I did not sign up for, download, or install SecondLife today.
Again.
At some point last year, I had decided that I wanted to see what all the hubbub is about, so I headed over to the SecondLife website to download the program. To do that, I needed to sign up for an account. Okay, no big. I hate having to sign up for crap and have yet another username/password/profile set to remember, track, and maintain. But as much as I dislike mandatory user registrations, I understand that with something like SecondLife, it’s unavoidable.
So I began to fill out the form. I didn’t get very far.
You see, to create your second life, you need to pick a name. First and last. Okay. First name: the (un)imaginative choice of “Robert.” Easy. Last name: I … uh … what the heck was this? A dropdown list? Without “Hill” in it? Well, I guess they can’t have every name in the world in the list. But why not a field to let me pick my own? I don’t want to be an “Anatine” or an “Etchegaray” or a “Barthlemess” or a “Takacs.” These names are all stupid.
No offense to anybody who really has those names. They’re fine for you, but I don’t want to be you. I want to be me. And none of the names in the list fit my style or preference.
So I gave up and didn’t register. I was too annoyed.
Fast-forward to today, when I saw a mention of SecondLife over at MicroExplosion, and decided that maybe I had been a bit neurotic when I was trying to sign up before, and maybe I should give it another try.
And I started with the names on the signup form again. I put in my first name. And then froze again at the stupid dropdown menu. And got annoyed — again — because still none of the names “called out” to me. And so I navigated away from the page … again … because I still just couldn’t bring myself to care about a name I’m not yet invested in. I have no connection to “Etchegaray” or to “Takacs” or to any of the other names in the list.
I guess, in the final analysis, I really just don’t want a second life. I don’t want to be some online persona that’s not me. I want to be myself; I want to be who I already am, to feel connection with my online persona. Or, to phrase it another way, as the song lyric goes, “I gotta be me.”
