Brock Press

Issue date: 2/24/09 Section: Marginalia

A long, long time ago, in a time when Mountain Dew only came in one flavour and Bawls was just a sparkle in some guy's eye, there were nerds. I'm talking traditional, long before ThinkGeek and J!nx: all-male, coke-bottle-glasses, acne-and-suspenders-type nerds. The nerds that get shoved into lockers, wedgied and were an eyesore to all they met. Then, through the magic of contacts and Proactiv, these nerds evolved into a more socially acceptable breed, some of this new breed even included … women.

Now, we see nerds as highly camouflaged, hiding out in the back of Web forums, disguising themselves as someone who has kissed someone other than their great aunt Marg, when in actuality they are still nerds. Some nerds even have boyfriends or girlfriends … or both (who am I to judge, really?). The point is that nerds have evolved once more to good-looking men and women of all living conditions (parent's basement or their own), and quite possibly with a social life of sorts and even a job or two.

With the onslaught of nerd games available, even someone as cool and good looking as YOU can be one. Now I know what you're thinking, "that would never be me"… Or would it??!!11@1? I know some of you have thought about it. It's ok, I won't tell anybody. Everyone goes through an experimental period in their life. But if you do decide to get your feet wet into the cool, sweet embrace of nerdom, I wanted to make sure you're educated, get the right information and make the decision for YOU not for anyone else, you smooth operator, you. I'll be pitting up two of the most infamous nerd games ever: Second Life by Linden Labs, and World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment.

The first game we will look at is Second Life … Oops, I just called it a game. That's your first mistake, call this a game, and you will be virtually beaten by SL fanatics who will explain to you that Second Life is a whole other life. A … second life, if you will. It's basically a huge world that is created, maintained and policed by other nerds like you. They spend eight hours making a virtual guitar, three hours searching for one outfit and 15 hours trying to get the hell off of the newbie orientation tutorial island. Get this; they have their own fake currency, kind of like Canada, only it's worth more in real life. They're called Linden dollars, and a bunch of them are equal to one real American dollar, which means you can buy Linden dollars with real money to buy fake crap in the world. Confused? Tell me about it. People can collect Linden dollars in Second Life and trade them in for cold, hard, American cash. There are no goals, no score and no winning; in essence it's Pee Wee hockey only for nerds. You can buy houses, own land, and make your avatar just as hot as you would want to look in real life, but don't.

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools