I’ve spent more than a few hours of my life engrossed in virtual worlds like those found in online games such as City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, but ultimately I never really let myself get too attached to them, because, well… this may sound weird but I value my real life too. Not that it’s necessarily action-packed, but sometimes I actually prefer it to the thrill of mining for virtual iron ore so that I can craft it into a virtual sword to be traded for a virtual magic amulet so that I can slay a virtual goblin shaman. And so on. Ultimately I think it’s the time commitment for these games that’s a problem for me, because if you’re not dedicating every waking minute to them, it almost feels like there’s no point in playing.

I have yet to try out this thing called Second Life, however, for many of the same reasons I listed above, although I am curious about it. The thing I find most interesting is that it’s starting to gain a large user base and it’s not even really a “game” at all. It is merely a virtual world where you can socialize, shop, build virtual real estate, and even attend online classes from schools like Harvard. I don’t quite understand it, but it’s truly becoming a digital representation of real places and real people from the real world.

And now at last, I am getting to my point. This lengthy pre-amble was really just a justification for pointing you towards an amusing parody website created by Darren Barefoot called “Get A First Life”. It points out the irony of getting caught up in all of these artificial realities, and although it’s just a single page joke, it does make you stop and think about how strange it really is. Now all someone has to do is create another virtual world based on his concept, call it First Life, and allow the self-referential jokes to cause a tear in the space-time continuum.

Link: Get A First Life