After a light(?) scolding for posting more than required 200-500 words for the weekly journal (I posted some 800+ words), my journal entry for the second week was very short, summing up what struck me most about my experiences from the scavenger hunt. Which reminds me, I have to update this blog with my scribbles from the scavenger hunt, which have a lot of photos…hopefully I won’t be so tired when I get home.

WEEK TWO JOURNAL

The scavenger hunt experience of week two proved to be an example of how cyberspace, in its encouragement of democracy, allows itself to run on capitalistic values, which, ironically, turns up confining a person to certain values without necessarily having created any laws.

Although people are allowed to have freedom in how they look, it has almost become somewhat of a consensus that those who want better looks have to spend money to buy new skin and clothes, since certain contours and textures cannot be achieved with the default settings.

It is funny how people in the ‘real’ world say that the media is responsible for broadcasting images of super-skinny models or creating a “norm” for what is considered beautiful and what is not. However, in the world that Linden has created, there is no such media, and people are not pressured to look a certain way; nor are their any health hazards in being obese or dyeing one’s hair every day and so on.

Yet the people playing in SL cannot detach themsevles from the values or mindset which they have developed in the real world, which gets reflected in what is expensive and what not in virtual SL. Because of these characteristics, SL – for all its characteristics which include an independent currency system and free market – can never be truly independent, at least in an emotional context.