{Note:  Welcome to Ideacity our new contributor, Ellen (aka Ima).  A new participant within Second Life, Ellen gives us a first hand account of what its like to enter the virtual world.  She’ll be giving us ongoing accounts on what it’s like to experience the places and people within, grounded in her fresh view and personal observations.  For those of you who have been tinkering with Second Life for a while, this will be a refreshing look at what it was like in the beginning.  For those of you scratching your head about a “game” where there’s “nothing to do”, this may help you understand why people stick with it.  Enjoy.}

Let me start right off by saying that I don’t consider myself a gamer and have never been obsessed with MySpace. When not online for work, my usual routine has been to muck about the news headlines of the day, send some emails and check a few blogs. ..nothing major and nothing that kept me online for hours on end. That is, until Second Life.

Having an avatar in Second Life has been far more fun that I would’ve expected. It’s kind of like having a new toy to play with…just working on the appearance of your avatar alone can take hours if you really get into it. But why would anyone spend hours in a virtual world when the real word already has everything you need? Well, maybe a few stories about what it’s like to be in Second Life and what kinds of things you might encounter as a “newbie” will prove enlightening.

The first major decision you’ll make regarding Second Life is what to name your avatar. Who knew? I have to admit, I wasn’t prepared with a list of names. I actually wasn’t warned that maybe I should give this some thought before signing up. So I came up with a name on the spur of the moment. Naming is actually your first opportunity to become someone else. I find that names are far more expressive and inventive in SL because you get to choose your name versus real life where your parents typically pick the label most closely associated with your identity. Ah, the power! Be warned however that SL doesn’t let you change your name later, unlike real life where you can go to court and become Princess Mufflebun if you really want to.

My first ah-ha moment in SL came when building my avatar. (By the way, “building” an avatar is very easy – it’s really more like creating the settings for your avatar. SL has done most of the heavy lifting for you on building it). Now the moment in question had to do with hair. Your avatar does come with hair but it looks like serious helmet-head hair and most people don’t want to stick with that. So, you go out and buy some nicely designed hair which is available at many stores in SL. In real life, you buy a wig that fits your head, right? So of course when I bought my hair in SL, I put it right on my avatar’s head as is. Woohoo, I was excited to see my new head of hair. Oh, it was lovely. I had massive bald spots on three slides. Creepy. I kept messing with the hair…putting it on, taking it off…shifting its position. Nothing helped. Then it finally dawned on me, I can change the shape of my head! So I changed my head until the hair fit perfectly. Now that’s a revelation. In real life you buy hair to fit your head, in SL you fit your head to the hair.

In real life, I love to shop. I’ll shop for just about anything and manage to make it interesting, but my true downfall is clothes. Boy, do I love shopping for clothes, especially bargain shopping. In that vein, I’ve found SL perfectly suited to feed my shopping obsession. There’s plenty of clothes shopping to be found AND even discount shopping and freebies. SL is full of all sorts of places where you can get a whole box of clothes for $1 (that’s a Linden dollar which is worth about 10 cents in real life, now that’s a bargain!) The clothes in those boxes are pretty good too. I’ve found ball gowns, diamond necklaces, leather jackets, groovy jeans and my all time favorite – a full-on, totally decked out wedding dress. I guess if you’re really discerning, you’d be worried about others running around in SL in your free clothes, but I haven’t run into an avatar yet with my outfit on.
Now, I have to take a moment to reflect on my full-on, totally decked out wedding dress. I love wearing it in SL and it’s not even about wanting to be married in SL or real life. It’s just so big and pretty and over the top. You can’t run around in real life in a giant wedding dress but in SL, no one even bats an eye. Every day is that “special” day in the big ‘ol wedding dress and it’s not even hard to get around in. I just punch a few computer keys and go. Life is good.

I hope some of my little stories have inspired you to check out SL if you’re not already on. It’s oddly entertaining. I’d need a whole separate blog post to tell you about the other avatars I’ve encountered. Maybe that’ll be my next entry. In the mean time, feel free to go on and check out the outrageous variety of avatars and far-away places in SL. And, the next time you see someone wandering around in a full-on, decked out wedding dress, think of them fondly.