Second Life Is Stupid
April 14, 2008OK, so I know this isn’t very new, but I had to post it up here. I feel like everything I could say about Second Life is pretty well encapsulated in this video. What I still don’t understand, though, is why so many academics get so excited about it, when it’s pretty much just them and various types of lonely sexual deviants on there. It’s like they’re trying to turn this thing that has just about been proven to not be culturally viable (the average user only ever logged in for 12 minutes and never logged back in) into something to study when there are plenty of other useful things to study. And now the government is involved, so it’s just going to become an even bigger clusterfuck.
To call something that has been around for four years not culturally viable is a bit odd. The figure you quote for the average user is already well known to be false. There is an average of 45k people concurrently logged into SL at any given time from all over the world. It has continued to grow and constantly offers innovative methods of communication, entertainment and deviance to its users.
However, unless you have spent a considerable amount of time exploring the grid (I mean more than the 30min the standard ADD suffering adult seems to be capable of these days) then no you won’t see any use to SL. That’s fine by me. That just means one less person taking up my bandwidth when I am trying to enjoy a live performance by a musician in Ireland or Japan. It means on less person in the way when I am trying to revel in a lecture being given by a prof in New Delhi.
Bag on SL all you like, the simple truth is that virtual worlds are not only culturally viable but inevitable. If they were not then why does the interactive (read as video game) industry constantly strive to create more immersive titles with greater replay value.
There are more facets to SL than education and sexual deviance, granted those two things rank pretty high with many of us. Don’t discount the corporate presence in SL. While it is true that some larger companies jumped into the water then promptly jumped back out, people have got to understand that most of those companies where there for a specific purpose. That being accomplished, they left. There is still a huge corporate presence in SL and marketing potential is great.
And if people still feel the need to rag on it, then I recommend that those people go read a copy of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.
Oh yeah… Steppenwolf… Hesse’s muddled attempt at an “existential” novel. I’ve always wondered what Hesse’s writing process was like while putting this book together… Opium, write, absinthe, revise – that would be my guess. You could probably make a lot of money off of that story by putting it in a modern setting and casting some dude with floppy black hair as the main character. He’d spend most of the movie creaming in his tight girl jeans over the new “Fallout Boy” album, whining about how his parentals make him want to kill himself, and playing World of Warcraft.
All jokes aside, based on my understanding of the story, you’re comparing Second Life to the “magic show,” implying that it is somehow transcendent and teaches you about yourself by putting you in fantastic situations. Would you go as far as to say that your experience in SL has prevented you from killing yourself?
Also, by saying that Second Life is not culturally viable, I’m not saying that virtual worlds are not culturally viable. I actually think that the IDEA of an open-source virtual world is really cool. I’m all about open-source, and I’m really tired of the plutocratic system that currently governs almost all of net culture and is slowly driving us back into the feudal era. Maybe SL will grow and evolve into something better in the future, and I will be proven wrong – I can fully accept that.
This is what I’ve experienced so far in Second Life: avatars dressed as pandas (with human penises) having a bukkake session; poorly designed 3D graphics that people attempt to pass off as “art”; “lectures” that you can also (in most cases) view as video podcasts; rude, elitist people who are only rude and elitist because they can’t be that way in the real world; and did I mention the bukkake? I think the fact that Linden actually includes a “furry” as a default character model is indicative of the types of people that make up their world.
Anyway, enjoy your bandwidth. I went to four real-life concerts this week and voluntarily attended several interesting lectures by visiting scholars here at the University. I’m not a “steppenwolf.” The real world doesn’t make me feel suicidal. Maybe that’s why I think Second Life is stupid.
Wow Mace. I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m super excited about the marketing potential for Second Life. Numino – stay outta my way and keep that bandwidth open for people who can appreciate my art and my products on SL.
It’s the real world hygiene and health laws that have been keeping me and my line of fecal artistry and products down. I think what people forget about SL is that it has all of the aesthetic charm of real worlds (hey if not more – I mean when can I have a random, yet meaningful hookup, with a minotaur in a business suit here in the US of A?!), but without being able to challenge the aesthetic qualities of my “poopart” (I will admit the playful reference to Warhol there – tee hee!) with the sense of smell that can be detracting to those new to its poopfulness.
I’m looking forward to entering the “matrix” of virtual worlds, one fecal-ated pixel at a time. Mace – look me up on SL (my avatar’s name is Fecaluptuous Floater and I look like a really sexy woman crossed with a bidet).