Finding your new self
In the online world of Second Life, let your avatar lead the way
By Stephanie Shapiro

In real life, she is bound to her home by ill health. But in the digital world of Second Life, the woman known as Circe Broom has parlayed her gifts as a land speculator into a career as an acclaimed music impresario.

A lavishly built avatar with an auburn mane and a heart of gold, Broom presides over several Second Life stages, where jazz, country and classical musicians from around the world perform live through streaming software.

Other avatars, draped in glittering jewels and cyber finery, flock to Broom's productions at the Luxor stage, Hummingbird Cafe and Club Egret. They know that she is a tireless promoter who insists that everything -- the stage, the mood, the music -- be faultless. "You cannot use my stream unless you're really good," Broom says.

Second Life is considered a "massively multi-player online game" along with EverQuest and World of Warcraft, games in which players from around the globe simultaneously compete against one another.

With its open-ended possibilities for content and social networking capabilities, Second Life is a digital mashup with creative freedom not found in other computer games. Its denizens say it's not a game at all.

"Mainly, what Second Life is to me is a second life," Broom's creator, Rose Ragan, says in a phone interview. Within the game -- what participants call "inworld" -- "I'm up and dancing and flying and having just endless energy." In real life, she says, "I'm sitting here in a wheelchair with oxygen 24/7."

According to Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life, 4 million members have tumbled through its 3D looking glass since it was launched in 2003. Each member arrives as a virtual babe in the woods who acquires a name, physique and wardrobe. With patience, members also develop the gaming skills to build, script and texture a fulfilling life as an avatar.

In Second Life, it's possible to buy islands, erect skyscrapers, open art galleries and clothing boutiques, take classes, sail, fish, bow toward Mecca, feed the birds, get a tattoo, toggle your gender, join a breast cancer support group, leave flowers at the virtual Anna Nicole Smith memorial, make oodles of money, strip, zoom around in a go-kart, engage in live chat with a dragon.

You can watch movies (and make them) in Second Life, or attend a news conference on the situation in Darfur broadcast live from a cyberspace studio. You may protest the war in Iraq or denounce the arrival in Second Life of corporations such as Reebok, American Apparel and Toyota. Kids can go to summer camp in Second Life. English literature students can comb virtual London for Victorian artifacts.

Second Life residents may teleport to Svarga, an enchanting "sim," or simulator, of a self-sustaining eco-system. On Berkman Island, they may listen to a lecture streamed live from the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School.

Daring avatars can visit the Gorean sims, based on John Norman's novels where men are masters and women are chattel. (You can go there with a visitor's pass, if you don't want to join in the fun.)

Have pressing business in Sweden? Stop by the country's embassy in Second Life for visa information. If you have a scoop about the latest sensation in your SL neighborhood, you may contact Adam Pasick. He's a real-life Reuters journalist who reports from Second Life as avatar Adam Reuters.

Second Life is not the only virtual community in cyberspace, but it's certainly one of the best known.

Based on the architecture of electronic gaming, Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale created a universe that resembles everyday life, replete with most, if not all, of its power struggles and emotional turmoil. Plus, you can fly.

Second Life "has all of the affordances of text-based online communities and much more. You can move around. There's a physics to the world and you can make things," says Thomas Malaby, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, who specializes in gaming. "In all of these ways, there's a much wider scope for falling flat on your face or doing something with great elan."

The "power of Second Life is not in the graphics, performance, or usability (which all have a long way to go), but in the social connections people make," says Rodica Buzescu, project manager for Millions of Us, a company that brings real-life businesses into virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Those "who stay and enjoy their experience are inadvertently those who belong to a group where they feel engaged, active, or where they simply have a chance to explore one of their interests in more depth," says Buzescu, whose avatar, Ansible Berkman, has also worked to integrate real-life activities into Berkman Island.

That's why Second Life has proved a comfortable environment for those with a certain neurobiological disorder, Buzescu notes. In the Asperger Syndrome Community, a Second Life support group established by John Lester, many participants "have learned important social lessons that have been carried over in their real lives," Buzescu says in an e-mail response.

