One of my mailing lists pointed me towards this documentary on SL by the CBC. You can watch the entire video online through the website.
I was so struck by the misconceptions and sensationalism in the doc, even from the very beginning - it continually refers to SL as a game and never brings up the term "virtual world" or "online world" at all. I was also disappointed in how SL was blamed for the problems in these people's marriages when I suspect that those problems already existed, and SL was an escape bringing some happiness to them. I don't like to see the platform scapegoated for ruining marriages. Also, it made me really angry when the doc kept saying that these women had fallen in love with "fantasies" - there are real people using those avatars, communicating with them and listening to them. Also quite tickled to see the scenes framed as being of an "unhappy household" of the woman in Pennsylvania showed the husband cleaning up around the house, doing the shopping, and spending time with the children while the wife got some time to herself. I personally think she took it too far, but I still strongly disliked how the doc made it seem that she should be the one doing all these things while her husband got to leave the house and be "breadwinner". Last time I checked, CBC, it was 2009, not 1952.
Argh.
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