Quote - She was whining that buying Poser was a waste of money, because it was too hard for her. Apparently, she expected to earn back the purchase price by selling Poser content for SL.

somehow i doubt someone like that even purchased poser.

as a former MMORPG addict [started way back with the first MMO - UO - and then star wars galaxies (SWG), and more recently world of warcraft (WoW)], i am especially wary of MMORPGs. i refuse to play them anymore, but for some reason i actually find 'second life' especially insulting.

its not a 'second life' - but rather 'a complete waste of time while your precious and pitifully short real life ticks away'. while i can even somewhat understand budgeting a few hours for a fantasy based MMO like WoW or SWG to 'escape from reality', i find playing a cheap copy of real life while your precious actual life ticks away is absurd.
if you spend the time you spend in-game improving your virtual avatar on improving yourself, instead, you will be far better off. if you spend the time you spend hoarding completely useless wealth and property in the game on real world items instead you and your family will be much better off. same goes for learning worthless 'skills' in these games -- why not learn a skill in the real world that will actually improve your life? some skills in some MMORPGs take weeks or even months to master - even if you spend many hours a day grinding away at them. if you spend this same time learning a new skill you will improve yourself (and could be better off financially rather than have a few hundred worthless 'credits' or 'gold').

i still play video games (like BF2, etc). but the problem with MMORPGs is that they are designed from the ground up to hook you and get as many subscription months/hours from you as they possibly can. every design element in the game focuses on this. skill advancement, the persistent world, decay, ranks/status and - in cases like SWG - randomly daily spawning resources and creatures, the jedi skill tree, etc - make it so its hard to take lengthy breaks from the game or you will be at a heavy disadvantage.

if you are one of the rare breed of people that can truly budget, say, 1 hour of time a night to a game and at the end of that hour you walk away, then by all means do anything. but if you are wasting your life - especially your youthful years - staying up every night advancing your characters and hoarding wealth in an MMORPG then you will end up regretting it and there will be no way you can get that time back.
if id have spent the time i spent in SWG just casually working instead, id have a house half paid for by now. 'second life'? just the title alone is insulting to me. you only have one life: all second life does is waste it.