Lively alternate lives

This is one of those mind-blowing stories about how whole lives can be lived - not just dragons slayed and death stars exploded - in cyberspace. Check out a New York Times piece about Second Life, pop. 75,850, where people in 80 countries "live"; take balloon rides; hold Nascar races; dance at nightclubs; buy and sail boats; purchase, subdivide, and sell real estate, get married (in real life), and kiss (virtually) distant spouses (in real life). "A handful" of players earn six-figure (real) incomes in profitable virtual businesses in the game, according to the Times. What parents might want to know, not readily found in SecondLife.com site info is the fact that parts of this massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) are X-rated. "Like most virtual worlds, Second Life also sees its share of cybersex, in which two people will use a private chat channel within the world to type suggestively to each other," the Times reports. "But Second Life adds a visual element to cybersex that chat rooms lack…. In addition, there is a virtual sex industry," the Times adds. Which is why there's a Teen Second Life (see my coverage of this in August).