After a few weeks of exploring the virtual world of Second Life, I finally decided to cash in my chips and walk away. It's a fascinating world - in fact I'd love to say that it's a microcosm of everything that is wrong with our sick society; which is why it no longer interests me. In your face advertising, gambling, prostitution, crime, and of course anything having to do with sex. Sounds just like America. Except there's not much else. OK, there are a lot of buildings - where people go to find sex or have sex. If you get lonely and try and find some people, you'll find them. Having sex or trying to have sex. Notice a common theme here? If you try and approach a single person in the 'street', they'll either fly away quickly (because they're sick and tired of having sex), or you'll likely get shot with some kind of particle disruptor or attacked by a swarm of killer bees. These are really nasty, incidentally.

It'll cost you about $5 for the hardware and software to actually have sex (but of course the sky is the limit if you want to upgrade). Don't buy the cheap one, get the Xcite. I could give you twenty reasons, but the most important is that the Xcite is interactive and you can tweak the size and color and uhm 'hardness'. The cheap ones come in a single skin tone and are one-size-fits-all and you can either put it on flaccid or stiff. Nothing in between. No refunds, and you can't sell it later. The Xcite will react if someone touches your privates (and you allow them to arouse you). There's also a female version and they all interact automatically. OK, that's the basic hardware. You also need to be around 'pose balls' to have sex. These are little blue and pink balls that you'll find everywhere, and they play a little (possibly x-rated) animation starring you. Usually the guy gets the blue ball and the girl gets the pink - but of course there are variations. Different balls have different poses. Doggie, missionary, 69, on the desk, etc. If you want to run a sex parlor, you'll need a bunch of these puppies. They cost about a dollar each. If you don't want to run a sex parlor, you're going to be awfully lonely - because that's where everybody is going.

But the cruel irony is that you won't be able to get it up in the free sex clubs where everybody goes to try out their hardware. Too many people - your system won't respond in a timely manner. They call it 'lag'. The only way to truly exercise your hardware is in private with a call girl (for about $5 for a half hour). They're everywhere, because this is the one profitable business you can run in SL without owning land (which will cost you somewhere upwards of $25, depending of course on location, location, location; and an account upgrade to monthly fees of $5 on up depending on how much land you want). Get out your credit card.

I probably should qualify all of this with 'so I've been told', because of course I would never do these things.  

But there's an upside to all this. There's a future for Second Life yet. We give all the sex offenders and perverts in our jails second life accounts and let them live out their twisted perversions. They'll be ecstatic that they can do whatever they want with like-minded people and get so absorbed in the fantasy that it might just keep them off the real life street.