Find your inner moron. That’s what the internet is for. Until last Thursday I hadn’t realised this profound fact about computers, labouring as I was under the misapprehension that computers were there to help people to do useful stuff such as find out precise facts about the Balkan conflict or look up babies’ names.
No, computers are there to take you on an inverse voyage of discovery. A voyage on which the knowledge you did have is deleted and replaced by a thick fog of banality. A voyage on which the only thing you do learn while you psychically unravel is that no matter how with-it, popular, intelligent, busy or otherwise compos mentis you are, computers can — scratch that — will reduce you to a broken monosyllabic shell of your former self: the kind of jerk who types the acronym LOL (laughed out loud) instead of actually laughing; who hangs out with “friends” every night of the week but does this alone in pyjamas surrounded by the remnants of the week’s takeaway for one, with headphones on (they are connected to the computer).
The miracle of modern-day technology means that anyone can do it. Or rather, that it can happen to anyone. I didn’t mean it to happen to me — I was supposed to be researching an article — but last Thursday it did: I found my inner moron. Now she’s taken over.
My inner moron has a name which is Mary Obstreperous. It is the name I gave to my avatar on Second Life, the virtual reality computer program that has since wrecked my brain. When I first logged on to Second Life my knowledge of virtual reality programmes was sketchy. I knew that Second Life was the most popular virtual community on the internet with a total of almost three million “residents”, a million of whom have logged on over the past 60 days. “Residents” hung out on the site as cartoon characters or avatars which they had designed themselves. In time I learnt to refer to my Real Life as my First Life.
I knew that they spent a lot of time having or trying to have virtual sex and that, to this end, some real-life men resorted to pretending to be women in virtual reality. The avatars most likely to be squat 17-year-old boys in disguise were tall female avatars in thongs with long hair and provocative names gleaned from pornography websites. That’s what I knew. I could write a book on what I didn’t.
The first thing I didn’t know was that a lot of squat 45-year-old women also like to disguise themselves as tall female avatars in thongs. So do 20- and 30-year old women. And teenagers. Deep down, there aren’t many people who don’t want to be a 6ft lapdancer. Dressed like call girls, they put on a good front until you ask them a question such as “How old are you?” and the whole pack of cards falls down. “im 45 no way brave enough to wear clothes like this in FL!!!!” Within seconds they’re telling you how much they’d like to have blonde hair in real life. How blonde hair doesn’t go with their real skin tone which is olive with large pores around the T-zone area. How they’d love to have these breasts and how the real ones are like “spaniel’s ears after the birth of three goddamn kids!!!! LOL”. Or even ROFL (roll on the floor laughing).
Sometimes you get on to hysterectomies. Always you get on to problems. Or sex. One or the other. Counselling or sex is what most people are after on Second Life, although most refer to it as “friendship”. “I am looking for friendship,” a creepy naked guy called Face Cummings told me. “U can be my teacher.” Whatever it’s called, you get sucked in.
I eventually fell asleep in front of my laptop at around 2 on Friday morning, having spent the evening becoming addicted to trading weak insults with Face. I had talked to a guy called Don Goldflake about a fear of death by tractor we had in common. Somehow I’d also ended up handing over my date and time of birth to an Indian guy called Paras Delon who then persuaded me to send him the astrological profiles of two of my former boyfriends. Right now Paras is conjuring up a chart which he’ll send to me anon. I admit that I’m excited about it.
Paras decided that we’d bonded and suggested a Second Life business venture:
An astrology shop. I’m doing the marketing. As no-holds-barred-alternative-life-fantasies go, you’ll agree that this is pretty out there. Me, a leafleteer. I forgot to mention that there’s a third, crucial, draw to Second Life which is, naturally, money. Fake money called Linden dollars can be exchanged via a currency converter for real dollars. You use your Linden to pay for virtual clothes or land, or gestures with which to impress other avatars such as the ability to make your character do a somersault or a Nazi salute (this last has become popular with the French National Front, who have set up a base in Second Life). A Chinese woman in China has given up her job in FL because she’s become a real millionaire on SL selling virtual real estate on Second Life. You can read about it the the Second Life newspaper, New World Notes.
A lot of people talk about Second Life as if it is a genuine alternative to the real world but really it is a genuine alternative to Las Vegas in which you travel from one fake world to the next, not by escalator or pretend gondola but by teleport.
I spent Friday morning cruising Second Life’s most popular pretend venues: Studio 54, a soulless pretend club in which you can pretend to dance and pretend to drink pretend cocktails; something called Amsterdam which speaks for itself; Dusty’s Rock ’n’ Country Lounge; Sinners’ Paradise; a nudist beach where you can pretend to lie naked in pretend deckchairs, gamble or buy pretend penises to attach to your sexless crotch which throb into life and spurt forth when virtually stroked (not having to pay for your genitals is one undeniable advantage of the First Life); a club called Sleek which boasts “sex, yachts, escorts, waterfalls, gym, shop, straight, gay, bisexual, lesbian, human and furry”.
I was confused about “furry” until I met a squirrel called Rodentonmeth. Rodentonmeth didn’t consider himself a weirdo because in real life he was an animator and he was using his Second Life avatar, one of three, to make a statement about his body. I could tell that Rodentonmeth was a cynic because when I asked what the statement was he replied: “almost everyone here is lying to himself.” At least he wasn’t dressed up like the guy over there, he said, pointing at a slab of MDF on legs. Or a slave (they’re all women) on Second Life’s Slave Island. Or one of the children at the Second Life orphanage. Briefly I wondered how the governors of the world’s maximum-security jails felt about access to Second Life. Because I was bored I said to anyone who’d listen: “I am from special branch and have triangulated your signal!” It was Saturday, 10pm my time. In real life I should have been at dinner, perhaps a party. Instead I was on my sofa talking to a squirrel.
