Dear Second Lifers: Leave Me Alone

I know this is a free country and everyone is entitled to its own delusions, but all I can say to "second lifers" is please, get a (REAL) life!
Laura Bustillo
San Juan, PR

Thank you for your column, it was a great way to start my work day here at Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness, where we too believe that computers have a place, but real is real and virtual isn't.

Robert Kesten
www.screentime.org

Well-stated, the computer should not be replacing real world socializing and partying. It has its uses but there are some places it does not belong and it doesn't do anyone any favors. It is so one dimensional. It further contributes to the decline of civilization or at least I think so.

well said. I think 3D websites (environments) are the way of the future... but avatars are the way of lonely-people. Second life should enjoy the population while they have it and squeeze all the advertising contracts they can out of it before competitors come out with better uses/usability for a 3D environment site.

Marketers get criticized when they do the same ol' boring things, and here marketers get criticized for doing something progressive and different... It's easy to write snide comments about this "e-party," but this seems like an on-message stunt (for the product) and likely appealed to the right audience. Maybe the writer was just peeved because there wasn't any real swag for him?

If real people are wacky because they've created alter egos or other fictional representations of themselves, then corporations must be just as nuts... How about the Maytag Repairman, the "Wazzup" guys from Budweiser, or the guy who wakes up in the wee hours mumbling "it's "time to make the donuts."

Real people, fake people, virtual people... They're all marketing targets in an ever fragmenting, affinity-driven Internet landscape. You know... niches.

Reach 'em wherever and however you can... their money's all real.

David Langan, GrandCentralGames.com

If I want to feel awkward and mis-placed, I will just go to a "real" social gathering and save myself from that feeling while sitting behind my computer. I am all for new technologies, but does the enlarging of Americas waistlines really need another option to stay at home and be behind a computer...in this instance I say "no". Go out and meet real people and have real conversations, you never know, you could meet someone that shares your infinity for Second Life!

I thought I made it very clear that I only respond to real swag (and booze). But that's not what 'peeves' me. What peeves me is press release after press release after press release pitching me on how awesome this next big thing is in Second Life.

Someone writing in Ad Age last year said it will be news when a company/product/expert sends us a press release saying that they DIDN'T open a storefront in Second Life.

I understand there's some real money to be made in Second Life ... if you're a small player ... and there's something to be said for niche-targeting avid Second Lifers (though the few I know don't leave the house all that often to go spend real money on real-world things). Further, we've devoted real, in-print coverage of such developments.

But, from a PR perspective, if you--as a Second Lifer--are trying to convince me--as a cranky old-world journalist--to cover these 'events,' you have to at least acknowledge that many of us find Second Life a goofy waste of our time.

When I go to an event, I don't want to have to spend 15 minutes just trying to learn how to sit down.

Sorry for posting again, but I wanted to clarify something... My earlier point was simply aboput markets, not about the sanity of any particular one. Every niche is the next big thing, til it's not. Second lifer entiusiasts are evangelizing, just as cell phone marketers and crowd-gaming proponents do fotr their own particular obsessions.

And I wouldn't want to cover a virtual pr stunt either. Neither would I want to be cooped up in a real life convention hotel with a bunch of trekkies, or dog people, or American Girl nuts. Even healthy obsession, on the Internet or anywhere, is a hair's breath from full-on looney. But Adam Smith's invisible hand doesn't discriminate, and markets are always made on supply and demand-- and on even crazier things than virtual people: Beanie babies, Pez dispensers-- an obsession that launched ebay... OK, maybe not so crazy.

Second life may be full of nascent psycopaths... I don't know. But whoever is making a buck in there can't escape your warning, which applies to all economies, nuts or not: know when to to get out. Crazy people can lose their money too.

Perhaps you should be writing about something you are passionate about instead of something you are not? You have missed the point of Second Life. It represents the future of the web. In 5 years, Gartner predicts 80% of people will have a Second Life of some sort. Second Life attracts very creative people who have built everything that exists in this virtual world. There are endless benefits of virtual world from distance learning to mobility for those who are disabled. Obviously Second Life is hot or you wouldn't be writing about it at all. It is easier to take pot shots at it than to get involved in it and discover what over 9 million other people have.

Joni West
President, This Second Marketing LLC
joni@joniwest.com
415-776-4755

Oh great, another Gartner prediction that no one will ever remember to track and ultimately guffaw over. You realize of course by the time you get to that 80th % person, you are counting my 57-year-old Aunt Mary in Oshkosh?

Yup, she'll be there, right along with the 24-year-old chuckleheads, with her Martha Stewart avatar.
Kevin Horne - NYC

80% you say? Right. Just like we were supposed to be at 25% DVR penetration by 2007 (17% is the reality). Just like in-game video advertising was supposed to his $527 million in 2005 (it hit $178 million). I predict the Saints will win the Super Bowl and LSU will win the NCAA championship.

And don't even get me started on how vague that "Second Life of some sort" phrase is. Do I count because I have a MySpace profile? Does someone who plays "Halo 3" 16 hours a day count? I have a cousin who had a "second life of some sort." And she didn't even have a computer! They had to put her in an institution.

Some places it is much darker, predators hunting the weak. The Gorean Master and the slaves that he takes control of. This one is unusual, in that the Master has total control over the slave. The "slave" giving not only total control of their Avatar, and who can communicate to them, but also, control as to when they will or will not talk to what they can wear. Believe me this does carry over to real life. Imagine the fun of kneeling next to your Avatar Master and saying nothing. Second life being nothing more then a place to be told what to do, serving fake food and ale. You want to call it guided, or taught? Hey, what ever floats your boat? I know just a video game, right? This setup just allows the predator to get in that persons head and develop a false sense of security. Tell that to your husband, wife, girlfriend, or boyfriend. Why you are glued to the PC instead of enjoying life, REAL LIFE. But there are plenty of damaged people on SL. And your fantasy could be causing them to loose sense of reality, along with your lost sense of reality. Their marriages, get funky, destroyed, their children get neglected. And you get a ridiculous God complex that makes you anti social in the Real World, which just plummets yourself deeper in to SL. Cha Ching! Sweet business you got Linden People.
You have the 50+ couple that spends every "free" moment in SL being the King and Queen. Oh, and so good to their obedient subjects. At their beckons call, at their total command. Or, the sexual perverts. That can now live out the fantasy of doing it with a farm animal. Or, kneeling down and being the public toilet. Sex is rampant in SL. You really do not know if the man is a woman or the woman is a man, plenty of men that are living out their desire to bea woman. Plenty of women that want to love another woman, so she hides in the body of a man. So, the wall that SL provides, allows for an easier transition to experiment. Sad part is as your getting deeper and deeper; you are getting more lost in fantasy then reality and they start to blend. Actually, you probably were lost between the two to begin with. Now you go out into the real world. Take a break; meet one of your SL friends. Break the rule, cross that line; remember SL and RL are supposed to be two different places. People meet up, some get married, the rare few. But mostly it is a letdown, disappointment, and harm to others. Who wants to tell people that you got into that trouble because you decided to meet your "make believe" friend?
Lips stay sealed, people get hurt. And in the end, the only place they feel right, the only place that people understand is right back on Second Life.