Virtual online worlds have been around for a good chunk of years now, the most famous of which currently is Second Life. Essentially, these are online communities where you can literally, “live a second life.” But, like those obsessed with EverQuest in the previous decade, these Second Lifers will sometimes take their new world more seriously than the real one. In the past year, currency in Second Life has essentially become a tradeable commodity, with islands going for sale on eBay and users straight-up trading cash for online credits.

In the coming months, people may be able to pay hundreds of dollars just to pick out their last name. Cause after all, having your last name be “Strickland” instead of “Ogawii” is worth enough to feed a family of four for a month… Plus, it’s looking like they’ll need to verify that your “vanity name” is truly your own name. What’s the point in spending $150 dollars on a name when it has to be your own? You can’t even be creative with it! True, I can’t complain about people wasting their time in front of a computer (I’m the one that’s blogging right now, after all). But really, find something else to do.

Second order of business: The strange similarities between the Second Life logo and a promotional design used for the online version of Myst - Uru. The thing about the computer game Myst is that people have become really obsessed over it as well. An extremely cryptic website, PreAfter.com, sprung up about archaeological digs in Nevada for the lost civilization of the D’ni (the mythical peoples from the Myst legend). I was never sure, but I assumed this had something to do with the online version of Myst that was being talked about all over the web. I was even lucky enough to be invited to beta test it - of course, my computer sucked in those days, and my specs couldn’t handle it.

Anyway, to make a long story short: Both Second Life and Myst Online were originally created to be exploratory worlds people could “live” in. Now lets look at some graphics:

It’s a hand, kind of made out of a spiral, wouldn’t you say? Now, look at the promotional image that was spread all over the PreAfter website (right). Personally, I think it’s fair to call that a hand made out of a spiral. Too much of a coincidence for my taste…

And that was another segment of Eerie Similarities. For more, see another one of my other segments.

Second Life to charge for names - Yahoo

I’ve essentially decided, at this point, that putting money into online gaming of any form is just stupid.

Any company that invests money to make a headquarters in Second Life is just doing it as a half-assed publicity stunt.