Some days, I wonder how many grad students are busy reading my blog when they should be doing more important things…like drinking.
But apparently, their graduate school mentors *do* drink – which causes them to approve thesis topics based on the activities of people who enjoy virtual worlds.
As a result of this thirst for knowledge – certainly not the desire to play games in lieu of studying - I have been sent survey after survey after interview request to reveal the details of…drum roll please….my romantic SLife.
How ridiculous. I will be the first to tell you that I did not join SL for romance. I joined strictly for the sex.
I am kidding, of course. But, you can’t tell that to a grad student.
I am not thrilled with the perception that Second Life is a dating service or a brothel. These studies never ask about the homes I have built, or the parties I have thrown, or the friends I have met from across the world.
Annoyingly and without exception, every survey has had at least one question that asks me to explain SLex to them. So this is how I explain it: "When a boy avatar and a girl avatar and the men behind both avatars love each other very much, they rez some pose balls and text dirty to one another until a wife/girlfriend walks into the room and asks what in the hey is going on. The end."
Another complication with such surveys is that they inevitably want to know all about my SL husband. But, I want to protect his privacy in SL as much as possible. Well, as much as possible with his name in the partnership box on my profile. And while wearing a ‘Mrs. Jerremy Darwin’ tag above my head. And while gushing about him in my profile picks. And while putting his name all over my blog. And while wearing my ‘Jerremy’s Bitch’ t-shirt. Wow...I am really bad at this.
Anyhoo, if you should receive a survey about your SLove life from a naïve but terribly eager grad student, I encourage you to fill it out…and then run it through your shredder. After that, email them back and ask them to pick a new topic for their thesis.
Because we, my fellow Second Lifers, are not SLab rats.
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