Natalie’s Blog

Chapter 7 of Boellstorff’s book Coming of Age in Second Life discusses community in reference to “the event, the group, kindness, griefing, between virtual worlds, [and] beyond virtual worlds” (p.179). Of these many subtopics I was most fascinated with the ideas of events, groups, and interactions between virtual worlds. The chapter begins with a list of words, signifying interaction between members of the Second Life community. At first I was confused about what was transpiring between the members of the community however, it was quickly revealed in the reading that they were simply engaging in a game of “primtionary.” I couldn’t help but smile after reading this because my friends and I have long played the real world version of this game, pictionary. After the chapter revealed what the members of Secondlife were doing, I was able to understand that gathering for a game like this was what Boellstorff would categorize as a Second Life event. According to Boellstorff, “if what makes virtual worlds “worlds” is that they are places, what makes them sites of culture is that people interact in them” (p.180). I can attest to this interaction and the forming of cultures and groups in the world of Second Life through my own short periods of interaction. Boellstorff says that defining groups as “cultures or subcultures” (p.184) is one definition of groups. The other is slightly more formal and is defined as a “named network for residents” (p. 183). Under these two definitions (and as I had already surmised from my way in which we are discussed in the real world) the people with which I am building a clothing business and myself form a group of our own in Second Life. However, we are also apart of the larger group of the class as a whole. Finally, I found it interesting how people who were familiar with one another from other virtual worlds could meet again in Second Life. The example in the book was an interaction between three people who had been previously acquainted in The Sims Online. According to Boellstorff, one “could have multiple identities in one virtual world or one / more identities in multiple virtual worlds. This asserts further emphasizes the influence and vastness of the virtual world of Second Life. However, despite it’s size it is similar to the real world in that one can obviously say from time to time, ‘it’s a small world’.