Moral Panics- Second Life

Think back to our discussions on Second Life. What are the social concerns of the development of the kind of technology discussed in this article? How is it changing the way we interact? What are the issues on control and censorship? Who is left behind? Post an entry of 300w in response to these questions. Do some of your own research and find actual examples to back up your points.

Second Life, as explained in a previous blog, is mostly viewed as a very positive step forward in the world of technology. It allows users to interact with each other and the system itself which is generally thought to be a sociable and enjoyable experience…but there are exceptions.

There are many things that, morally, could go wrong in Second Life and cause a bit of panic to spread amongst users and the relations of users. For one, children can easily use Second Life whilst lying about their age making them vulnerable to paedophiles and general abuse online. Two, there are suggestions that it can be used by terrorists to communicate and plot attacks and Three: it can ruin marriages.
Max, 39, isn’t sure what drove his soon-to-be-ex-wife to have a relationship in Second Life. He says she refused to talk about it, and if he asked questions, she’d just hop online and freeze him out.
“I thought she was going through a depression and she’d get bored and move on with life,” he says. “But she kept getting deeper and deeper.”

Within six months of signing up for Second Life, Max’s wife was spending up to eight hours a day online — and even more on the weekends. She and her in-world boyfriend were in constant contact — even when they weren’t in-world. Max says he found out later that his wife and her avatar boyfriend were having drinks together — in his house — via Web cam.
Max went on Google and started doing some detective work. To his amazement, he learned that his wife had married her in-world boyfriend in Second Life.
“I had my dad looking over my shoulder at the stuff I was finding,” he says. “Just so I could ask him ‘Am I crazy? Am I really seeing this?’”
Max ended up pulling the Internet connection out of the wall, and he says his wife started trashing the house. The end came, says Max, when she threw a punch.
“I’m 6 foot, 200 pounds,” he says. “When she took a swing, I said, ‘no, we’re not going past this point.’” The two are currently finalizing divorce proceedings.
Although Max’s wife did end up meeting her virtual boyfriend in the real world, that often isn’t the case with virtual relationships. Sarah had a plane ticket bought and plans to meet her virtual partner, Martin — but she canceled her trip.
“One day I had the realization that I didn’t really want that guy,” she says. “What I wanted was for my husband to treat me like that guy.”
Sarah and her husband split up, and have since divorced. But Sarah credits Second Life with showing her what she wanted from a partner — attention, affection and romance. She gets all that from her current real-life boyfriend — a guy Sarah says she’ll probably marry.
And even though Sarah’s boyfriend didn’t ask her to, she ended her Second Life relationship last year. As a result, she doesn’t go in-world that much anymore.
“I decided that I didn’t want to partition my love,” she says. “I just wanted to have one person to call ‘sweetheart.’”