How do you hit people in Second Life?

Perhaps you’ve heard of Second Life, a website where you re-create yourself in the form of a custom-made avatar and walk around a virtual society and economy and pay real money to get fake money (called Lindens) to advance your virtual life and buy virtual things. Sound confusing? It really isn’t.

Second Life is massively popular. Massively. Popular. It’s a more adult-themed Club Penguin. I will have to admit that I haven’t played Second Life, as I have some preternatural aversion to spending real money to get fake money that I can spend on fake things. But lots of you like to go do this, to reinvent yourself as a fat waiter who works at a diner or a DJ who works at a strip club or a construction worker who jackhammers various things all day. You can be almost anything you want to be except a prostitute or a violent criminal, the latter of which, admittedly, reduces my overall interest in the game considerably.

So I’ve never played it, but I’ve read many reviews and experiences with it (including the periodic musings of Robert Scoble on the topic). Most are pretty positive, mainly intimating a mild-to-acute level of excitement for the game and a keen interest in evolving an avatar’s life as much as possible and paying real money so you have access to fake experiences that, somehow, manage to be interesting. Overall, it has seemed like a fairly clever marriage of the modern social web and digital entertainment.

But before you click away to get your own Second Life avatar and start walking around aimlessly and charging your credit card to get fake money for the game, you might want to read Toothpaste’s (as in the creator of the Toothpaste for Dinner comic) account of his adventures in Second Life.  His review is…well…not so positive.

But it’s an absolutely hilarious read. If you don’t agree, then there’s a very strong chance you’re brain-damaged.  Sorry you had to find out via my blog.

Second Life is free to play, and I keep seeing people referring to it in the news, so I had to take one for the team and just dive on in. I knew it probably wasn’t going to be intriguing when I got to the signup part and couldn’t even make a one-word name. I had to use some fantasy-ass last name and I couldn’t even use cusses. The best I could do was call myself Wenis.

Wenis Swindlehurst: How do I hit people
Foxbrand Leprechaun: You can’t
Wenis Swindlehurst: I need that shit you drive.

And:

After a half-hour of pulling on sliders, I had transformed from Wenis Cybergoth to Wenis Pale Corpulent Bulldog-Man. I shortened my torso and gave myself man-handles. I made my hands puffy. I enlarged my jowls to the maximum, and beaded my eyes down to… well, little beads.

Just go read it. You’ll be glad you did. This post’s title will make much more sense then.

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