Stage 2. Immersion

Immersion its when you have passed a few days, the controls of the -not so friendly- user interface are learned now, you know how to fly, move around and add people to your "friend" list. In a few words its must happen when you say "I got it, now let's see some more".

Back then I had my starting point established at the heart of mainland Second Life. I got this idea from a note card that suggested places to visit, one of them was a Balloon Tour over the houses and offices of the Linden Labs employees, I tough I would love to see the life's of the rich and famous, I did not know I would end up stuck on that place like for ever.

The place it's a wood platform, standing 15 meters above ground, with space for the balloon landings and takeoffs, signs promoting the tour and chairs and umbrellas to wait for your ride, along complimentary virtual popcorn and lemonade. Little did I know the ride was broken, so I waited and waited, trying to activate the tour i did things like sitting on inflatable party balloons, since the instructions read "Sit on balloon to start tour"- all this I did under the eyes of a really cool presence, Willa Wyclyffe.
Willa would just observe one after another noobie drop in and try it all, just like I had, she would always say "Balloon ride it's broken" but noob after noob would still try it all. Willa could be found normally talking with all her class and coolness with Irving Beardmore. They appeared to me like two super veterans, as they discussed scripts and building and other stuff I could only imagine, I did not dare talking to them for fear of being ignorant.

Immersion stage, continues on the "awe" factor as it feeds on visual perceptions and the mind and imaginations keep running at full speed filling the blanks with the desire to believe. This stage has to be characterized by meeting people, something I appeared to be good at, given that I really like people and the fact I can be outgoing at times. SL helped me exercise some human skills I wanted to work on and loosen up on my shy and reserved nature. In personality tests in real life I score right on the middle balance between introverted and extroverted slightly charged to introversion. Yeap believe it or not, acquaintances in real life cannot believe it either, but that is how I feel internally and how I grew until recent years, of course if my motor gets going I don't stop.

This is when people get exposed to the dangerous addictive factors, SL Love, SL Relationships and SL Sex. For whatever the reasons, this anonymous, ideal chat place allows people to open-up and chat their hearts, minds and desires out. And here enters the Human Emotions Furnace effect, yes, in Second Life virtual love its passionate, honest, open, perfect and relationships become ultra-relevant, I don't know why but can understand it.


Deep in my mind I knew I was addicted, I looked for help, guidance, or references in-world, of course this was not only stupid but also fruitless. I was being tempted with SL love, its funny but some people seem to project their personalities beyond their avatars, and individuals portray weak or strong presences. What they say of course helps you imagine who they are. Imagine being so vulnerable and in several ways ready to get hit or over run by excitement and emotions. Add your own personal needs and a powerful recipe for virtual love its waiting for you.

I made the commitment to elude SL Love and deep attachments as if they were enemies as I knew this would only hurt me deeply and could be really hurting to my evident and increasing addictive nature and condition.

In my Immersion Stage I met fantastic people, I was making friends everyday a few of them would would stand above and create a little house in my heart, I will not glorify them here, but please know the things I have shared with them are unique and all this craziness, addiction and adventures into this apocalyptic world will binds us across this virtual world, as I am sure other addicts feel for their friends.

I met the smart, accomplished, apparently not addictive person Sigmund Leominster, one person I thought understanded me in my ideas about SL Love and addiction and its well read, a fighter who has come a long way, caring individual. I met MTD1952 who's adventurous ways hide a loving, big teddy bear with a kind heart along a flair for fun. I met merry Feltwich who is a lady that I not only love as a friend but respect, admire and share very dear life beliefs, merry you are the head Tough Cookie girl. I also fancy as a friend a person that uses the name of DrGonzo Yokishawa, for his smartness, for not taking Second Life seriously and being a smart easy going, he is one fun buddie to have.

I also hold very high my Mongoose Merlin, whom saved me from some ugly places in my early adventures, she said "What are you doing here?" "You clearly don't belong here". Skyra Woodget who its Second Life's self earned Jet Set, a complete woman, mother and selfless giver, with a high a healthy self esteem. Sky2 who has a protective heart and always took care of me from a distance. As you see friendships can flourish in SL, being this one of the real hits of that place.

Hence my description of Immersion stage ends with the mention of some of the friends I made back then, I think with those words you can get the picture of the feelings that start to build inside the developing addict spirits. And of course my first real virtual friend, the ever cool Willa W.

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.

Falling through the rabbit hole

It was on those early days of initial exploration, where the key word has to be curiosity, "killer curiosity for all us cats".

Early days are used mostly on modifying appearance and exploring, exploring has to be one of the best and most rewarding activities to do in SL. Of course there are people who rush into the sexual exploration. Even do I was curious as always and I had already visited a few "themed" islands, I was not attracted to behaving like a monkey on SL and I was determined to treat my avatar with some self-respect and not do anything I wouldn't do in real life.

That does not mean that I didn't want to see the deepest, darkest things, in fact I wanted to see them all, to understand worlds, activities and different ways of thinking from the ones in my life. I visited a vampire themed castle, that I could never find later again, I was there walking like a duck (you need to get special code to walk sexy or more normally) with my nobie hair, free clothes trying not to look like a whore, when I ran into this Dracula castle, there were people dancing and others just watching, I did not even know how to use music, so I guess there was music to all that dance. I got frozen maybe due to some veteran jokester who kept freezing me, but I kept coming back since no one would scare me that easily! I saw a person using a half dressed child avatar, in fact baby avatar, not knowing what was the deal I was hit with the fact there is a lot of perverted role play going on in SL, I was taking notes.

