Virtually free

This morning I cavalierly wrote about a couple who married, strayed and divorced all in Second Life. Now I find that my friend Allen is virtually married to someone than his wife. As Allen says...

We just like each other a lot and people in-world had begun to think of us as a couple because we’re both such dorks. So, we spent the 10 lindens to become partnered..This probably sounds dramatic and strange to most people but I’ve seen and heard of this sort of thing happening all the time in SL. People hook up at the avatar level, get “partnered” (10 linden dollars at the web page), maybe even have a blingy, poofy wedding in-world and then get divorced (for 25 linden dollars) a few weeks or months later.

Hey, Congratulations on your second wedding!

Really, my point wasn't that someone got married or divorced in Second Life, or that their actions may or may not be virtual echoes of their real lives (also called "RL" by Second Lifers). What I found interesting is that this whole world is running on a bank of computers, so a "god" could conceivably step in, replay what happened, parse the syntax of the situation, and judge one side or the other to be in the right. Of course, I know from experience that in RL things don't work that way. Maybe a malicious god could occasionally seize control of SL and force the participants to replay their past. Or a trickster god could rework the scenario, tossing in false memories and easter eggs. Who knows, maybe in the future a Network God will skim some of this off the Linden Labs servers, add a laugh track, and we'll watch it streamed over the Internet.