second life -

What is Second Life? It's a 3-D digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents. You can chat, play games, build houses, and go to parties, all with thousands of other people from around the world. Second Life is a tiny server of a California company and it exists in the minds and hard drives of its subscribers; a city of almost 20,000 souls on 12 square miles of virtual land. Calling Second Life a computer game would be wrong. Games typically have a goal, and Second Life does not. At least, no more of a goal than real life, or RL, as it's called inside the world. Here is the interesting part: "Here you can find virtual proselytizers and prostitutes, virtual couples, virtual designers and artists and virtual gamblers. Soap opera-style drama abounds, fads rise and fall, people play games within the game. They fly airplanes, hold fashion shows, host poetry readings. They dance endlessly. They marry, cheat, divorce, remarry" secondlife.com