This Week in GEEk

As readers may or may not realize, USA has a virtual campus in the on-line user-created world of “Second Life.” USA’s OnLine Learning Laboratory is offering weekly tours of “JaguarLand” every Thursday evening from 6 p.m until 7 p.m.

Updates and information for those interested can be found at www.saeslgroup.ning.com.

“JaguarLand” boasts a charming miniature downtown area with a canal, a picturesque church on a stony hill, beach houses, and a small hut village.

In a word, it’s nice. It’s a quaint and scholarly place. It’s what you’d expect and desire from a university in terms of cleanliness.

But not all of “Second Life” is so innocent. There is a dark underbelly to this virtual world that the suits in the OnLine Learning Laboratory might not want you to know about.

One of the most infamous groups in “Second Life” is the Luskwood Creatures. They are a group of anthropomorphic fetishists, known in common vernacular as “furries,” who like to dress as woodland creatures and make up all kinds of crazy fantasies about themselves and their friends.

Luskwood was one of the first groups to begin designing and selling anthropomorphic avatars in “Second Life.” They also own about 130,000 square meters of “Second Life” land space, boasting a membership of more than 30,000 people.

Luskwood even recently expanded their business into the real world, manufacturing full adult-sized furry costumes, you know, for those that want to take it to the next level.

Speaking of taking it to the next level, what happens when two cutesy anthropomorphic man-beasts fall in love? They can’t mate in Luskwood’s genitally deficient furry avatars. Luckily there are dozens of tremendous “Adult Content” furry shopping malls.

There you can browse an endless selection of add-on genitals (complete with lovingly crafted shapes, detailed textures, multiple states of arousal, and animated fluid release), sexy big-breasted foxy (literally!) lady avatars, and all the necessary accessories to perfectly recreate your most horrifying and bizarre sexual nightmares.

I can’t begin to fathom how people find this stuff arousing.

“Second Life” isn’t all about furries and sex, though. Well, it is mostly sex.

There are countless locations dedicated to a variety of perverse sexual deviancies, most of them hilarious, some of them frightening.

During one expedition during my research for this article I happened upon what I can only describe as a sort of sexual device museum. It was a long stone hallway with open rooms on either side, each with its own assortment of obscene theme-park rides.

Once you click on them you lose control of your avatar and are forced to watch as they are helplessly and repeatedly violated by gruesome indescribable creations like tentacle monsters, weird demons, and even horny unicorns (get it?).

While most of the sexual content in “Second Life” is laughable, in 2007 there was a series of scandals over “Second Life” creators Linden Labs’ toleration of “ageplay,” or sexual role-play using childlike avatars. In response Linden Labs has made it impossible to search the phrase “ageplay,” so I’m guessing that’s fixed everything.

“Second Life” is truly a breeding ground for depravity.

Jaguarland is, of course, an exception to the rule and it will be interesting to see first-hand whether or not “Second Life” can serve a useful intellectual purpose for well-adjusted adults. All signs seem to indicate that it can, and it has been successfully implemented at other schools around the world so maybe it’s not fair to sit here and focus on the negative side of the game.

But it is hilarious.

If you do take the tour of Jaguarland this week, I recommend exploring a bit of the other side as well.