Hi, How is This Life Treating You?

I was stumbling around on the Internet the other day (big surprise) catching up on news, etc, when I read about a huge hack that occurred on a site revealing over 300,000 of its user’s credentials. It was on a site I had never heard of, so naturally I hopped over there to check it out. The site is www.secondlife.com. Notice I did not embed that tag in this entry. I do not want that tracked back to my Blog in any way, shape or form. Guess we can tell what this entry is going to be like. Feel free to go check it out. Maybe you should before I go off on my tirade...

So, I go over to the aforementioned site, and on first glance, it looks like a online game of some kind or an MMORPG or something that I wouldn't be interested in at all, but I start digging because something is telling me to. I think it was the dollar signs on the front page.

"Hmmm, money and internet stuff? Yeah, how can I get me some of that scratch?” I thinks to myself. (The dollar figure was somewhere up around $300,000US so of course I'm interested)

As I'm digging around the first thing I notice is there are over 600,000 members to this site. Wow, that's a high number. I have to figure out what has sucked in all of these people to spending there hard earned cash. The next thing I notice is this strange little monetary symbol (L$) and I'm trying to figure out what this is because there is a whole bunch of big numbers associated to it.

This is where things go south really quick folks...You may want to look away. I'm probably going to offend all kinds of people who live on the internet thinking that it's a viable alternative to real life. Then again, I really don't give a shit. Read on Horatio.

Now, the person (people) who thought this up are geniuses. The whole L$ is this sites version of money. After you create your virtual person to live on their servers (not world. Servers. Bunch of disks. It's not real folks) you can go adventuring around and shit, but just like the real world, shit cost money, so you can go exchange your real greenbacks for L$. The exchange rate is pretty good. $1US=$250L. That is if it was real money.

Now you got your little fake you some money, so it's time to go spend it. You can go to the casino and trade your fake $$$ for a virtual pull of the slots and win (or more than likely, lose shitloads) fake $$$. When you get bored of that you can go to the fake mall and buy some virtual clothes, get a virtual tattoo, or change your skin color, just for the hell of it.

And here's where it get's really sketchy, but this is the part I love.

Up until this point, I had definitely furrowed my eyebrows, and questioned the validity of transferring real money into fake money but thought, meh, not a big deal...Just some online peoples having fun...or so I thought.

You got your little virtual online you some good scratch, your threads are pimpin, and gots some tat's to show off, but you don't have anywhere to live (again, it's on a f*ing server people. NOT REAL), so you gotta get the crib to match the style. You can:

a) Go hire a real estate agent
b) Buy a piece of land and look for someone to build your house (arghh, my brain hurts)
c) Consult the classifieds to find somewhere to live...

I'm going to come back to c). Oh am I ever going to come back to c), but let’s talk about the land first. You lease the land from the server owners. Cuz it's there server space at a rate of 5 extra US$ per month, all the way up to an extra $195US per month...Okay? Sure. That only covers the usage fee; you still have to buy the land from someone. You can go to the auction block and see what land is available to buy with prices escalating over a 1000$US for a virtual piece of land. WTF? Ok...breathe...still got one more point to make...relax.

The Piece de resistance...

I don't want to buy my land from the auction. Lets go check out the classifieds (yes, they have their own classifieds section, why wouldn't they?). In the classifieds there are all kinds of things you can buy. New clothes, hair, guns, etc, so I start browsing, because I like to watch a good car crash occasionally. The first thing I notice is people are paying for this friggen advertising space to sell there wares. And it's not little bucks either.

Does this seem like circular logic to anyone else? Spend real money to get fake money, then open up a fake business with your fake money, and start advertising (costing more fake money) so you can get yet more fake money, all the time feeding the server owners with more cash...

You site owners are geniuses...Mega-props to you guys...

But...BUT, and Here it comes, in the classifieds there is all kinds of "adult" themed purchases you can take advantage of. Skins, animations, etc. Now I understand the drive to hack anything to turn it to porn, but...there was (at least) one of the businesses offering a site where you could buy porn. Let me clear this up so it's perfectly clear. A fake business, selling porn flicks, MADE WITH THE LITTLE VIRTUAL PEOPLE!!!. Not real people. The little avatars blowing their virtual loads over each other. Wtf. WTF?

That's it. My brain has exploded. I cannot tell you anything more about this without doing some severe damage to my own synapses, but before I sign off of this one, a bunch of points I have to make.

1) To everyone who is doing this in the hopes of fleecing people out of their real paychecks...Good for you. Exploitation is the way of all things. Laugh about it all the way to the bank.

2) To the Site and server owners. Good for you. See the above point.

3) To the people in it for a good laugh and not paying anything. It's always fun to point and laugh, but be careful, there have many people who've gone in to the bar to just check it out, and walk out with a $300 bar tab.

4) To the people blowing their paychecks on this...WAKE UP. It's not real. Yes it could be fun, but guess what, so is getting real clothes, or a real tattoo, or busting a real nut. Think about all the time you put into this virtual person you've created. Now, what would happen if you put all that time into yourself? Chances are you'd be a lot happier in your real life and not have to run away to a fake world because you life sucks so much.

I think I'm just bitter because I didn't come up with the idea...but I do have a whole bunch of real tattoos, so that helps.