Shared Experiences

Soooo.....
Sharing is caring, but is it real or not?

Yes I do agree with meadows statement. “Shared experience creates a sense of reality” I think that this statement is very true in all facets of a person’s life not just in an online world where everything to some is perceived as being fake or not real. I think that when you share an experience with someone else whether it be an unusual or hard to believe one it provides you with the confidence that it was real and what you experienced was in reality however strange or unbelievable it was and that the same is provided for the other person. If you experienced something on your own it sometimes can feel like it wasn’t real and you get no confirmation from another person that it did in fact happen to you and you are living in reality. I think that these same ideas apply to online worlds as well as the real world.


I believe that online worlds and their activities are just an extension of a chat room or an msn conversation and are taking online experiences to the next level. Online communications whether it be email or instant message creates a shared experience between users and a lot is sometimes riding on it, an email for example could be a job offer. So I do not think that an online world for example second life should be looked at as any less real than the real world, sure enough its virtual but so are many other things we find ourselves engaging with everyday. If big businesses are investing in online worlds and making real money from them then something real is definitely happening. I agree that shared experience creates grounding belief because more than one person is invested in it and there is proof of that.


An example of both big business investing and lots of people investing in the online world is the virtual world of second life. In this virtual world people are exchanging virtual money for account US dollars and big banks and corporations such as Harvard University are building and maintaining a second virtual life in second life, So this tells me that if these types of organisations are creating these types of experiences for themselves that there is defiantly a reality about the virtual world. To share an experience with someone whatever it is and to what extent immediately makes that experience real whether it be in the virtual world or not.