http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article1557980.eceSecond Life is the online world where disabled people can reinvent themselves and enjoy a better life.
Laura Deeley
If you’ve read anything about Second Life, the online virtual world with more than four million residents, you’re probably under the impression that its denizens are society’s oddballs. Geeks, Goths, the lonely and a fair few sexual deviants who, unable to make real friends, congregate online pretending to be someone else from the anonymity of their bedrooms.
Well, it’s true, there is a well-publicised dark side to Second Life. It is probably one of the few places in the world where you will hear of men pretending to be women having virtual sex with women pretending to be unicorns. Second Life has enough sex clubs and brothels to rival Amsterdam’s red-light district. But like any city or country, there is more to Second Life than can be discovered by the casual observer. Unlike in the real world, the residents of Second Life are in full control of their reality. For a few linden dollars (Second Life’s online currency) they can build anything they like. Residents can adjust their physical appearance too; inflate their breasts, lengthen their legs, get body-builder arms or a pert bottom, all without a single nip, tuck, or bicep curl. The result is a world populated mostly by muscular young men and silicone-breasted, wasp-waisted women, accompanied by the odd winged humanoid cat or bald green-skinned dwarf.
But for many of the residents of Second Life, it isn’t having bigger breasts or the ability to fly that inspires them, it’s the simple things that most of us take for granted: walking, running, even talking, are the stuff of their imaginations.
Wilde Cunningham is an avatar controlled by a group of nine adults with cerebral palsy (and their nurse) at the day-care programme they attend in Massachusetts. The group members are aged 30 to 70 and comprise four men and five women. Most of them are wheelchair users and rely on their carers for almost all aspects of their daily lives. Yet in Second Life they have built their own houses, have pets, gardens, even a baseball field. They also have many close friends and a large social network. “Second Life gives me the chance to be the person I feel I was born to be,” says John S, 32, one of the group. “Being in Second Life is how I imagine an innocent man who had been locked up wrongly feels when he is finally set free. In Second Life I get to call the shots.” For John S, the virtual world is all about being free from his disability but for Simon Stevens, who also suffers from cerebral palsy, it is equally about making disabled people visible.
Stevens, 32, lives in Coventry, where he heads Enable Enterprises, a disability consultancy firm. His avatar, Simon Walsh, is in a wheelchair. “I don’t know how to be nondisabled and I’ve never wanted to be nondisabled,” he says. “It’s important that people know; it’s part of who I am, plus I’m a disability consultant in Second Life, too, so I’ve got to look the part.”
Stevens sees Second Life as an opportunity to expand his client base as well as a medium for socialising and forming a community. He will admit that becoming Simon Walsh has had a marked effect on his personal and private life. “As Walsh, I’m smoother, sexier; no beer gut,” he jokes. “In real life I’m very active but speech can be a problem; I wear a helmet because my balance isn’t great; I wear bibs and nappies and I need assistance with most everyday things so, as Walsh, social and romantic relationships are much easier.”
Stevens believe that the internet represents a huge change to the way disability will be dealt with. “This is the future for people with disabilities and the charities that support them,” he enthuses. “Anyone who is disabled should join now: get online, enjoy, explore.”
Nanci Schenkein has done just that. Formerly an events planner from New Jersey, Schenkein was forced to give up her job when, ten years ago, she was told she had multiple sclerosis, which limits her mobility. “I heard about Second Life when it was first opened to the public in 2003. Being a bit of a techie I thought it would be fun to go in and build things.” The first thing she built was a recreation of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. To celebrate, she held a party. Midway through it, it dawned on her that everyone present was more interested in the party than what she had built. “I realised there was a big gap in the market; nobody was doing parties in Second Life, so I got started. Before long people were asking me to do weddings, birthdays and business openings. I never intended to go back to work as an events planner, but I guess it’s what I’m good at.”
Schenkein (avatar: Baccara Rhodes) and her in-world business partner Mash run a Second Life event planning service, Spellbound Events. They also own the virtual equivalent of Selfridges, a huge department store where residents can buy everything from kitchens and cushions to a pet moose.“Second Life provides me with a modest income and a community,” says Schenkein. “People outside don’t seem to understand the connection we have here but it’s so strong. I have friends in Second Life who’ve stayed up with me 24 hours a day when I’ve had to have steroid treatments for the MS — that’s friendship.”
John Lester, the academic programme manager at Linden Lab, the company that owns and runs Second Life, agrees. Lester was the brains behind Brigadoon, a private island built to accommodate a group of people with Asperger’s syndrome, a less severe form of autism, who were already members of a chat site that Lester had developed for people with neurological disorders. People with Asperger’s are often characterised by social isolation and awkwardness, eccentric behaviour and obsessions. Nonverbal communication, such as reading body language and facial expressions, is also difficult.