Second Life's power lies in its emotional pull, says Kim Komando, host of a digital radio show that explores digital technology's social impact. "You're getting accolades, there is greed, there's dissent, there's lust -- when we have this whole pile of emotions, that's when I think people become tied to it."

A healthy balance between worlds is key, says Komando, whose show airs on WBAL: "How much of your real life is being cast aside for your virtual life?"

Learning the ropes
Entering Second Life without the assistance of a more experienced friend can be as fraught as attending a party where everyone is a stranger. It takes time to create an avatar to one's liking, to clothe that avatar and navigate to a compatible sim.

Without a sense of direction, it's all too easy to encounter avatars cruising for cyber sex or trying to separate bumpkins from their Lindens (Second Life currency). "Griefers," who disrupt Second Life with boorish behavior, are a Second Life plague.

For people such as Circe Broom (Ragan), it has been well worth the effort to master Second Life's steep learning curve and brave the griefing.

"When I am in there, that's me, it's not an avatar, it's me," says Ragan, who lives in Maryland. "I'm seeing through my avatar's eyes. If I hug somebody, I feel it, honestly."

That is why, in part, she didn't create a flawless specimen of an avatar. "I modeled my avatar after me," Ragan says. "There's some really beautiful women in there. I feel really kind of jealous. I've tried to make me look more beautiful, but I can't do it. I come back to me, because that's me."

Avatars often marry in Second Life, but Circe Broom/Rose Ragan doesn't have time for a doting husband. She might opt for an "alt"; that is, a second avatar. One day, the Maryland resident says, "I'm going to make myself a male alt, the most handsome avatar in there and bring him in to be my partner. Maybe, I'll just marry him or something."

When she entered Second Life as Circe Broom, Ragan's first goal was to accumulate Lindens. "I got a job in a lesbian club that had a policy of 'hands off' -- you can't touch the dancers," she says.

She saved her tips and bought land. She sat on the land until it soared in value. With her profits, she traded an earlier Second Life residence for an island. "I built myself an Egyptian sim," Ragan says. Her musical empire grew from there.

Online concerts
For entrepreneurial spirits such as Baltimorean Brad Reiss, Second Life opens a profusion of marketing possibilities.

Twice a month, Reiss presents a multimedia simulcast of video and audio that brings together the real-life patrons of XS, a Charles Street restaurant, and Second Life regulars from China, Pakistan, England and other outposts.

Together they listen to a jazz program called "Coffee & Pajamas: Gourmet Blend," streamed into Second Life by a DJ in France.

Over brunch, the XS crowd can watch the DJ (Lisa Feay in real life, Elfay Pinkdot in Second Life) and the avatars who teleport to her virtual club, on a 42-inch flat-screen.

Many avatars are dressed for the morning show in pajamas and "big fluffy teddy-bear slippers," Reiss says. They dance with one another, and if instructed, wave to their real-life compatriots in Baltimore, whom they can also hear, thanks to Reiss' technical wizardry.

Reiss, himself a DJ who travels through Second Life as Doubledown Tandino, delights in the novelty of these Saturday shows. It's yet another mind-boggling possibility in the hall of mirrors that is Second Life and its pale imitation, real life.

Typically, Second Life members listen to music within the confines of virtual clubs and concert halls. Rarely, if ever, have "inworld" avatars delivered music to audiences in real life, Reiss says.

"I was really intrigued by the idea of doing it the other way around," he says. "I wanted to find out if a real-life event can exist based only on the virtual party that's going on."

Ragan, for one, has not grown wealthy in Second Life. She pours about $300 a month into her virtual existence. After upkeep and paying tips in Lindens to her performers, there's little left over.

It's all worth it, for Ragan, once a jazz singer herself. Especially on those sublime occasions when she pulls off a global jam session. As avatars tune in, musicians mustered by the indefatigable Circe Broom simultaneously stream their sounds from Portland, Ore., Tokyo and Sydney. Events like this, she says, are a miracle.

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