Clarity On Fire

Back in college I did a case study about something I thought was wild at the time … It was called Second Life. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It was a virtual-reality online game that connected hundreds of thousands of users around the world. You built an entire life — complete with houses, jobs, pets, and spouses — inside this game. I was fascinated by the intersection between real-life and virtual reality. I read stories about people on Second Life who played 8 or 9 hours a day — to the point that their “second life” felt more like real life than their actual life. I read about people whose virtual reality persona married another person’s virtual reality persona … and the legal ramifications that ensued when the real-life spouses found out. I also read about people spending real-life currency on completely virtual products, which was the major question underlying my project: Is there a real-life market for unreal products? Turns out the answer was yes. Big companies like Coca-Cola were actually considering selli