What would you do or who would you be if you had a Second Life?

I would be anyone but myself, possibly a rock and roll musician or an olympic athelete...dgc


Italian Woman Explores Prostitution Via Second Life (from wired.com)

Say what you will about the gameplay potential of Second Life, but there's no denying its potential as a fascinating sociological petri dish. To wit: Green Pixel's interview with "Palela Alderson," an Italian woman who explores her prostitution fantasies via Linden Labs' online world, and makes a bit of cash in the process.
The 26-year-old "Alderson" (pictured at right) is employed as a communications professional by day, but at night, like some kind of Freudian superhero, she dons her virtual persona and sells faux sex for 2,000 to 3,000 Linden Dollars a pop (the equivalent of $9 to $13 USD).
The motivation, Alderson claims, is a long-standing fascination with prostitution in the real world.
"We have street prostitution here in Italy, and I have always wanted to be one of them," she tells Green Pixels. "As a teenager I would watch these sexy women walking the streets, waiting for the cars to stop, teasing the guys, and then hopping in and getting out sometime later. I'm not sure why I find it such a turn-on."
Alderson's urges originally led to reality's version of the world's oldest profession, but, she says, that choice was a dead end.
"In the end, I refused all the dates I got," she says. "It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, not at all. It was because I was afraid of being discovered by my family. They would have never accepted it, and I didn't want to hurt them or make them ashamed of me."
After realizing the potential in Second Life's virtual sandbox however, Alderson turned to Linden Labs' program to explore her fetish. "I set myself up immediately as an online escort. It took a little while to learn how to do things, but within a few days I had my first client."
Most intriguingly, Alderson sees no disconnect between her virtual persona and herself, unlike many people who roleplay a certain personality archetype in a virtual world.
"In Second Life I look similar to the real me, even if I don't use the red hair extensions every day," Alderson says. "I try to minimize the differences between real life and Second Life -- my avatar looks like me because it's me that's doing these things, not a character or an actress."