I had a work meeting yesterday where the subject of Second Life came up (not my fault, honest) and once again faced the accusation that if someone spends a lot of time in Second Life it is at the detriment of their regular life which they will be unable to maintain to a satisfactory standard. Bearing in mind that this invariably comes from people who have never tried Second Life, I wonder where it comes from.
Media scaremongering and a surfeit of half-remembered science fiction plots are what spring to mind. Sure there have been times when I have accidentally stayed up till sunrise exploring SL, but personally I have been a lot more concerned about my Flickr addiction. It has proved much more time-consuming, yet you never read articles warning of the dangers of hanging about with virtual friends on a photo-sharing network - probably because it sounds utterly ridiculous and wouldn't sell many papers.
Is when I SL overdose (SL-OD?!) really so different to when I get my hands on a new Michael Connelly novel and spend all day at work thinking about it, and racing home to get back to it, staying up too late devouring it before lying in bed, eyes closed, mind racing and with minor heart palpitations knowing I should be asleep? It doesn't feel so different to me, but reading this post back I'm staring to wonder whether I just have a problem in general...
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