I hadn’t been in Second Life for several months. But I was invited by a friend to visit his class on Social Media Marketing and talk about the psychology of website design (I’ll post the talk when I get it cleaned up--we had some technical issues), so I was forced to go out and go shopping because my avatar had absolutely nothing to wear. Gosh, I was still in my "newbie skin." (The uncustomized, out-of-the-box avatar look is a marker of a newbie.) It’s amazing how brave I am when I’m shopping. So with this new found bravery, I thought it would be fun to go exploring and see if there were any fireworks displays. The thing that always impresses me in Second Life is the amount of creativity and skill displayed by the range of resident-generated content. Heady psychological issues like social connection in new media and identity aside, I was struck by the idea of Second Life as a continual participatory art piece. People are spending huge amounts of energy creating … [Read more...]