The Second Life Ultra-Primer

Second Life ™ is a virtual world created by Linden Lab®. It’s the most popular one, too, with over 12 million registered accounts. At any given time, 45,000 – 65,000 users from around the world may be on line in Second Life.

SL has been described as an "online game", a "virtual reality", a "3D chat room" and many other things. It is all of these, and none. Unlike a game, there are no points, no levels, no goal, no winners and losers. It is addictively immersive, but not so all-embracing as a "true" virtual reality would be. It can be used to make friends and meet people, but many users also use it to create personas totally unlike their real life selves. SL is an online world, a place where you can build, explore, live, learn…where you can, in fact, have a second life.

The defining features of SL are these:

• User created content. Almost everything that you see in SL has been created by its users. Most online games do not allow for ANY user content. Users retain intellectual property rights to their creations, and many users sell copies of popular items, both in stores in Second Life and on third party websites. You can buy virtual houses, furniture, clothes, hairstyles, shoes, vehicles, custom animations, and thousands of other items.
• A working economy. SL uses markers called "linden dollars" or L$. These markers can be purchased on the SL website. More importantly, they can also be redeemed for cash. The current "exchange rate" is about 270 L$ to $1 US. Many people have small businesses in Second Life, and a few actually make a living at it.
• Anonymity. Only Linden Lab knows who you "really" are. You choose a name for your avatar (the 3D figure that is "you" in the SL world) during initial registration. Your avatar may be any age, race, gender, or species imaginable, and you can change all of those aspects at any time. The only constant thing about "you" is your avatar’s name…and you can even change that, simply by registering a new account and creating an alternate character, or "alt".
• Ease of communication. SL has many ways to communicate. There is local chat…typed text that can be "heard" by anyone within 20 meters of you. Your avatar can gesture, and has a range of facial expressions. There is Instant Messaging, text sent to an individual or to a designated group. You can create "notecards" and send them to other players. There is voice (two way audio), both in chat and IM. Music and video can be streamed into SL from outside web servers. There is also some connectivity between SL and the rest of the internet…clicking a URL in a chat window will open your browser to that address, for example.
• Ease of travel. Avatars can walk, run, and jump…but they can also fly. For long distance travel, teleportation is the usual method. Click a location on the map, or activate a "landmark" and travel is near instantaneous. Vehicles such as cars, boats, and aircraft are available, but they are used more for entertainment than for serious travel.
• Immersion. The most interesting thing about SL, and the thing that makes it so addictive for many, is a phenomenon called "immersion". What this means is that, for many people, a virtual world like SL provides a feeling of "really being there" that other forms of communication do not. If you are on one end of a videoconference, and someone moves very close to the camera, you generally do not feel an invasion of your personal space…they are still "back there", behind the monitor. But in SL, if an avatar moves too close to you, most people instinctively move their own avatar back a pace or two. That’s immersion.

These characteristics result in some interesting social phenomena. When you combine immersion, anonymity, and a working economy, out pops the escort industry…online "prostitution" using SL avatars, sexual animations, and erotic text chat. Linden Lab gets some bad press over some of these aspects of SL, but it’s not really their fault…it’s just people being people. In some cases where users were taking advantage of the Second Life world to engage in truly immoral or criminal behavior, LL has taken steps to prevent it…for example, ageplay (the use of child avatars for sex) has been banned. Gambling has been banned. And "basement banks", residents who set up their own unregulated "investment companies" or "banks" in SL have been banned.

What to Expect

First, you will download and install the Second Life "client", or viewer software, on your computer. On first running this, you will be prompted to register. During the registration process, you’ll choose your avatar’s name and initial appearance. You’ll also choose a password. Your user name and password will be used to log into the viewer, and also to access "members only" areas of the Second Life website.

When you first log in, you will find yourself on Orientation Island, a place to learn some of the most basic Second Life skills…how to move, change your appearance, and use some of the features of the user interface. Once you’ve mastered these, you will teleport to Help Island, where you can experiment with SL’s building tools. From there, you will teleport to a random Welcome Area and the main Second Life world, or "grid".

Welcome Areas tend to collect crowds of "regulars"…players who show up to talk with each other day after day. Many of these regulars like to show off in various ways, and their behavior, especially en masse, can be very confusing to a newcomer. These areas are also where you are most likely to find people who like to take advantage of newcomers’ lack of experience to play jokes on them, or even to try to scam them in one way or another. Which brings us (at last) to the topic of safety in SL.

Second Life is really one of the safest places on the internet. Your avatar can’t be killed or destroyed. There are some areas of the grid that are "damage enabled" and in these areas, your avatar has "health points" and can take "damage". But, if you "die", you are simply teleported back to your home location. In most parts of the grid, even this mild form of death does not apply.

Practical Jokes

There are lots of "fake" hazards…jokes or tricks, really…that can happen. Caging, for example. An avatar with a "cage gun" shoots and hits you, and a cage forms around you, trapping your avatar. There are several ways to avoid this or escape it, the easiest being a teleport to another location. You can be bumped, or pushed. Recent changes to SL’s physics make it much less likely that you will receive the kind of very strong push that results in what’s known as "orbiting", or throwing your avatar a distance of thousands of meters. There is a deformer animation that’s often disguised as an innocuous dance or some other item…if you activate it, your avatar is twisted into a bizarre shape. It can be fixed by logging out and logging back in.

