One of the great things about Second Life is the amount of freedom that users possess. Even though it can easily be seen as an outdated platform, that shouldn't detract one from appreciating the interesting content that has been created.
Since I have an interest in Korea, I decided to search for Korean communities on Second Life.
I came across a place called KOTA, a kind of hangout for Koreans. It was sparsely populated when I logged on, there were perhaps three or four other people at most, but the island of KOTA had a number of detailed buildings to explore.
A Korean classroom. Nostalgia for the 90's?
I'm not sure what the Hangul (Korean text) at the back says. Google translates it as "grow up" and "hairy head".
I decided to talk to someone. At this point there was only one other person on the island. To my surprise we were able to have a mutually comprehensible conversation in English. The square boxes in the conversation are Hangul characters (Korean script). Even though I can read Hangul, I couldn't see what the boxes were supposed to be until I copied/pasted them into google.
I asked her if she was Korean.
In Hangul, she said "yes". Then she asked me where I was from.
I wrote 뉴질랜드 (New Zealand).
She noticed I was a new user. She was quite happy to help me out and show me around the island.
Eventually she led me to a house which belonged to her friend.
It was apparent that someone spent a lot of time designing the rooms. Some of the items (like the shower, bed, etc) had functionality for adult content. I asked her why that stuff was here since KOTO is supposed to be a moderate sim. "My friend just likes that kind of thing", she said.
Occasionally she would ask odd questions like, "are you tired?", "did you eat?", "do you need a shower?" etc. I was beginning to suspect she was one of those dreaded weirdos pretending to be a pretty girl. She even asked me if I was handsome, and whether I liked Korean women.
Anyway, after dodging her questions, we returned to where I originally met her, which was in front of a coffee house.
After drinking coffee together, she left for work. I asked her if I could add her as a friend, which she seemed overly enthusiastic about. Again adding to my suspicion that she was probably some despicable person getting off on seducing naive fellas, but it didn't really matter. The entire experience of meeting someone on a virtual world and having them host you was novel to me. There didn't seem to be much harm in befriending her.
After she logged off I went to a small island just off KOTA. It had an information center which detailed some history about Dokdo, a contested island between Korea and Japan.
There were quite a few more buildings to explore on KOTA. All in all this little world had an excruciating amount of detail by my reckoning, and I could see why, for a period of time, Second Life was popular, given the freedom that users have. They can create their own communities, and share culture and history with people from other parts of the world.
A lot can be learned from Second Life and then applied to the virtual worlds/platforms of the future.
I remember a joke I used to hear about Second Life users - they should get a first life. But with the advent of social media, I wonder if the distinction between virtual spaces and reality is that easily discernible, remembering that social media is a facet of virtual space as well.
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