Letters to the Editor
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There's One Born Every Minute
I have a secondlife persona somewhere. I worked around with it for a couple of weeks, but it was pretty clunky. For a while, I looked like myself and that was boring. I realized that I never dress up in person because it is expensive and uncomfortable, so I dressed up my avatar. I started her off with a 1950s ensemble, complete with long gloves and a sequinned top. After I fiddled with the hair, I decided, what the hell - I made her look like a young Diana Ross. I wound up "friending" a guy whose avatar was a tuxedoed, dapper type. It was fun flying around.
Then, I started getting invites to African American clubs and India-Indian clubs (the surname I picked was Singh - goes with the Diana Ross thing.)I felt very silly and dishonest and have not gone back in since.
I viewed it as a fun fantasy exercise, but I hear that corporations are meeting in SL and a friend of mine is going to do an online booksigning in SL. There's a real potential for fraud because of people's credulity and the only thing I can say is "caveat emptor" when visiting such a site.