legitimately), Omar Khayyám. The last name was chosen because, of all the names on the drop-down menu, it was the only one that rang any bells in my mind (Jehangir is a punk-god figure of sorts in the fictional Islamic Punk Rock scene documented in The Taqwacores).

I logged in an began by transforming my appearance into a more realistic one. By default, Second Life characters start off as somewhat closer to the societal ideal of beauty than most people are, and so I tweaked my character’s body to better resemble mine. I had some trouble with changing her face, as I couldn’t figure out how to make her face me during the appearance-editing process so that I could see the changes I’d made. Still, I decided not to get stuck on her looks and to do some exploring.

The lag really, really annoyed me. Really. I would’ve logged off then and there if it weren’t for the assignment. Anyhow… The initial island had a few interesting places, notably the dragon, but I got bored quickly and tried some of the SurLs that were on the course webpage. They didn’t work, to my frustration, so I decided to fly around instead. I ended up on some island where there was a dancefloor. There seemed to be a restricted, exclusive area into which I could not enter. My clothes really didn’t seem up to par, so I tried the SurLs again. I explored Anteater Island but not only found it deserted, but not all that interesting and compelling.

I guess that’s the bottom line of my Second Life experience: I just didn’t find Second Life interesting. I would rather go to the Student Center and actually play Dance Dance Revolution and interact with people than log onto Second Life and, fighting lag, try to find someone with whom to interact. As much as Second Life and its ilk are touted as the future of online interaction, I am doomed to be old-school in my preferred online interaction methods.