In a nutshell - What is this about?

I created this blog for those who are interested on Internet Addiction and my request to Linden Lab to display a cautionary note mentioning Internet Addiction to the people signing in.

After all this time, this has become just a way to place this on the conversation. This is in a nutshell all I strive for.


Your liberty to read or leave its not denied on this space.


Virtual communities have enormous potential and will be part of many people's life's and work. So we need to take a thoughtful approach towards this. SL has an extraordinary pull and this phenomenon can result in dramatic damage to people who develop an addictive attachment to them.

  1. People joins in with no knowledge of this phenomenon
  2. Awareness of a danger helps reduce its potential harm
  3. Any tool to display this reality, might prevent those who read it

All ideas an opinions are welcome, posts with foul or offensive language might be deleted. Some information and videos might be disturbing for some people please be advised.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Addictive factors in Stage 1 Exploration

The intention in adding scenes of what I lived its to portray the experience, in hope that readers get more information to develop judgments and perhaps ways to deal with it. This is also for the families of the affected in helping them understand their loved ones, that they are not complete fools.

Furthermore part of my thesis its that analyzing this phenomenon in stages can help its understanding. In this stage I offer what I call "Initial Exploration".

  • Starts with curiosity - some of us expect much less and get blindsided
  • The main addictive aspect could be the possibility of creating a perfect being
  • Anonymity allows behaviors different to the ones in our ordinary life's
  • The awkwardness of walking funny, being inexperienced and looking up to people forms a place full of "awe"
  • Discovering strange and original people
I just want to discuss a little about the amazing power of visual perception. Even as much as we rationalize that this is a virtual world, and people its evidently not as they appear to be, we -I include my self- get fooled by our own eyes in believing a man in a white rope will be a scientist, a man in pilot uniform or a police officer or a soldier will be just that.

Avatar created identity becomes so strong and people can develop such an emotional attachment to their own virtual persona and to others worse that a rat in an experiment. Your mind tells you one thing but the eyes feed the body with wrong information, people in Second Life its not what they portray, something that starts with not even using your own name, and goes on to become a giant masquerade party.
Posted by at

2 comments:

Siggy said...

You might want to write about one of the other stages: Relapse. I suggest this now because it is fresh in our thinking and you can explain your feelings. No-one said that once you leave, that's it! It's like weight loss; you lose what you want, then find it goes back up again, so you go through a dieting period again. The plan is usually to make the periods between dieting periods longer and longer.

So, think about what makes a relapse happen because if people can spot what to look for, maybe they can cope better.

11/12/2008 12:41:00 PM
Mony said...

Thanks Siggs! I will I will... I need to remember the other stages, and then hit hard on re-lapse. I was so happy about being out for the best part of 2 months.

Thanks for reading!

11/14/2008 04:15:00 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)