When you know you’ve been spending too long in SL

Although on the face of it this post may seem frivolous (but there’s absolutely nothing at all wrong with a little humour once in a while, is there?), it addresses a very serious and very interesting issue: in what ways might prolonged immersion in Second Life (or other MUVE) engender, in real life, patterns of thinking, instinctive responses, and behaviours that, normal in Second Life, might be considered abnormal in real life?

The question, put thus, is of course vague and possibly contentious: clarifications and finer distinctions need to be made.  First, by ‘immersion’ I simply mean the shift of attention from real life to wherever one happens to be, and whatever doing, in Second Life; immersion in this sense is equally characteristic of our natural stance towards television, cinema, theatre, and novels, and so need not at this time embroil us in the related ‘immersionist’ / ‘augmentationist’ debate.  (I’ll revisit, in far greater depth, the issue of ‘immersion’ in a further essay.)  Secondly, in using the words ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ I am not making value judgements; rather, I am simply highlighting the appropriateness, the ‘fit’, of thought and action to environment.  Second Life behaviours that might, in real life, be considered ‘abnormal’ are therefore just those that don’t ‘fit’ the real world.  Endeavouring to fly unaided from the top of a tall building, to take an extreme example, would for the obvious reasons not be considered abnormal behaviour in Second Life in the way it would in real life.

I’ll begin with a short anecdote of my own experience as a MSc student, programming intensively over long hours in LISP, POP11, and Prolog.  It would not be uncommon, after a day of lectures, to head for one of the computer labs to program until midnight and beyond.  With short time left before deadlines for submission of programming assignments, it would not be unusual to be coding throughout the entire night into the following day, sometimes as much as 18 hours or more, breaking only to make a coffee or pop a pie in the microwave in the ‘debugging room’ (the student common room between the two labs).  I still having very clear memories of emerging from the lab at 3am, 4am, sometimes 5am in the morning, to drive the four miles back home: hallucinating, I would see streets as statements, junctions and traffic lights as separators, almost quite literally interpreting the urban landscape as elements of programming code.  Quite clearly I had, for those hours in the lab, become so deeply immersed in programming that it had become my cognitive filter for reading the real world.  I found, yesterday, in response to the invitation to complete the sentence “You know you’ve been spending too long in SL when …”, the following, some frivolous, some serious, but all capturing the essence of the immersive Second Life experience:

When you go to the store and ask the assistant if the Chocolate Gateaux comes with Mod and Copy permissions …

When your RL friend says that they are on a diet and you say ‘Yeah me too, and it only cost me L$299 for this great new body shape’…

When you are an hour late for your appointment because you couldn’t find the damn ‘Stand’ button in your car….

going somewhere and being suprised about the lack of lag

Some tımes ı fınd my self tryıng to mute annoyıng people

Stopping myself asking people where they bought their hair …

Why can’t I ALT-zoom this website?

When you go to buy new furniture in RL and worry about the prim count!

When you’re late to work because deep down you were only allowing for travel time to TP

When you see a building in RL and in your mind you figure out the shapes and number of prims needed for building that

When you see a stranger looking familiar and wonder if they are an alt

When you hate the fact you have to talk to people to get to know them because RL people don’t have profiles you can perv

When you look for that pair of comfy sandals, then remember they were in your Inventory

When you see a building in RL and in your mind you figure out the shapes and number of prims needed for building that

When you find yourself in the morning train, staring at people, wondering why they don’t have their names above their heads

You walk out the door in the morning and wait for things to rez

You look for dance balls at RL clubs.

A friend asks if they can come over and you answer, “Hang on I will send you the landmark”

Second Life became immersive for me to that extent only at the end of August of 2010 when, sitting in a market square, I found myself frustrated at not being able to cam in on people, right-click them, and read their profiles.

Have you had similar experiences? have you found that your immersion in Second Life, or in other MUVEs, over a long period has led you to unwittingly carry over SL patterns of thought or instinctive behaviours into your real life?  I would love to hear them, and would invite you to post them in the comments below.