Topic 3 - Second Life, literally

The website second life literally does what it says. You can actually create a second life. Once having downloaded the software, you were asked to choose a starting look for your avatar, with this you had a choice of male and female in business suits or normal clothes, even strange outfits too. You were required to create a 'fake' first name for yourself, i choice hippy ( do not ask why) the website then gave me a variety of last names that i could have. I choose a weird one, because it felt weird. I received an email to activate my account - Hippy Hepzipig i became. I was told in the email that i could do anything that i wanted to.
The first few steps were quite weird but it reminded me a lot like the game TheSims because you were picking a character, giving it a name and then living their life.
Second Life allows cybertopians to achieve things that you might no be able to achieve in 'real life'. You can buy land, build your own house/business you can do anything you want to do. Which i suppose this is what is appealing about this 'virtual world'.
This 'world' also allows you to attend 'dozens of events where you can party at nightclubs, attend fashion shows and art openings or just play games.' This can be done by yourself or with the 'friends' that you meet. I think that a site like this would appeal to people that are quite lonely, that don't do that much in the 'real world' and would enjoy experiencing something like this. Additionally, this might appeal to people that don't have the confidence to attend a night club by them self or have the confidence to go up to a stranger and start talking.
In comparison to Turkles theories based around MUD's in 1993, i believe that these people taking part in this 'virtual world' could be called netizens in the fact that to me this site is not well known. These early adopters of this site may be accused of being 'fake' however i believe this is the nature of the site, the site allows you to be who ever you want to be, and it starts when you have to make up a 'fake' name. The only issue i would have if i was to regularly partake in the site is that i would not want to get in touch with anyone outside of the 'world' for i believe people would not be who they say they are.