Emotional & Physical Costs
The emotional costs of SL are so far-reaching. You open yourself up to an incredible amount of hurt and deception when you are in SL. When you meet people, you make the immediate decision to either be yourself or be someone else. I always just chose to be myself. As a longtime user of online chatrooms (I entered my first chatroom in 1992), I was accustomed to just being myself (with a nickname or handle) when I spoke with other people. Keeping my physical location and full name secret is something I almost always did, however, for the sake of anonymity - not dishonesty. I would wait until I got to know someone pretty well before spilling details like that...if ever. In many cases, a lot of the emotional walls that we build on a daily basis with people in our real life tend to disappear completely from the beginning - and these walls are replaced with the other walls like what you really look like and whether or not you're really being honest about who you are when you say you're wealthy or hot or well-connected in RL. Those are things you can tell pretty much immediately in RL but are a LOT more difficult to determine in SL. So you start out immediately with someone heart-to-heart, mind-to-mind, rather than face-to-face. If you get along with someones heart and mind and have like opinions, you become close. I have met several individuals that this applies to in SL. I have also met those individuals who claim to be someone or something they aren't...and who lie purposefully to just cover up their true selves for any number of reasons. There is no law written anywhere that says you must be honest if you visit SL, but it is a matter of character, in my opinion. If you become close friends with someone and share things about yourself, they better damn well be the truth. I have so little respect for people who can't admit to being who they actually are. I know there are issues of trust - but you know, I trust people immediately - and I believe people too. I guess these feelings could vary - depending on the person - but all the friends that I have with met in SL that are still with me in RL are those who were honest with me about who they were - IN BOTH LIVES. So the emotional cost in this case is, of course, being hurt very, very deeply by other people's deceptive behavior.
As far as physical costs go, if you're addicted to SL there are SOOOO many of these.
I have a picture of what happens to your MAIL when you're addicted to SL:
This is an actual example of my mail pile (it went beyond "stack") in REAL LIFE. I actually had a check for a 401k that was closed out by a prior company I worked for that sat in a similar stack for months a couple of months ago - I basically had to make a last-minute trip to the bank to deposit it before it had to be reprinted. I cleaned out my mail "in-box" then - but this is just what accumulated since October/November. I would open the SUPER-DUPER-SERIOUSLY URGENT stuff, but everything else just sat. Nothing was important enough for me to sacrifice my SL time for.
Speaking of sacrifice, when you're addicted you tend to sacrifice a lot of time you could be spending on bettering yourself or bettering your life logging on and playing with virtual things. You get less sleep, you get less time outside in the sun and fresh air, you get less time with your family, you get less time with your friends, you get less time to run errands and have the random moments where you just decide to visit a store or a park on completely spur-of-the-moment basis. Not because these places no longer exist in the real world - but instead because the virtual world has priority over the real one. Every spare moment is spent either trying to log in or even visiting other sites that had to do with SL during the day when you COULDN'T log on. For example, I would sometimes shop on Xstreet during the day at work (for the record, I haven't even been to xstreet since I started this blog - SCOUTS HONOR). Xstreet is a Second Life virtual shopping site. For pennies on the dollar you can buy clothes, shoes, furniture, actions, dances, accessories, boots, hair - anything. I would shop during the day and come home after work, log in and grab all my purchases and PLAY! You can also access all sorts of blogs that have to do with SL and what's going on INSIDE SL when you're not there.
BTW, I took the SL Addiction test and I got like a 32...I think somewhere around the number "20" was considered addicted. Some of the higher-scoring responses were things like visiting outside websites (like Xstreet) and blogs about SL. Basically I liked being "in-world" so much that even when I was out of world I was trying to find ways to get back in. Why? DELUSION. I was deluded into thinking that SL was a better choice - a better way to spend my time - than RL for me. Or at least it was a hell of a lot more fun. I have tons of responsibilities in RL. I have E. and I have a house to clean, food to cook and I have a job I work at and I have chores and I have general duties I take on strictly because I want to and a bunch more that I take on because it's expected of me. Yes, I said "expected" of me. I don't like letting people down and I try my best to make sure I just don't let people down in general. Even if that's at the cost of my suffering. I remember last week at the field trip there were these two plastic bins filled with lunch bags for the kids. I don't know who made this bins - someone who wants to torture innocent souls would be my guess. These bins were hard plastic with jagged edges and where you placed your hands to carry the bins you would immediately have plastic cutting into your skin and palms of your hands and then sharper edges along the insides of your fingers. WAY uncomfortable and WAY heavy - there were lunches enough for 20 kids and 8 adults! Anyway, one of the other adults said "here, I can carry that with you" and I said "NO...it's too much for you - it's hurting the heck out of MY hand" and she said "Martyr!" I think jokingly - but I mean, come ON she was like 75 years old. First it was too heavy and SECOND it was way uncomfortable. I will just gladly suffer something like that alone without complaining if it means someone ELSE doesn't have to suffer. Anyway, I just don't like letting people down. Which is why I find myself gravitating back a bit toward SL - I know there are a few people there who have counted on me in the past to help with the proofreading - I don't want to let them down AND I enjoy it. Finding the happy medium - the safe place - that will be the challenge now. I still find it easier to log off than ever before. And logging on is no longer priority one. I hope I manage to keep it that way. The things that SL is - the good things - the time spent with my incredible friends there - that makes it worth it to a point.
Physical and Emotional sacrifice will no longer be something I experience with SL. It's just not worth it. The pain, the heartache, the frustration, the lies, the stealing of intellectual property, fraudulent attacks on character, misplaced personal vendettas...all of these are just too much drama for me to take - especially from people who may or may not be who they say they are? NO THANKS. I will keep drama at a minimum and keep my life for myself, thank-you-very-much.
I think I will close with this song. It's one of my all-time favorite songs. I think the meaning of it depends upon your outlook when you listen to it. It can either mean "hey you, I hope you enjoyed yourself, honestly!" or it can mean exactly what the original title of this song is... "Good Riddance".
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