Virtual misbehaviour

November 22, 2008 by Leave a comment

Three stories have caught my attention this week; two tragic, one less so, but still a bit sad.

First, the story of Dave Barmy and Laura Skye, two av’s who met and married in Second Life, before their real-life counterparts did the same. Now they’re getting divorced (in RL), after Laura caught Dave cheating on her in SL. I saw a TV documentary about SL around a year ago which featured the couple, and I remember thinking back then that the marriage looked a bit precarious, based as it was on projections of their idealised partners. Dave apparently can’t see what he did wrong, since there was no real-life infidelity. That would fit with research that shows that women tend to take a dimmer view of such activity than their male partners.

Much darker is the story behind the trial of Lori Drew on charges of conspiracy and computer fraud, which opened on Thursday. These bland charges conceal what Drew is really alleged to have done; driven Megen Meier, a 13 year-old classmate of Drew’s daughter, to suicide, by bullying her via a fake MySpace account. Strip away the new technology and it’s a sadly familiar story; a vulnerable adolescent is overwhelmed by sudden exposure to the reality of just how unpleasantly people can behave towards one another in the adult world, but, if the allegations are upheld, the case will illustrate how computer-mediated communication, stripped as it is of humanising context, can be extraordinarily powerful. The medium disconnects a cyber-bully almost completely from any possibility of empathy with the victim, thus increasing the risk of abusive behaviour. In turn the victim can experience the bully’s aggression in almost pure form, amplifying the damage caused.

To round off a depressing post I’ll note that a Florida teenager has killed himself live on the internet. Reports say that up to 1000 viewers of the website Justin.tv watched as Abraham Biggs lay dying. I have no idea why Abraham felt he had to do what he did, but it may be significant that his death has become noteworthy in a way that, in his mind (we can speculate), his life never could. It raises the question of whether the ease with which private pain can be made public via online outlets like Justin.tv, or YouTube, or indeed WordPress, is a good or a bad thing. I’m sure that for some people it can be a relief to think that someone out there may be able to understand what they are going through, but for others the opportunity to seek validation for what feels like a meaningless existence might push them into extreme behaviour. As for the people who just watched him die without doing anything to help, again the distancing effect of the medium must have transformed what should have struck them as a human tragedy into something that was just another sensation to be consumed.

Filed under Psychology, Second Life Tagged with , , ,

In the neighbourhood

November 20, 2008 by Leave a comment

In another sign, if one were needed, that I am some way away from being sufficiently immersed in Second Life to make this project a success, I completely missed my av’s first birthday at the end of last month. I only noticed when I saw the $72 charge on my credit card statement. I think that’s about the same as I paid last year, though the sterling price has gone up by around 50%, on account of the deteriorating exchange rate. Even so, $6 a month is pretty cheap, and I get $1.20 of it back as my monthly L$ stipend. Not that I ever spend any of it; my current balance is about L$12000

I’ve managed to spend a few hours on the grid this week, and I’ve concentrated on exploring the locality. I hadn’t previously paid any attention to where my land actually was on the SL map, but a little research has shown that it’s on the north-facing slopes of the mountain at the centre of Heterocera Atoll, the second-oldest of the SL mainland continents. The landmass is misnamed, since it’s obvious from the topography that Heterocera is not a coral island, but rather a volcanic formation. The central peak rises to a considerable height, and the rocks that are visible above the tree line appear igneous in nature.  The mountain is topped by a large bowl-shaped  feature, the Zygaena Crater, partially filled by a deep, still lake.

An old stone-paved road runs on the edge of this central lake, and I took a walk around it, stopping now and again to look in at some of the buildings that line the waterfront. The whole place was completely deserted, and the empty stores and houses had an eerie, post-apocalyptic air. In a huge railway terminus rows of clocks counted down the minutes to the arrival of trains that never appeared. A roaring fire burned in the grate of a log cabin that had no other sign of habitation. Neon signs called out to non-existent window-shoppers.

Night fell eventually, and as I stood on the shore looking up at the stars I began to see how people could feel that Second Life might have some sort of reality beyond the monitor screen. I should have more time to spend online over the next month or so, so I’ll try to do my best to get properly obsessed.

