'Don't like your life? Create a new one.'

Back at the beginning of November I had definetly decided what I was going to investigate as a case study (not my dissertation) for one of my courses for my degree. And what could be better than 'Second Life', a phemonena that is appealing to lives across the world.

I have decided to investigate online identities, consumption and capitalism within this virtual world - a case that fully grabs my attention. To me this is unique, from what I have discovered so far there has been no undertaken sociological research on Second Life (if you do know of any sociological research studies on SL, then please do let me know because so far I have found nothing).

This piece of research will mainly undertake interviews with different individuals such as your average avatar, the child avatar (this means individuals that are adults in real life but are children in Second Life), the Neko avatar (half human and half cat), the Vampire avatar, the Gorean avatar and any other avatar I come across in between. Not only that I am interested in how individuals consume within Second Life in order to pursue their avatar (online identity) such as buying clothes, weapons, hair styles, houses and so forth. Not forgetting the 'virtual Capitalist' that make a living out of selling houses, land, clothes and so forth - not forgetting the lapdancers!

I am enjoying my research so far and think is an excellent area to research for my case study, I welcome any comments that you may think will help me and if you are on Second Life...maybe I will get to meet you!