So much for your new life.

Second Life, the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online, has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users.

Linden Lab, the San Francisco-based company behind the Second Life site, said in a letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised.

This story would be a little more tragic if it weren’t for the buckets of irony pouring out the sides. Think of the John Carpenter flick “They Live!”. In a flash, that hip young coffee house waitress from Boston that you’ve been “seeing a lot of” in your new little fantasy world turns out to be a 42 year old maintenance man from Newark. How’s that conversation going to go?

“So… listen. We can still be friends, right? We kind of had a special thing going there, didn’t we?”

Coulda been worse, I suppose. The information could have included photos. That’s why I always pad my information in a plausible way. “Sure I have a regular job. I’m just an average joe. Most of my international crime syndicate investigations happen at night and on weekends. Makes it easier to go unseen in the larger crowds… since, as you can see from my photo, I look too much like Matthew McConnahe to typically go unnoticed.”