Much of Second Life was visualized by two authors; William Gibson in
his Neuromancer Trilogy in the late 80's, and especially Neal
Stephenson, with his novel "Snow Crash." Throughout SL I have seen
references to those books in homage to their vision.
I have been thinking of the third book of the Neuromancer Trilogy,
called "MonaLisa Overdrive." In it two characters who had accidently
stumbled into being important in previous books are being pursued by
bad guys who are closing in on them. In the end, they imprint their
personalities into an artificial intelligence device called an Aleph
(the name of one of the mainland sims in SL) which had in it a
complete copy of all of cyberspace, including full sensory virtual
reality simulations. In the end, the girl, who was an international
star, drops her body to join her mortally wounded guy in the Aleph,
where they continue on living. When I read it years ago, it bummed me
out, felt like a tragic end. Now I understand Gibson's vision, so
long before even the first 3D environments: the temptation, at some
point will become immense to do just that.

I wrote the last comment in an email to my lover in SL, at work missing her, tired from being up too late with her, and finding work dull and uninteresting. In writing to her and in feeling for a few hours an overwhelming desire to live with her forever young beautiful and odorless in her ravishing sky home I managed to come up against the limits of SL again, and found my emotions returning to my real life, to enjoying my body, my sensations, the glories of nature. The next time I went in to Second Life, it looked eerily shallow and dead, or maybe filled with shadows. Then, meeting friends and my lover, I realized that Second Life is brought to life by relationships and creativity among friends and loved ones in the real world who play there. To think of it as an escape instead of a distraction or a pastime, feels like a cruelly shallow illusion. Check with me tomorrow, it may be different. LOL
Cogs

I have a friend in SL who, when I share the delights of having a partner in SL, cautions me about the burnout rate of relationships. The stat she quotes is that the average lifespan of a romantic relationship in SL is about 2 weeks. I have no idea whether this is accurate, but it's got a bit of "truthiness" going for it. I'm interested in having conversations with others about their experiences with relationships in SL and especially about what they've learned and how they have been changed by them.

Second Life is an amazing and potent environment for online romance. Two people are friendly, they go dancing, hop on a slow dance ball, and they see their AV's intimately dancing, looks of rapt love on their faces. AVs are designed by artists to stimulate huge emotional response with their beauty, virility, shape, and so on. The usual penalties that real life provides for incautious romantic entanglements don't exist in SL except for the possibility of deeply hurt feelings (and if the resident hasn't the ability to have perspective, real possibility of harm).
In the study of animal behavior, there is a term for a phenomenon called "super normal sign stimulus." It means that if an instinctual trigger, say a mother robin being triggered by the sight of a blue egg to sit on that egg, is replaced by, say, in this case, a bluer egg or a larger blue egg, the robin will ignore its own egg and sit on the more instinctually attractive egg. This happens all the time to humans as well. People leave small towns where they are secure and known to go to the big city, though it is less safe or even good for them. Plastic surgeons make a lot of money over super normal sign stimulus. We have emotional responses triggered by certain experiences,sights, sounds, other sensory input.

So if a person wanting love and/or sex, becomes a resident in Second Life, they are presented with extremely sexual looking avatars, every wild permutation of fetish and kink, hundreds of animations covering furniture and the landscape with cuddles, kisses, dances and intimacies. All manner of romantic dress, hair, makeup, environments and scripting is brought to bear on the hunger and the pocketbooks of residents wanting these most human needs. Girls who might be very prim in real life take jobs as dancers and escorts, for lindens to buy things or to meet guys or simply to experience being wild without risk, to seek attention, to try out new sexual roles. Guys can buff up, buy handsome skins, buy lavish gifts, and have multiple girlfriends if they care to. So relationships flourish, promiscuous sex abounds, giant weddings occur and much fun is had. In my several months as a resident,

I have learned of several relationships that have lasted a good while, one, at least, that resulted in a marriage; most long term relationships seem to be with people who were already together in real life, or met each other and share a business together. My learning question is, I guess, can SL sustain a long term relationship without either an intimate relationship in real life, or some other sustaining connection in SL. I have a personal interest in this, since I am in a very lovely relationship that I would like to have last for the forseeable future, but worry that SL is good for bringing people together but has little support for the deepening and strengthening of a relationship that happens in real life through enduring challenges and working through problems. A love affair that just happens in SL is kind of like a fair weather friendship. There is nothing to challenge it, so after a while, will it become too lightweight to remain interested in?I think it can, but it means using the SL environment as a support but then the exploration of each other must take over, learning about each other, co-creating deeper and more meaningful conversations and shared experiences. This of course means that both people need to be on board and committed to the relationship, and also have the ability to bring their imaginations and life experiences into the shared fantasy. I so believe that if both people want it, a relationship based in SL can be sustained, just as one based in correspondence has historically been the basis for amazing relationships. I believe that, like building, scripting and social connections, intimate relationships in SL have the potential to be art.