WIPLY Photo Contest 2021 - Aragorn Zelin

For me, it's hard to say that people I meet in Second Life are "friends". I see them usually only as acquaintances. Perhaps here I will be able to clarify my views on what I believe a friend is and is not. A friend is so much more than what we are capable of having in Second Life. A friend is someone that will stand beside you through the good and the bad times of life. They share a genuine interest and a physical presence in your life. You can reach out and touch them physically if you need that shoulder to cry on or their arms to hold you in a hug. We know where each other lives and our phone numbers. A friend is a physical presence in your life, not just a Second Life cohort. Second Life is a virtual platform. We engage with avatars from around the world with different cultures, but how "real" are they, and just how "real" can they ever be? How much can you involve yourself in their lives when most of the time we know them only by their avatar's moniker? How much can you invest emotionally in these "friendships" and actually get beyond the pixels? Usually, we don't even know their real names and have limited accessibility outside. Most often distance is a huge factor. I do know and realize that Second Life friendships and love relationships have carried over to our real lives and even real-life weddings occur. Those are the exceptions to the norm. I know from personal experiences how vulnerable you can make yourself to these "friends" by exposing your true personalities and real-life aspects. It can be too much real information becomes too much ammunition against you if you were to find yourself with issues and those SL "friends" ignore you or worse yet stab you in the back, betray your trust, kick you to the curb, and distance themselves from you either by unfriending you or by creating another alt avatar and going their separate way. Once they break your trust in this virtual world, you are more watching your back and careful about what you share and with who you share it. From then on what happens in SL is friendship Role Play. Romantic relationships and Second Life marriages are just Role Playing. So, unless you have met this person face to face and real to real it's hard to say they are your friend. I think that in Second Life you can only take it so far, so unless I had a close relationship with somebody in both worlds that accepts me for who I am and what I stand for I cannot consider them second-life friends and not definitely not real friends. They have to earn my trust and not break it. Thanks to Asarith I have started to believe friendship may be possible again when we talk or practice our samurai routines.