While edge cases are the stories that make the news, the reality of Second Life is that people there do pretty much what they do on any other social environment: have fun, either by themselves (engaging in creative activities can be done on your own), or, more likely, with friends. Either friends they have met in real life or new friends they made on the Internet.
The problem is that stories about regular, normal residents of Second Life are just plain boring. Let me take myself as an example. I logged in on my first day, spent 90 minutes tweaking my avatar, 20 hours exploring and meeting people, becoming fascinated, slept 4 hours, logged back in for another 16-hour-session, became addicted, bought a Premium account. A few months later I was participating into a political experiment to let a group of people democratically suggest how their own virtual space should be managed and organised: in the 2D world, this means setting up a group/forum/website, and enjoy the chat. In 3D, you have to deal with urban planning ? which includes commercial, residential, and leisure areas. On a website, you might one day organise a video session for everybody to enjoy participating (it's hard, but thanks to things like USTREAM, it's possible). In Second Life, you have to plan events, hire performers or DJs, do advertising and promotion for your event, and handle security.
Two years after that, a group of friends established a business to develop professional content (including software programming) for Second Life, and, with offices in Lisbon and New York, we started getting dozens and dozens real customers ? corporations and institutions ? which wanted a virtual presence in Second Life. A few years after that, I continued my academic studies ? first a mastership, now a PhD ? solely done through Second Life. These days, be it for fun, meeting friends, work, or study, Second Life is my primary environment of choice.
Boring
So it doesn't make the news. But this is pretty much what happened to most of the twenty million registered residents of Second Life; I'm neither an exception, nor an "edge case". A few ? perhaps a few millions! ? added to leisure, business, and academic studies a further issue: romance, cybersex, love, marriage. 1 in 4 American couples have met online; a lot of them used virtual worlds like Second Life. Now this starts to interest the media, because it falls outside the "norm". Not everybody is interested in dating services and cybersex, so, because it's something different and special, it attracts the attention of journalists. An estimated 20% of all Second Life users are engaged in adult activity, create or buy adult-related content, and have forged relationships in SL that go beyond clicking on the "Add Friend" box. Those 1 in 5 have stories to tell, and those are the ones that get interviewed.
Among those 20%, a few have very heart-breaking personal stories. They might have some disability, either physical or mental. They might be unemployed and have found Second Life's economy ? little affected by the overall economic downturn, although there was a decline in the overall rate of growth (i.e. the economy still grows, but not as fast as in 2006/7; still, it's worth US$ 0.6 billions annually, and has grown perhaps ten times since 2006...). They might live in countries with oppressive regimes, or have had their parents/kids/partners killed in wars or by horribly disfiguring diseases. They might be agoraphobic or terminally depressed and found Second Life an "escape" to their terrible reality.
All these are so-called "human interest" stories, and they are immensely appealing to the media. However, they are edge cases. Very, very few people have actually such rich and extraordinary (in the sense of "not normal") stories to tell; but the ones that tell these kind of stories are always picked up by journalists, eager to write something that will move their audience.
That isn't to say that these cases do _not_ exist. They certainly do; after meeting thousands and thousands of fellow residents of Second Life, lots of them had rather heart-moving stories to tell me, which made me shear some tears. Perhaps one of the most lovely stories I heard was from a former Dane actress, long retired, who, decades ago, met an Italian aristocrat in her youth, but, for many reasons, they never proceeded with their relationship. 40 or so years later, they happen to find each other in Second Life, and relive the love they never managed to sustain in real life. I believe both might have died by now, but they still spent a couple of years very happily together in Second Life. Like that lovely story, I've heard uncountable others ? most remain untold, but a few hit the news.
After all, isn't that the kind of thing we expect the media to report? We don't like to hear about boring experiences like ours. It's so far more exciting ? or romantic! ? if we get told stories that move us, that engage our deeper feelings (even if they're feelings of rejection!). Journalists know that, and so that's what they pick as examples to grab an audience.
I think that this article correctly picked one of those lovely tales from Second Life and turned it into an article that made us think about our human condition. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of people in Second Life with similar stories. No, the vast majority has nothing interesting to tell. They just enjoy being there.
