Film Review: Life 2.0 — like life minus the reality

By Angela PennyThe Guardsman

Watching Life 2.0, a documentary  about the virtual reality sensation Second Life, was an entertaining  thrill, emotionally insightful and satisfyingly voyeuristic.

The  juxtaposition of the real and “imaginary” lives of four heavy Second  Life users was fascinating. Watching the film was like taking an  imaginary vacation to some other planet, with a complete society  including beaches and dance clubs, fashion and real estate, friends and  strangers. The graphics were very utopian, with clean lines and computer  generated images. It was basically a binge of collective imaginations.

Life  is much easier in Second Life than it is in the physical world. For  instance, while dating in Second Life, a woman gets upset because the  private beach won’t allow them to fly.

After this couple failed  to make a real-life relationship work, the man speculated that if they  hadn’t ventured out of Second Life, they would “have a nice house in  Second Life somewhere with lots of friends,” and would probably be still  together, emotionally if not physically.

One of the subjects  in the film is the fashionable avatar, Asri Falcone, who designs  high-end skin, fashion, and housing products for Second Life denizens.

In  stark contrast to her avatar, the camera pulls back to reveal the  real-life Falcone, snoring in her unkempt bed before her alarm goes off  at 6 p.m. All of the subjects in the documentary seem to spend most of  their nights staring into a computer.

Living your life as an  avatar is like the ultimate in plastic surgery.

In reality Asri  Falcone is pretty, but she’s overweight, lives in her pajamas and  chain-smokes. She also lives in her parents’ Detroit basement.

Falcone  says she earns well into “six figures” by selling her products, but I  wonder if that includes decimal points or is in game dollars, since  about 250 Second Life dollars is equal to one US dollar. She lives with  her parents because they’ve all had some health problems and her mother  is an excellent cook specializing in soul food and fried chicken.

Filmmaker  Jason Spingarn-Koff also follows a young man strangely obsessed with  building a Second Life persona of an 11-year-old girl. At one point this  avatar spends time as a suicide bomber and eventually plans her own  death.

The documentary doesn’t judge whether ultimately Second  Life, is healthy or non-healthy but it definitely has the power to take  over people’s lives. For all of the individuals profiled, their Second  Life experience was almost more important and more “real” than their  physical surroundings.

One of the founders of Linden Labs, the  San Francisco-based company that created Second Life, said one of the  biggest differences between the virtual world and first life is that you  can’t physically hurt someone or be hurt.

The film is not an  encyclopedic expose of how to use the tools in Second Life. For me, the  virtual experience of the movie was enough to know about what goes on in  this “new reality.” And I’m satisfied that I’m not missing out on  anything.