“The group wanted to socialise and meet people but found it frightening and communicating difficult,” Lester tells me. So he created Brigadoon to provide a place where they could practise socialising in a more realistic setting. The island was a great success. Second Life allows members to chat in realtime so its residents were able to communicate instantly but without the complication of reading nonverbal signals. “It built up everyone’s confidence,” says Lester. “After a while they felt comfortable enough in their social abilities to leave the island and explore the rest of Second Life.”
One such ex-Brigadooner is Torley Wong, who works for Linden Lab as a community developer of communications. Wong, whose Second Life residence is a watermelon house — “when I was a kid I wanted to live in a watermelon” — says his life has changed dramatically since signing up. “Before Second Life I was introverted. I didn’t communicate well.” In Second Life, Wong finds he can communicate through the things he builds and the way he looks, rather than through text. He has a number of different avatars, including a woman called Torley Linden (see panel left) and a dog, which he says represent the different sides of his personality.
With its potential to free you from a body that does not work or a mind that finds it difficult to communicate, Wong says Second Life is the ideal place for people with disabilities. “I’m much happier here. I’m more extroverted and I never want for company,” he smiles, from the comfort of his magical watermelon home.
But are disabled Second Lifers more at risk from online dangers, such as abuse, grooming and scams? Robin Christopherson, of AbilityNet (abilitynet.org.uk), a charity helping disabled adults and children to use computers, believes that as long as disabled users take the same precautions as the nondisabled they will be safe. “Disabled users make up a large proportion of online activity so, proportionally, they are at greater risk, but those risks are the same as for other users,” he says.
The only exception are those people with cognitive or learning disabilities. “Second Life has its own currency and users with cognitive impairments may be more likely to get taken in by scams asking them to part with real money.” However, Christopherson believes that the benefits outweigh the risks. “It’s socially levelling and gives disabled users the chance to escape their disability for a while and the prejudice that can come with it. That’s a positive thing.”
Another concern is that by losing themselves in fantasy, disabled and socially awkward users may not be facing up to their problems. But as John Lester reminds me when I ask if online relationships can ever be a substitute for the real thing: “Behind every avatar a real individual exists; they are achieving real goals and making real friends. It’s all real.”
The relationships built here are long-lasting and often provide support for people when they need it most. Lester believes that this group of people, which society labels misfits, has evolved into a new type of person, comprised of electrons rather than atoms, but with a depth of feeling and concern for one another that we can hope only to replicate in real life.
After meeting and being welcomed in by so many Second Lifers, it is hard to disagree.
What is Second Life?
Second Life is an internet-based virtual world. Its users, known as residents, create an “avatar”, a customised online character who represents their ‘in-world’ self.
Avatars are able to fly, teleport to new locations and ride in vehicles.
There are nearly five million registered residents and up to 30,000 are logged on at any time.
Residents communicate in real time by typing to one another.
Second Life has its own currency known as linden dollars (L$). L$1,000 cost about £2.
Residents can use the linden dollars to buy land and build objects; they can also buy and sell items. To find out more about getting a second life, log on to secondlife.com
Say hello to schizophrenia A Second Life clinic that lets people experience the horrors of schizophrenia could be a useful tool for understanding the disease, says LAURA DEELEY
For a psychiatric unit, the Sacramento Mental Health Centre in California has a strangely deserted feel: no nurses behind the triage desk, no patients wandering the halls and no clutter. As I stroll past reception, I look at a poster advertising a mental health service. As I read, the letters begin to morph and the word “sh**-face” slowly surface. I try to ignore it, hurrying into the next room, where I find a newspaper lying on a table. Only one word is readable — Death — standing out in bold letters. Then things really kick off.
“Kill yourself, you don’t exist, this is all an illusion,” says a disembodied voice to my left. Another voice cuts in, muttering: “Someone sick should be in your bed, we shouldn’t waste beds on a nothing like you.”
It’s all too much. I run down the corridor, throw open a fire door and burst into the sunlight. The voices stop, the world returns to normal, but now I have an idea of what it’s like to spend ten minutes in the mind of a person with schizophrenia. Despite its nightmarish qualities, my experience is an example of the potential of Second Life
Frosty Beam, Laura Deeley’s avatar, gets a taste of life in a schizophrenic world to educate. Created by Professor Peter Yellowlees, a psychiatrist at the University of California, this Second Life clinic is a virtual replica of the unit (with added hallucinations) in which Yellowlees works. “It’s quite an onslaught,” he says, “but it’s one of the best ways we’ve found to help students understand the nature of schizophrenia and what patients suffer daily. Many students struggle with the concept of lived experience; what it’s like to hallucinate, have delusions and hear voices. This tool makes communicating with the person having a schizophrenic episode easier.”
My friend Karen, who has suffered from schizophrenia, tried out the Second Life experience. She says: “This is quite realistic. I think people will understand more from ten minutes in here than you could from talking to someone who is ill or watching a film about it.”
The Second Life clinic is also to be developed into a cognitive tool for patients. “A person’s hallucinations could be programmed into the virtual world in which they then visit their psychiatrist to be taught how to ignore their symptoms,” says Professor Yellowlees.
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