In Which I Wax Poetic About an Assignment I Don't Like
Earlier today I signed up for Second Life. For class, because I sure as heck wouldn't be doing it otherwise. There's a reason why I have an avid dislike for it, namely Jane's passion for it.
Basically, the title says it all, participants get to have a second, more interesting life in the virtual world than they do in the real world. While that could be lots of fun, Jane's descriptions of it turned me off. She hung out online with a lot of kids between the ages of 18 and 25, who would constantly tell her she did not act like a woman of her age. She took it as a compliment that she was still considered youthful.
Some of her stories about it made me wonder what exactly was going on, and I could read between the lines when she told me about the youngsters she hung out with having relationship issues in the game and how she gave relationship advice. I found it odd that a person who was most definitely a homebody and had one serious relationship to her credit was expert in the matters of the heart she described, but I kept my mouth shut. Other stories, and the Facebook relationship status of 'it's complicated' made us realize that there was some cyber hanky-panky going on.
In sorting through her affairs, there was quite a bit of it, especially with one gentleman who suckered her into sending him a decent chunk of money with stories of "I can't pay my rent!" The timeline bothers me, it was about the same time we'd asked for some assistance in order to save our old house and we were told she didn't have it. The guy ended up with, based on the Western Union receipts, much more than we'd asked her to lend us.
Then there are the emails back and forth, and I have a disdain for it that I briefly explained to the professor. I'll do the assignment, but what is it really like? Is it the cyber version of a singles bar? She and others answered that it can be, but you have to be savvy enough to ignore the come ons. Not my cup of tea.
Tomorrow, we will go over Second Life in class to know what we need to do to complete an assignment for class that counts for 10% of my grade. I signed up and participated in the tutorials on Welcome Island, as recommended. While there, strangely, the chat option is enabled and no joke, this is the FIRST question I got asked:
I'm not exactly sure where this type of question fits in with the educational purposes of the program that I am told exist. Hopefully, I'll find those benefits soon.
Basically, the title says it all, participants get to have a second, more interesting life in the virtual world than they do in the real world. While that could be lots of fun, Jane's descriptions of it turned me off. She hung out online with a lot of kids between the ages of 18 and 25, who would constantly tell her she did not act like a woman of her age. She took it as a compliment that she was still considered youthful.
Some of her stories about it made me wonder what exactly was going on, and I could read between the lines when she told me about the youngsters she hung out with having relationship issues in the game and how she gave relationship advice. I found it odd that a person who was most definitely a homebody and had one serious relationship to her credit was expert in the matters of the heart she described, but I kept my mouth shut. Other stories, and the Facebook relationship status of 'it's complicated' made us realize that there was some cyber hanky-panky going on.
In sorting through her affairs, there was quite a bit of it, especially with one gentleman who suckered her into sending him a decent chunk of money with stories of "I can't pay my rent!" The timeline bothers me, it was about the same time we'd asked for some assistance in order to save our old house and we were told she didn't have it. The guy ended up with, based on the Western Union receipts, much more than we'd asked her to lend us.
Then there are the emails back and forth, and I have a disdain for it that I briefly explained to the professor. I'll do the assignment, but what is it really like? Is it the cyber version of a singles bar? She and others answered that it can be, but you have to be savvy enough to ignore the come ons. Not my cup of tea.
Tomorrow, we will go over Second Life in class to know what we need to do to complete an assignment for class that counts for 10% of my grade. I signed up and participated in the tutorials on Welcome Island, as recommended. While there, strangely, the chat option is enabled and no joke, this is the FIRST question I got asked:
I'm not exactly sure where this type of question fits in with the educational purposes of the program that I am told exist. Hopefully, I'll find those benefits soon.
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