Second life? get a life

I can find a lot of things that are wrong with Second Life. Especially when people don't spend enough time in the real world and get lost in their created fantasy land, or island. The WSJ (8/10/07) found the perfect specimen.

Take Ric Hoogestraat, who is married to Sue and works at a call center in the Phoenix area but spends 30-plus hours a week inside the online Second Life video game, pretending that he is the digitally drawn Dutch Hoorenbeek, a 6-foot-9, muscular babe magnet who lives on his own island.

That unnerves Sue, especially since Dutch recently "married" a digital woman and set up housekeeping with their two digital dogs. (The real-life creator of the new Mrs. Hoorenbeek has never met Ric and says she never will.)

Dutch and his online wife spend hours shopping and motorcycling together, leaving Ric little time for real-life wife Sue. "Is this man cheating on his wife (meaning Sue)?" the Journal asked. Sue says: "You try to talk to (Ric) or bring (him) a drink, and (he)'ll be having sex with a cartoon."