Mo Money Mo Problems

When I signed up for Second Life, I deliberately avoided the checkbox to give Linden Labs my bank account details. I wasn't interested in it as a consumer, for me it would be an investigation, about the experience rather than the goods I could purchase. I had read all about people making money from it, about the drive for big corporations to get involved and flog their crappy goods to us in yet another market place and was sure that I wouldn't fall into their trap.

Or so I thought. This weekend I couldn't register my paypal account fast enough. It had been brewing under for a while. I had grown tired of my pink fluffy bunny rabbit slippers and was having trouble finding anything to replace them. I didn't want to wear the same outfits all the time, and deep down I didn't want other people judging me for my lacklustre wardrobe. That's right, I didn't like the possiblility of total strangers making assumptions about me by my avatar. It had really come to this.

Second Life is a place where you can style yourself to be who you want to be, to look, to dress and to act however you desire. The reality of this seems to be that most women chose to dress themselves like cheap hookers trying to impress a Kwik-Save Hugh Heffner. Skimpy clothing, unfeasibly large breasts and blond hair like a nest of snakes are what passes for normal in there. I can understand that people feel driven to make themselves as attractive as possible, I guess it's just that I'm surprised at their perceptions of what is attractive, and believed that I wasn't really like that.

As soon as my Lindens register, I straight away purchase two pairs of shoes. One buckled pair of rocker boots and a pair of converse high-tops. I then raced to the wig shops and bought two sets of hair, one with a fringe, one without. Both brunette, and all items provided me with the consumery thrill that you get from RL shopping. Yup, it turns out virtual shopping is fun and addictive too. Admitedly I'm still wearing a victorian gown, rock boots and a yellow hard hat with my silky new flexible hair but I'm not as immune to the pressure of fitting in as I once thought I would be.