I had the coolest inter­view recently. The gang from Meta­nomics invited me to take part in the Meta­nomics Com­mu­nity Forum yes­ter­day “in world” in Sec­ond Life, where I spent an hour in open con­ver­sa­tion with around 35-plus folks in world: On My Mind with Chris Abra­ham — Com­mu­nity Forum.

I loved it because every­one on Sec­ond Life is bright, pas­sion­ate, curi­ous, open, and smart — fel­low nerds, maybe. What made my day, how­ever, was that I was being inter­viewed as though I were from an alien culture!

The folks from Sec­ond Life were basi­cally ask­ing me, in so many ways, what peo­ple from my world were like. I wasn’t sure if they were wind­ing me up, but some of the folks who were engag­ing with me were so nat­u­ral­ized into their True Home and True Life on Sec­ond Life that they were not too ter­ri­bly inter­ested in explor­ing “my world.”

Who would have expected Vir­tual World jin­go­ism? Snob­bery? It sort of felt like the din­ner par­ties I attended in Berlin: folks were so curi­ous as to my life in den USA. My Ger­man friends were super-curious about Amer­ica but a lit­tle appalled by my pres­i­dent, my cul­ture, my pas­times, my pri­or­i­ties, my edu­ca­tion, my lack of safety net, etc.

They were fas­ci­nated and curi­ous — just like the sexy gang of hyper-sexy hot­ties and fur­ries who pop­u­lated my audi­ence. I was sort of tempted to ask them to take me to their leader. It was intense. Most of them live in mul­ti­ple vir­tual worlds and many of them expa­tri­ated into Sec­ond Life not long after Sec­ond Life launched in 2003 — some of them have been liv­ing in vir­tual worlds for more than a decade.

When you expa­tri­ate to another cul­ture — be it Berlin or Sec­ond Life — you really lose touch with your mother cul­ture. You have fond mem­o­ries of your past and you might feel sen­ti­men­tal some times, but that is the past and you can’t go home again, right?

And from what I under­stand, Sec­ond Life is a first home for many peo­ple. While I was expa­tri­ated in Berlin, I felt the same way: I was able to rein­vent myself, I was able to explore myself out­side of the strait­jacket of my friends and fam­ily “at home” and while I am in Berlin, I can be a lit­tle more charm­ing, a lit­tle more sexy, and a lit­tle more interesting.

In the real world of Arling­ton, VA, and Wash­ing­ton, DC, peo­ple know me so if I show up act­ing like “a douche” or “weird” or even “not my age,” then I might feel very self-conscious.

And, in Berlin, I am cool (at least to me — I am an expa­tri­ate who has a vir­tual com­pany of employ­ees around the world). My con­fi­dence is very high and I am any­thing and every­thing that I say about myself, at least for a while.

It is like the oppor­tu­nity you had on your first day at col­lege or your first day at high school. So, I really under­stand Sec­ond Life — and vir­tual worlds — a lit­tle bet­ter now.

And this is not just Sec­ond Life. Peo­ple are as pas­sion­ate about World of War­craft (WoW) and Everquest and the rest of them.

Peo­ple are this pas­sion­ate about their tex­tual vir­tual com­mu­ni­ties as well. I think back and remem­ber how real my encul­tur­a­tion was in The Meta Net­work (tmn.com) and to a lesser degree Howard Rhein­gold’s Brain­storms (tmn.com was my first online home — my alma mater, if you will — my col­lege home while Brain­storms was like my grad school. You’re always more con­nected to your col­lege, right?)

So, more and more, I get it — lis­ten to and watch the event embed­ded above and I think you’ll start to get it as well. I can’t — and refuse to — speak on their behalf, but they do an amaz­ing job of address­ing what it is like to live a their “cho­sen life” on Sec­ond Life.Chris Abra­ham is co-founder and prin­ci­pal of Abra­ham Har­ri­son LLC, an inter­na­tional con­sult­ing group with spe­cial­ties in online word-of-mouth/conversation mar­ket­ing and online busi­ness & tech­nol­ogy strat­egy advis­ing. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris via email, Twit­ter, or leave a com­ment below.

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