Can you make a real living in an imaginary world?

How Much for a Jetpack? -- This is an article about an online game called Second Life where players can make virtual stuff and sell it for real money. One women interviewed in the article said she was making a "high five-figure income" making "cyberclothes." I ripped the article out of Newsweek a couple of months ago, but it disappeared into clutter never-never land, and I didn't get around to checking out the Second Life site until just now when I started writing this post. Then I found out that getting past the front door will have to wait until I finally get around to getting broadband.

The front page of the site says that $205,611.48 U.S. dollars were spent there today. Could that really be true? It's intriguing, but also a little creepy in a Twilight-Zone-ish kind of way.