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My internet presence doesnt extend much further than my page on facebook. To be honest i wasn't even very aware that such huge all consuming online communities really existed.
thus i found this book fascinating as an introduction to these worlds, using Second life as an example. It covers many aspects of life within the community from starting out, and how people find their footing, through to issues of racism and even sexual deviancy within the world.
One of the reasons the book was so enjoyable was because it was written from an anthropological perspective, so it didn't jump into issues in a overly complicated way, but it also didn't patronise the reader for any lack of previous knowledge. It was written to encompass both outsiders, and users.
What was most fascinating was how the book revealed the way these communities work. People fall in love, people partake in illustrious sex lives, there are second life 'terrorists', its an entire alternate culture. I wanted to join it, start a new life within the virtual world, especially towards the beginning of the book, and have secret relationships with what i hoped were women. But as the book progressed, the potential of second life became less appealing, as that virtual woman avatar that i was having my secret internet affair would be turn out to be a man, and break my heart, and stop logging on, leaving me stuck, desparate and lonely in a scary virtual dystopia.
What i found to be most interesting of this book, which was the reason for which i bought the book, was the content on identity, as he discussed how peoples second life avatar differed from their real life controlling users, and the effects this had. The general stance of the book was that virtual and actual world personas were of equal importance, as it described the virtual world as though it were simply another country within this world, which i think certainly added to the strength of the anthropological analysis
Would definitely recommend