Millions of people worldwide visit the Second Life site; 2.5 million are registered users. Through the online game they explore their fantasies by creating their own “avatar”—a user’s idealized persona that embodies the physique and personality of his or her dreams. Want to be better looking, have more money, live in a mansion, travel to exotic places, have the wedding and honeymoon you felt you never had? Second Life makes all that possible in the virtual world. It costs real money in the real world to play this game, but there may be another expense: the cost to players’ real lives. Some players would rather spend more time online in this virtual world than living their real lives.

In Strangers in Paradise, the fifth estate’s Hana Gartner introduces viewers to some of Second Life’s users, including Janet, a Calgary suburban divorced mother of two whose online persona, named Ten, meets and falls in love with another avatar, named Dutch. Janet believes she has found her soulmate in Dutch’s real life creator and decides to seek him out.

You’ll meet Carolyn, a Pennsylvania housewife and mother of four, whose Second Life existence in her fantasy on-line world is so much richer than the one she shares with her real life husband, Lee. She believes she’s found her soul mate in the man who created her on-line lover. That man, Elliott, lives in London, England, but Carolyn is so determined to meet him that she packs her suitcase, leaves Lee and the kids at home to find out if Elliott is the man of her cyber dreams.

Strangers in Paradise reveals how deeply someone can be seduced by a game, the pull of a fantasy life, and the catastrophic consequences for real life families.