Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Marie Curie.

What were you most scared of as a child? Are you still scared of those same things now?

When I was a kid, I wasn’t scared of anything. There were no monsters under my bed, there were no skeletons in the closest.

Falling over and hurting myself was a daily occurrence – that certainly didn’t scare me. I wasn’t scared of children bigger than me, grown-ups, animals, birds..

Daddy would get rid of anything scary. Nothing could hurt me, because Daddy would get anything that was scary before it got to me. Simple as that.

And now?
I’ve got a list.

I’m scared of moths, dogs, small enclosed spaces, spiral staircases, being buried alive, failure. And that’s just a small selection of things that freak me out.

What Marie Curie said, in my opinion, was complete crap. In understanding comes fear. I understand that dogs can bite me, that I could swallow a moth in my sleep, that I could get trapped in a small enclosed space, that I could fall down a spiral staircase to my death, that I could accidentally be buried before I’m dead, and that I might fail when it matters most.

It always makes me smile a bit when I watch kids on climbing frames, clambering as high as they can get – then holding on with just one hand, waving and shouting for me to look at them. They’re afraid of nothing. There’s no chance, as far as they’re concerned, that they might fall and crack their head open. There’s no fragment of doubt in their mind that they will succeed, and if they don’t – someone will help them to find the way to the top.

Nothing’s scary when there’s someone to hold your hand, to turn on the lights and chase the monsters out from under your bed.

But if you’re out there on your own – whether you’re five, fifteen or fifty – the world’s a quite a scary place.

Joshua Hoffine - Horror Photography

To me, virtual/online worlds conjure up images of freedom…

I’ve never participated in a community in Second Life – but after reading about SL in various media articles, I gave in and checked it out.

If I’m going to be brutally honest, it looked horribly boring.. A game without rules and restrictions, or a fancy, pixelated extension of internet chat rooms. Either way, I wasn’t interested in participating. But I was interested in the sociology of Second Life – in how it’s residents interacted and whether this virtual society was impacted by social norms from the ‘real world’.

I carried out a study on the social norms and relationships between people on IRC, four years ago (possibly the only part of my degree that I actually enjoyed..). I’ve been a participating member in various IRC communities for around a decade. The social norms and the general sociology of online communities has fascinated me ever since I first logged into a chatroom and began thinking about how a virtual world was different from the ‘real world’.

I wont flatter myself into thinking that anyone (or many people, anyway!) would be interested in what I think about the ethnology/sociology of Second Life. However, The Bryant Park Project have filmed an interesting video.. It may not be rocket science, but it’s interesting nonetheless – I can practically guarantee will get you thinking (even if you’re adamant that you just don’t care about the sociology of online communities!)

A virtual world is free of social and cultural ties, free of the pressures of conformity, free from the confines of the social norm.. Or so we may imagine. The question is,

Are we ever as free as we think we are?

If you’re interested in this sort of thing – check out The Daedalus Project – The Psychology of MMORPGs.