With advanced technology, social media has become an essential part of not only our social life but also life. Everyday, people get online to see what is going on about the world, and meet others online to kill time or do business. Just as what the human history has experienced, the online citizens gradually accomplished the transform from individuals to communities. (Ensslin, A. and Muse, E. 2011) People set up their online identities to get into the online communities. Under the trend of virtualization, there is a great number of online products came out to the public. One of those products is the Second Life.
The Second Life is a game of virtualized online community which came out in 2002, and was publicly tested in 2003. At the beginning, the number of the game clients broke 100’000 on October 18th, 2006. But it unbelievably reached 200’000 in just 57 days, on December 14th, 2006. The fast development of this game, in term of social media, implied the great popularity and expectation of the virtualized community industry. What made it so outstanding is the integrity of this platform. Firstly, it was based on the online conversation that people began their online career. And when people got familiar with each other through the platform built by social media, there came the term of ‘online community’ which provided a home for these online citizens and where they can share what they saw, what they heard or what they experienced. As the community getting larger and larger, people will be unconsciously grouped by their own interest or value. Different groups of people held different ideas about the world and had different methods of dealing with problems. Next, groups of people must have something to do to prove their existence in the online world, so they would possibly organize some ‘events’ for their followers and online friends to attend. Finally, just like the real world, advertisements would always be filled into every webpage online, and every corner in the real world.
However, there is still something that would be disappointing. Though the internet is highly developed in this age of modernization, there is still a great deal of people who cannot get access of the internet, thus cannot join the events of online communities. What’s more, there could be some problems with the hardware facilities which would possibly lead to the failure of joining the events. Finally, and basically, if the web server crashed down, the whole community would also immediately disappear. (Aliza Sherman, 2009) These accidents would all result in desperate endings.
The Second Life, as far as I think, is almost the same as the real world. You also have to think as the way you think in the real world. The only difference is that what you do is just staring at the screen and clicking. And it provides everybody a chance to taste a different character which could be regarded as certain self-actualization. Then people can sometime fall into the role of the game, and intend to expand the online identity. (Meadows, M. S. 2008) To some extent, the online identity can be a reveal of the true identity of a person because the internet offers every online citizen a mask to hide themselves.
Reference List
Aliza Sherman, 2009, Second Life Is Social Media, viewed May 14, 2013, <http://gigaom.com/2009/05/09/second-life-is-social-media/>
Ensslin, A. and Muse, E. 2011, Creating second lives: community, identity and spatiality as constructions of the virtual, Taylor and Francis, EBL Book Library, viewed 27th February 2013.
Meadows, M. S. 2008, ‘The roles of social worlds and the rules of game worlds’ in I, Avatar: the culture and consequences of having a second life, New Riders, Berkley, CA, pp 34-51 (available via the Library electronic resources).
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