There are many innocent gadgets that will request your permission to animate your avatar. For example, someone may offer to give you a hug. If you accept, your avatars will both execute a hug animation. A similar gadget called "pandora" will ask your permission ONCE. If granted, the other person will always be able to animate your avatar, until you touch the Pandora again and revoke your permission. Be sure you trust a person before giving them this sort of enduring permission!

As I said, all of the above are basically harmless, although they may be annoying. But remember the phenomenon of immersion? If you are immersed in SL, things that happen to your avatar can have a surprisingly strong emotional impact on you. For example, someone might trick you into standing on a poseball that contains an animation you were not expecting…perhaps a depiction of a sex act. Or they might expose their "private parts" to you. Or maybe perform a sexually suggestive animation right next to you, or talk to you crudely in chat. Any of these might result in a feeling of being violated, if you identify strongly with your avatar.

There are several good defenses against these practical joke type "attacks".

• Sit on an object. Your avatar can’t be bumped or caged or orbited if you are sitting on something.
• Teleport away.
• If the offender is violating the Second Life Terms of Service or Community Standards, you can file an Abuse Report with Linden Lab. This will not produce immediate results (maybe none at all), but it is the approved avenue for dealing with antisocial behavior.
• Mute the offending resident by right clicking their avatar and selecting Mute
• Render particle poofer attacks (e.g., swarms of flying penises) invisible by hitting CTRL/ALT/SHIFT/+
• If you own the land on which the offense occurs, you can freeze, eject, and ban the offender.

Real Hazards

There are a few real hazards to watch for, and they are easy to avoid. Here they are:

• Theft by Scripted Object. Someone may give you an object. When you attach it, a yellow box drops down, telling you that the object is requesting debit permissions. We are so used to hitting the "accept" button that some people do so without thinking. The object then teleports itself far away, so you can’t find it to report it…and drains your SL account of all your L$. When given an object…
  • Do NOT give debit permissions to objects given to you by others.
  • If you have an alt, remove all L$ from its account, and have the alt test the mystery object.
  • Keep logs of your chat and IMs. Abuse Report any occurrences like this, and support the report with your logs.
  • Immediately call the SL support phone number, in addition to filing an AR
• Investment Scam. Unregulated "banks" have been forbidden by Linden Lab. Nonetheless, some individuals still try to get around the rules with various schemes. If you are thinking of investing L$ with anyone, consider this: You do not know who they are, where they are, or where to find them. Giving any "investment banker" your L$ is just that: giving your money away. Don’t do it.
• Eviction Scam. 80% of SL consists of "private estates". These regions are owned by other residents, and often rented out piecemeal. Sometimes, a fairly large up-front "purchase" fee is charged. However, this is not a true purchase, the estate owner still owns the land and has full rights. There may be a "covenant", but the estate owner is not legally bound to follow it. Most estate owners are honest, but a few unscrupulous operators will take your "purchase" fee, and then evict you from your land without refund. . Some mall owners have been known to use similar tactics on people renting store space. If this happens to you, there is no recourse…so it is important that you do some research up front and only rent private estate land from owners who have a good reputation.
• Receiving Stolen Goods. L$ are bought and sold on the "lindex", Linden Lab’s currency exchange. There are also recognized third party sites that buy and sell L$, such as SL Exchange. However, there are bogus "exchanges" out there, and eBay sellers, who deal in L$ purchased with stolen credit cards. If you buy stolen L$, Linden Lab will take them away from you and assess you a 50% penalty besides. ONLY use legitimate sites to buy or sell linden dollars!
• Avatar Identity Theft. If someone gets your SL password, they can log in as you, from any computer, and do all sorts of nasty things. Pay your L$ to someone else. Say bad things to or about your girlfriend. Ruin your reputation. Never, ever, ever give your SL password to anyone, not even those closest to you. Don’t use easy-to-guess passwords, and change them frequently. And don’t allow friends and family members access to your computer.
• Real Identity Theft. There are no computer viruses or spyware in Second Life itself. However, use of the internet always exposes you to some degree of risk. Some SL businesses offer to pay you L$ in exchange for filling out online surveys. Don’t do it! Taking these surveys will infest your computer with all kinds of spyware, adware, and malware. Use common sense and keep your antivirus and anti spyware software current.
• Stalking. It’s surprisingly easy for someone to get enough information about you to find you in Real Life…even if you don’t give them your address and phone number. Be very careful about giving out contact information…after all, you don’t know who that other avatar is, not really. NEVER fall for that "if you really loved and trusted me, you’d tell me" line.

One last one…depending on your point of view, it might be no problem at all, or a "practical joke" type matter, or a real problem. Many people in SL play an avatar with a gender different than their Real Life gender. It’s been estimated that maybe one out of every four or five "women" in SL is really a man, and maybe one out of every 15 or 20 "men" is really a woman. I’m not bothered by this – I take everyone in SL at face value, and don’t care who or what is sitting behind the other avatar’s keyboard. But, if it matters to you, you should ask, politely, before starting to think about meeting them in Real Life, or making marriage plans.

Jump on in…and have a safe and fun Second Life!

Second Life, SL, The Grid, linden dollars, and Lindex are all trademarks of Linden Research, Inc., used here in accordance with LL’s branding guidelines.