I left, to continue my journey. The method I used was to open the map, and hit random places, and religiously I decided to start with the 4th corners, the far far places that I could find, it was time for the right top corner so I selected an island that looked the farthest. There I was going to fall into a mind rabbit hole, that would take me almost a year to endure and is still engraved in my memory.

When appeared on that corner of the world I found my self on an empty mountain, when this happens the thing to do is to fly and travel until you find a green spot on the mini-map that indicates a person but this particular green dot tried to escape into his workshop, but I landed just on his front yard.

This busy inventor had this intriguing shape, not your normal hulk male type, he had a long gray pony tail and for clothes he used a texture appearing all white with black letters and no eyes or features. He told me he used that outfit to fool his friends who kept asking if he had "rezzed" alright. I answered that a few days back a pervert in unloaded clothing had chased me asking for a hug and that I found it a bit scary. He changed into a normal clothing and it was refreshing to see an avatar man in his mid 50's.

Then he started jumping around, I reckon that I appeared quite stupid back then -If not now- he said I should try it and he gave me the animation he was using, so we both started jumping around like little brats, of course he was making fun of me trough this vivid expression of the image I pictured -"I will get my chance to show who I am" I thought- and we chatted nicely for a few minutes, he said it was strange that such a young person would visit that far, that it normally took people a year before visiting that area - That was a compliment.

Then he offered to show me something in his back shop, all my danger alerts started on my mind! -Why would I trust this guy? as I am thinking this he said "-Oh I keep forgetting how young you are." com'on nothing will happen to you.

He walked me to his back garden he had a beautiful place filled with flowers and trees, not like the normal ones but made by him. He told me to try something on the floor and I did. It made me stumble on my face and found my self seating on the floor in the middle of flowers, he kept calling me to continue, but I was struggling trying to stand up. He came back and he asked if I had tripped? Again mocking me, since he knew his funny code had caught one victim.

After taking this picture (or one similar to it for it was so long ago) I followed him and he indicated me to use a teleport, another first, after final hesitation I did and I found myself inside nothing, only he, myself and complete darkness, it was strangely relaxing I did not care if something happened to me, there was something about this place and my new friend, he told me to press the music button and I heard SL radio stations, it was classical music.

He pointed at a floating sphere, that sphere floated and traveled in the air like if we were playing with planets in the middle of the Universe, and when touched the sphere would send colorful particles flight around, it was so beautiful, they shed light as they floated and he had made them, he did not know what purpose would they serve, and as we were standing on what looked to be a trip into the center of the universe, we discussed some physics, (I had to show I was not a complete air-head) and I offered that light travels in a straight pattern and his spheres shed light in curves... he said he liked it that way, we also talked some other deep stuff, I don't know if I was smart of stupid but I said what was on my mind and what my spirit told me was right. I was stroked by the creativity possible in Second Life and it was evident that all of it its only in its infancy.

I left Jazzman Jibilla for the time being, a friend for ever. If earlier I had become hooked to SL without me ever knowing it, than night I truly fell through a rabbit hole.

Stage 1. Initial Exploration

It starts for many different reasons. Some come asked by their boss either to see what is going on here or because they have a virtual office in-world, some others because they read of it somewhere, others by recommendations by friends and in that way we come for many different reasons.

I came in because I gave myself a free afternoon and decided it was time I checked this place that had heard so much about. A guy by the name Negroponte was giving a speech at an important venue and he said: "Just check what is going on on virtual communities like Second Life..." Oh boy I bought the trap.

It starts awkwardly, in my days just under a year ago, you could choose an initial form of many types, human, furries and some strange like space ghost with no face. After that you visit some sort of "island" or area that serves the purpose of training and when you feel ready to use your new body you start your voyage into the virtual world or metaverse, the areas are divided by island, surely to be operated by servers but who knows.

I was one of those nerds that actually read most of the TOS (Terms of Service), I knew I was going into something that had a strange taste of apocalyptic, or at least a bit dark as it was to be proven soon.

As a new avatars you don't have a house, some of the 1st places you visit have the attribute of being programmed as your starting point. Hence a place that offered a tour of the Linden Labs in world office and houses became my home, this is the way many of us make first friends, honestly all looks amazing, shiny, sometimes spectacular and sometimes magical.

Specially for those like me that were not familiar to WoW or on-line gaming -I used an on-line place for a few weeks years ago and it was only text back then (booooring)!- So this was a dream come true. Imagine meeting people, places and actually seeing them and interact using a virtual world!

The idea is great and this is why this places are so fantastic. We addicts are not stupid people, just fell unprepared to a wonderful thing. Truly a technical wonder. I don't have pictures of this very first days and thankfully so because my creation or my on-line "persona" had square head and very ugly hair.

After a nice person helped me with my shape, hair and directed me towards some of the freebie places, clothes and basic items that you need not to look too goofy. Then as I started exploring using the map, that's when I feel trough the rabbit hole but I was already hooked badly.