Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Keeping Up With The Virtual Joneses: The Practices, Meanings, And Consequences Of Consumption In Second Life, Jennifer M. Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Every day, thousands of people log into the virtual world of Second Life and collectively pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase virtual goods. With an in-world economic system that is linked to offline economies and a wealth of user-generated content, the virtual world has a wide variety of goods available for consumption. These commodities, which include everything from clothes and cars to fantastical pets and flying airships, are computer code visually rendered on a screen, and cannot exist apart from the servers on which they are housed. Although they are virtual, goods in Second Life are widely bought, …