Like most converts, I babbled excitedly about it to friends, relations and business contacts. Until I noticed I was being treated with sympathy.
The problem seemed to be my "friends", the group of users who agreed to let me add them to my list. "How sad," people would say. "You and your imaginary chums -all pretending to be someone they're not. It won't last."
Well, Second Life now has 8.6 million members - 1.7 million active in the last month. And at the end of a long plural day, I still like to pop in on my SL mates at Cafe Trivia.
There's always a group of intelligent regulars who will greet you by name, make jokes at your expense and chat between quiz questions.
They are funny, engaging and good company. Like friends, really.
Sites like SL elicit something more valuable than mere engagement; immersion.
Users are not so much browsing information from pages as participating in web places. This is active media, where consumers not only contribute UGC, but software and applications.
Some are calling this open technical creativity "Web 3.0". A newcomer last week, Metaverse, launched specifically to enable open source virtual worlds (if you need a book for the beach, the word Metaverse was invented by Neal Stephenson in his novel, Snow Crash, which foresaw virtual worlds back in 1991. It's weird, but it is wonderful - genuine seer sci-fi).
Of course, like previous online phenomena, virtual worlds are generating their own gold-rush. Kids have Neopets, Webkinz, Barbiegirls, Habbo Hotel or Club Penguin (just acquired by Disney for $350m (£173m), with another $350m if they hit their numbers).
Gaia, IMVU and Cyworld are for teens, as is the rather frankly named Faketown.
Then there's Red Light Center for those who like to talk dirty to other people's avatars.
It seems to me that early verdicts that virtual worlds are sad and temporary were plain wrong.
Though not a pastime for all, they are platforms for the exchange of ideas; they qualify as media, and media that are highly valued by significant numbers.
M'lud, the defence rests.
- Richard Eyre is Crimson Goodnight richard.eyre@haymarket.com.