Best quote of the week: my friend GS on finding out about Big Brother on Second Life:
“How futile.”
I don’t want to dampen anyone’s fires, I know many people get a great deal of enjoyment from Second Life, World of Warfare &c.
But the pointlessness of sitting at your computer, watching 10 avatars, confined to an imaginary house, in a virtual world…
Am I missing something? Is there some level of entertainment (ironic or otherwise) that can be achieved through such depths of futility…?
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5 comments:
I dont get it either.
I'm gonna ask the only two people I know who are into it to try and explain why its anything other than glorified dungeons and dragons...
Real life is better. Second Life can be fun.
SecondLife is a bit like life… and like life there are so many dicks there it's not true. But there are also some great people too. As in life, the only thing that matters is relationships and Second Life offers people an opportunity to build relationships that you would not normally build in real life. In short, I've met people I would not normally meet. After a while, you just become the person you are in real life (maybe an exaggerated version of yourself) and you do meet real people. You swap stories and make friendships. Warning: You do meet a lot of pricks too. I met one guy dressed as a US marine, carrying an M16. He was a very proud American. I asked him what he was doing. He said, he was there to defend Second Life from terrorists. I asked him, would he be illegally invading another virtual world in the pursuit of home defence? He wasn't amused. But everyone standing near us was. We had a good laugh.
It's a huge virtual world. The Big Brother thing is just plain shit. However, I've been to live gigs in Second Life where I've heard new bands playing their material live (in a venue) to an audience. The band were at their real home and their avatars (their virtual selves) were in Second Life playing. In this way, Second Life could replace MySpace as a vehicle for new bands to find an audience. Whilst at the gig I got chatting to a group of people standing next to me and they turned out to be another band from New York looking to use Second Life.
I've sat round a campfire talking to: A video artist from Germany, a philosophy lecturer from Holland, a music vendor from Brighton and a teacher from Australia. When would that ever happen? We talked about the ideas of recreating reality and why people had such little imagination – even in a world with limitless imagination.
When the advertising agency BBH launched the first Ad Agency presence in Second Life, the anti corporate Second Life revolutionaries flew down in huge numbers to the launch party, drank out of penis shaped glasses and started having sex in front of the Ad Agency execs. How hilarious. I think something similar might happen to the Big Brother island.
Having said that, Adidas launched a shop there and offered cool trainers for just 50 Linden Dollars (about 20p) and they hit it off because they were offering Second Life citizens something interesting.
I love and hate Second Life. It's not as great as real life. Fact. However, it can be enormous fun and I use it as a social networking tool. I meet so many people from all over the world. I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had about politics there… endless debates about Bush and Blair and it is truly heartening to meet so many Americans who hate what their country has done to the world.
But let me stress again… it is not as good as real life and after a while you do get bored because relationships can never go past the penpal stage – not for me anyway. And the idea is that relationships in SL stay at the penpal stage.
My prediction is that Second Life will become as big as Google has become. It will get easier to use and more spectacular to engage. Companies will use it to market their products and services and consumers will use to find products and services. Second Life is at the stage where the internet was in 1995.
Also, there will be more virtual worlds springing up – niche worlds for niche groups and activities.
fascinating - you make me wanna give it another go...
Ditto, Marcus, you've sold me!
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