Chapter 3
In chapter three Boellstorff discusses the research that he did in second life. The research that the chapter talks about is reseach Boellstorff did solely through his studies in the second world. One of the main points that I think he is trying to get across in the this section is that although second life is a world outside of peoples everyday lives, it is still taken very serious by many. Individuals use it for social and economoic reasons that suggest that the although the world is intangible and abstract it is very real to those who partake in it. People develop identites and maintain relationships through the use of their online avatars. He uses the virtual world as a way to understand people from all walks of life by conducting interviews, investigating different worlds and their setups and developed his own avatar by buying clothes, houses, and other things that we use as a society to integrate outselves into the culture for which we live in in our first lives. This chapter helped me underrstand why some people put so much time and energy into a world outsid of their real lives.