Copyright Librarian. Dowce - click...drag...share. IDEALS @ Illinois: IDEALS Home. Academic Evolution. I've been reading Tom Boellstorff's Coming of Age in Second Life, an anthropologist's look at the most popular of the virtual worlds.
I now know what AFK means ("away from keyboard") and a lot of other things, too, about this complex online environment and its cultures and mores. Those already part of or familiar with <a href=" Life</a> may not realize how foreign this entire world is to First World folks. I fear too many may lump it in with massive multiplayer online video games like World of Warcraft. Second Life shares some cultural affinities with such games, but it is not a game. It is a world. University of Virginia Library - Scholars' Lab.