When Secondary Life turns Primary

Just when you though your first life was too much to handle…they offered you a second one.  Second Life embodies the fantasies of its users; your second life is everything you want it to be.  Yet, amoung numerous opportunites to seek adventure and run a business, second life offers people the opportunity to hide behind a mask and socialize.  The average avatar, the virtual represenation of the person, looks nothing like its user.  Inherently wrong?, I think not, but to what extent can someone pretend to living an “imaginary” life before being a virtual puppeter moves from hobby to a livelihood?  As an online multiplayer environment with unlimited potential does Second Life pose the same problems that exist in other MMO’s like World of Warcraft.  Yahoo Game’s recently told the story of WOW causing such marital discord that a couple divorced.  Now I’m not saying that Second Life will increase the divorce rate in America, but I’m sure that it will impact the way relationships are conducted.  Does a digital date count as cheating, is intellectual property extended to the digital realm, these are questions that address real life issues and are taking on new meaning in Second Life.  A European software company Vollee thinks that second life shouldn’t end on the computer, but is developing a second life application for cell phones, so users can bring their second life into their first.  Second Life offers unlimited potential for creativity, entrepreneurship, and fantasy, but every action falls on a spectrum and that line begins to fade more and more as the distinction between reality and fiction becomes blurred.