second life experience

I explored Second Life a few days ago for the first time. If I could describe it in one word that word would be, strange. I think the main reason I find it strange is because it is literally a "second life." You create this character, walk around this virtual world, make "friends" and basically do whatever you want. When I first got into the Second Life "world" I was a bit confused. It took me a while to get the hang of the program. After I learned to walk around and fly, I started looking around at the different characters. Some looked normal and others looked strange. There was one character that was a huge, yellow box with a smiling face. Another character was a wolf-looking girl. Aside from the way they looked, some of the people on the program were not very nice. There was a group of characters talking in a circle so I decided to go over and check it out. One of the girls was talking about some other girl and explaining how she was going to beat her up and whatnot. The others were laughing and encouraging this girl to beat the other girl up. When I tried to ask them a question they were quick to ignore me altogether. It made me reailze that the Internet allows people to act in ways that they wouldn't normally act in real life. Their mentality is: so what if I'm rude and heartless on the Internet, nobody knows who I really am. The Internet allows people to put a mask on. They can be whoever they desire. It's a very weird concept to think about.