Several months ago, I bought a PlayStation 3 game console in order to play Final Fantasy XIII. The PS 3 comes with the PS network so you can buy games online and download them to the console. It also comes with a virtual socializing environment called PlayStation Home.

For those of you who have never experienced social virtual worlds like Second Life or even MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft, I will give you a quick rundown of PS Home. Otherwise you can skip to the next paragraph. PS Home is a very watered-down version of Second Life where there are a set of virtual environments that one can visit with a virtual person called an avatar. One can make their avatar male or female, tall or short, fat or skinny, and so on. One can even buy clothes and accessories to dress up their avatar. [Yes, with real money].

I see PS Home another form of a role-playing game and others play up this aspect. Some create both male and female avatars and switch between the two. Everything in PS Home is obviously virtual and is not real.One does not have to look like what their avatar looks like. Nobody has to be truthful about anything. It is interesting because some people choose to make their avatar be different than who they really are to avoid mistreatment and harassment in PS Home; a black person may choose to be white, a female may choose to be a male for these very reasons. It is very rare to see an overweight avatar.

Of course it wouldn’t be a social virtual world if you couldn’t socialize. Although there are some areas that have mini games to play and win virtual items for your avatar like T-shirts most of the areas in PS Home are areas for you to socialize with other gamers. Sadly, even the new Star Wars area has nothing better to offer than another place to socialize at the Cantina bar.

Actually, I wouldn’t mind the socializing part so much if it weren’t for the type of people that usually trolled these areas. Of course I realize that this is a virtual world for gamers and I would image that a great deal of them are immature teenage boys, who have no real social life. Having even said that, it still is shocking to see the very poor behavior on PS Home. It is really like being tossed back into grade school. Game consoles have been around for a long and not only kids are gamers. Many adults and married couples with children are gamers and they are on PS Home too. But it is these immature ones that ruin it for everyone else.

It is very easy to spot these childish ones that go around harassing people. They hardly ever buy any clothes for their avatar and they usually use the default male avatar. They move about like bees around flowers, trying pick-up women and pick fights with men.

I was observing one such fellow in a dance area that was going from group to group harrassing people. When he came back to a group of women for second or third time, one of them switched to a male avatar and the harasser quickly left them alone. LOL

You can imagine the filthy language of some of these immature ones. Sony censors such language by replacing the offensive words with asterisks. Many get around this by using the first letter or a modified form of the word that will still retain its meaning.

I had some guys come up to my avatar and inform me that my avatar was fat or hideous looking. I can’t imagine them acting like this in the real world without the mask anomity. Or maybe they really are this immature.

I am dumbfounded by how immaturely stupid some of these people are. How could anyone in their right mind think that describing how nice certain parts of the woman’s anatomy is a great way to start a conversation with a woman (not to mention it is only pixels that they are ogling). No wonder these guys spend their time on PS Home instead of out in the real world.