Second Life Blues (Danton's Syndrome)

Second Life can be a euphoric experience. It offers seemingly unlimited possibilities for identity, for creation and for friendship. Land can be bought quite cheaply, and one can either make or buy the house of one's dreams, as well as everything needed to get comfortably installed. By joining a multitude of groups one can build an ever-growing personal network of friends and associates. Thus one's avatar moves into the virtual world, invests time and energy, and develops a life.

But there seems to be a down side. Sometimes when I log off, I am filled with a vague sadness, a sort of anguish. After a particularly severe bout of such feelings, I logged back in, and found someone to chat with. "I've got the Second Life blues," I said. "Does that exist? Does anyone talk about it?" But my friend changed the subject.

I thought about this anguish, and found a number of plausible explanations. The virtual world is a place in a very literal sense, and behind the avatars are real people. But the virtuality gives this place and these people a set of highly specific attributes, some of which are, to say the least, inconvenient. One major attribute of places and people on Second Life is that they are impermanent. Builds can disappear from one day to the next, and whole sims can drop out of the virtual world. Avatars in the best of cases tend to be intermittent, and in the worst cases just disappear, either for extended periods, or permanently. How many times have I logged in to find my sim completely empty, because the avatars are off-line? And in my short Second Life I've already seen a number of avatars take their leave, the consequences of which can be exacerbated by the anonymity of their real-world identities. After one of these departures I asked a friend if there were any known reasons for the sudden withdrawal. The friend only said: "Oh, you get used to that here. The key word in Second Life is 'Second.' Avatars come and go, and that one will probably be back sooner or later." But some never come back. To the extent that there is a second life, there can also be a second death, and cases of virtual suicide.

Anonymity is another attribute that can have social side-effects. It is well known that the anonymity of on-line forums tends to transform certain participants into trolls, those Internet monsters who procure vicarious pleasure by triggering flame-wars with other forum users. Relationships with other avatars can be similarly brutal, unpredictable and emotionally dangerous. Anonymity can bring out the worst in people, because the lack of social constraints allows them to behave in ways they would avoid in real life.

Has this phenomenon of "Second Life Blues," and its causes, already been scientifically described by others? If not, I claim the invention of the term. Medical syndromes are often named for the doctor that first clinically observed them. If Doctor Danton is the first to write a blog post that gives a precise clinical description of avatar malaise, it would be fitting to call the described set of symptoms "Danton's Syndrome." READ MORE...