Wired News: Second Life Intrudes on First One covers the apparently growing online of Second Life players, who play an immersive, 3D game that allows them to write many of the rules
Whilst I will leave others to brave the sign-up process and try it out, looking at the forums there is certainly a strange and quite distinct culture emerging among users
Thanks to Ian for the reference
By way of an antidote, just in case you get hooked on Second Life, why not try Nada, a totally stable cross-platform application with a suspiciously-small footprint (via Sigrun).