There is (was? I haven't been to SL for a couple of years) a thriving live music community.
Have you played in front of the crowd ? I did - and even if the crowd is virtual, it's a pretty cool feeling.
My employer did rather successful seminars/meetings in SL.
There was also a research that the virtual worlds are a sort of therapy for the autistic folks (http://goo.gl/iaOH7)
Finally, a small story I heard from someone.
A couple walks into the "club" in secondlife. They ask the DJ to put on a particular song and start dancing. When the music finishes, they thank the DJ and the woman explains - "It's the first time in 20 years that we're dancing. My husband can only move in the wheelchair".
That story alone is a sign that SL has served and is serving its purpose. And that everyone can find the different things.
As for your points:
- "...even when they can create anything themselves." - Much the same way as everyone can make a painting, or a poem, or a song. They can, but to be good you need to devote the time to it.
- "Lame commercial "theme parks"..." - these are companies that did not get the potential of the secondlife, and treated it like a video game - hired the consultants to build what they thought would look good - which they did. But they did not put a life behind those constructs. Ergo, lame theme parks.
- "vice". Participating in the pyramid scheme in SL and learning about it in a painful way by losing a few hunderd dollars is way better than putting all your life savings into the banking scam in real life. And if a kinky sex with a virtual stranger averts even one occasion of the aggression in real life - that'd be great, isn't it ?
As for attacks - lots of it is the same /b/chan crowd that plays the pranks in real life - it's all for lulz of disturbing others. So I do not see a whole lot of interesting there.
As for the "interesting" technical part - opensim (opensimulator.org) was (is?) a pretty fun project, it recreated to a larger extent the server side of the second life.
So, to summarize - I think there's more to it than it seems. :)
Have you played in front of the crowd ? I did - and even if the crowd is virtual, it's a pretty cool feeling.
My employer did rather successful seminars/meetings in SL.
There was also a research that the virtual worlds are a sort of therapy for the autistic folks (http://goo.gl/iaOH7)
Finally, a small story I heard from someone.
A couple walks into the "club" in secondlife. They ask the DJ to put on a particular song and start dancing. When the music finishes, they thank the DJ and the woman explains - "It's the first time in 20 years that we're dancing. My husband can only move in the wheelchair".
That story alone is a sign that SL has served and is serving its purpose. And that everyone can find the different things.
As for your points: - "...even when they can create anything themselves." - Much the same way as everyone can make a painting, or a poem, or a song. They can, but to be good you need to devote the time to it.
- "Lame commercial "theme parks"..." - these are companies that did not get the potential of the secondlife, and treated it like a video game - hired the consultants to build what they thought would look good - which they did. But they did not put a life behind those constructs. Ergo, lame theme parks.
- "vice". Participating in the pyramid scheme in SL and learning about it in a painful way by losing a few hunderd dollars is way better than putting all your life savings into the banking scam in real life. And if a kinky sex with a virtual stranger averts even one occasion of the aggression in real life - that'd be great, isn't it ?
As for attacks - lots of it is the same /b/chan crowd that plays the pranks in real life - it's all for lulz of disturbing others. So I do not see a whole lot of interesting there.
As for the "interesting" technical part - opensim (opensimulator.org) was (is?) a pretty fun project, it recreated to a larger extent the server side of the second life.
So, to summarize - I think there's more to it than it seems. :)