willing suspension of belief

as in the way we watch movies and read novels, we humans can suspend belief to feel as if what we perceive is 'real'. How real is SL to you? I find myself getting adrenaline and endorphin rushes depending on who I interact with or what I do, how is the effect for you guys?

warm and wooly

It used to seem so very real...when I was a NEWB! (Just kidding)

But for the first several months it was so real. Had an emotional rollercoaster ride. Fell in love, felt like I was really in a nightclub at the old, old Elite, loved shopping in all the little out-of-the-way places (weren't any real malls back then), and everything was so life-like in it's way.

But one day, I saw this red curtained alcove, and peeked inside, and there was this scrawny little guy calling himself the Great and Powerful Wizard of SL, masturbating to sheep porn and playing tringo, and it all fell apart for me..

Schwanson ruined Second Life for me too David. We should form a support group.

thanks Dave! seriously though, does the experience become any less real as time goes by or do you get deeper into it and 'addicted'????

Remember you all saw it here in print...Schwanson is responsible not the lovely crack house she lives next to

I find I don't have to suspend anything. As my Jadey puts it, Second Life is a new communication medium, and I've always had a mind like a child in some respects. So on here, I'm talking with real people with real thoughts + feelings -- you guys had better not be a computer simulation, y'all! Or I'm gonna FREAK.

Actually, like all things for me, time wears away some of the wonderous child-like illusion quality of things. You get to learn the mechanics, you explore and explore, you bevcome accustomed to seeing similar actions, events and builds. Things do pale, for me anyway. I certain burnout set in, though not a crippling one.

Don't get me wrong. Second Life is still wonderous, and I can still laugh with glee or be wonderfully suprised, or meet incredible new people. But like Disneyland or your favorite movie, or any special place/thing that you revisit so often, the newness wears off and it becomes more old hat, though still very enjoyable.

I spend less time now in SL than I ever have in the past, but mainly due to RL issues. And spending less time in-world makes it seem equally less "real". But god, I used to go for marathon SL sessions. I think my first two weeks in, I spent about 20 hours a day roaming around, till exhaustion caught up to me.

The sensation for me is a mixed bag; I tend to get excited a lot by meeting the people inworld whose talent I admire very much (Francis Chung, etc.). On the other hand, sometimes I find myself in a very coolheaded, analytical mindset, especially when I see something cool inworld and begin dissecting it mentally and ask myself "now how could *I* do something like that..?" The more skills I acquire inworld, the more I find myself doing this. Not that I'm skilled, necessarily, but I'm at least capable of linking more than two plywood boxes together.

And once in awhile the utter coolness of SL friends and random folks will shine through the text and the pixels and it is all good. =)

SL never seemed quite as "real" to me as TSO, and still doesn't in a way, now that I have been here over a month - probably because the graphics aren't as realistic. (Don't talk to me about 3-D.). However, like other games, it takes on a certain reality of its own, and becomes more real as time goes by; just a different sort of reality than I was used to in TSO.

I agree with the person who said something on the order that, of course it is real - it is a real medium, with other real people. That makes these games always very real to me - sort of like going into any other immersive sort of environment, like Disneyland or a spook house, with other real people. What's not real about that?

I, too, have a mind that never grew up and loves to play, so I approach SL quite a bit like I did TSO, as another "real" home, like my TSO home or my real rl home. Games are different places than rl, but the are authentic places. The SL and TSO ones just exist more in my mind than in reality. But since the same places are depicted exactly the same way in other, real people's minds, that makes it real, and in a way, more a meeting of the minds with less bothersome physical realities to come between people's minds and souls, making the connection between people in some ways more authentic than in rl.

I very much enjoy my "real" SL home. Especially now that I have an actual house in it, lol.

coco

I have only mild interest in the common perceptions of space/time.

So I remain pretty apathetic to my interactions with SL.

Which is how I happen to interact with the world anyway. So much of it exists only in my mind.