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I’m waiting for my lich

November 19, 2008 by Leave a comment

It’s only been out for a few days, but the latest instalment of World of Warcraft is already proving its addictive potential – some kid in Sweden reportedly had a seizure after 24 hours of uninterrupted play.

I can just about imagine spending a whole day wandering around the pretty, but largely uninhabited, Second Life landscape, but I doubt I’d come across anything that was convulsion-inducingly exciting.

Even so, it seems that my gloomy prognosis for the future of the metaverse was unjustified – virtual worlds like WoW and SL are still making profits, for their owners if not their residents.

Filed under Economics, Psychology, Second Life Tagged with , , ,

Fame at last

October 10, 2008 by Leave a comment

Second Life Shrink was featured in the Guardian’s “Letters and blogs” column this week, quoting the comment I made about Vic Keegan’s article on how the financial crisis will affect virtual worlds.

This hasn’t boosted my traffic much – two hits have come via this link so far, according to my stats page – but it’s always nice to know that someone, even an anonymous sub-editor, thinks my writing is worth a mention.

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Looks familiar

October 3, 2008 by Leave a comment

Whiling away the time until the Palin-Biden debate starts streaming over the web, I came across the news that the Republican VP candidate has at least two doppelgängers on the grid. Or so the creators of these avatars would have us believe, since, to my eyes at least, neither of them resemble her more than they look like any other woman with dark hair and glasses.

A slightly more convincing Barack Obama is out there too, though the way he moves is more “heavily medicated” than “presidential”.

Here’s a better Obama, with McCain thrown in too, along with their grandmother and mother respectively.

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L$700 Billion Question

October 2, 2008 by 2 Comments

What effect will the financial crisis have on virtual worlds like Second Life? Given that the economic underpinnings of the Linden dollar are flimsy enough to make CDOs look like Krugerrands in comparison, I fear that the grid may not survive the looming depression.

Others are more optimistic, seeing spaces like SL as a escape from the harshness of the real world, where we will all be able to forget our worries in the perfect sunny landscapes of the grid, in the same way that our great-grandparents sought refuge from the bleakness of life in the 30’s by flocking to the cinema to lose themselves in dreams of Hollywood.

Time will tell I guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one morning to find that Second Life has disappeared. I wonder if the bailout bill covers L$ deposits?

Filed under Culture, Economics, Second Life Tagged with , , ,

Virtual stability

September 26, 2008 by Leave a comment

I was perhaps a bit harsh in my condemnation of the Second Life banking system; it turns out that, compared with our real-life institutions, the virtual Wall Street was a model of financial rectitutde.

This is an old story, I know. Even George W Bush seems to have got his head around the details. I just wanted to put on record my admiration for all the erudite commentators who have filled the financial pages of the newspapers with explanations of the crisis, for the benefit of us poor rubes who would otherwise be completely unable to understand why borrowing money on the short term market, then lending it to people with poor credit histories so that they could buy houses at inflated prices, was a questionable business model. I am sure that there is some really good reason why they didn’t share this wisdom with us twelve months ago.

(In case that last link goes dead for some reason, I’ll note that it led to the “Awards and Recognition” page on the Lehman Brothers corporate website, wherein they boasted that “Fortune magazine named Lehman Brothers the #1 “Most Admired Securities Firm” in its [2007] rankings of  ‘America’s Most Admired Companies.'”)

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Back on track

August 31, 2008 by Leave a comment

I should have a bit more free time this month, and, since the summer is over, it won’t seem such a waste to be sitting indoors in front of a computer screen, living in a virtual world, rather than outside enjoying the corporeal pleasures of the real one.

I’ve got a specific Second Life project in mind, which, if I actually get round to it, should give me something to write about.

I know I’ve said this before, but I really am going to try to get this blog into gear sometime soon.

Filed under Blogging, Second Life Tagged with ,

Golden Years

August 22, 2008 by 1 Comment

So, despite my scepticism, it turns out that it is possible to make a living by working in a virtual world.

The BBC report sums it up:

  • Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as gold-farming, is growing rapidly … In many online games virtual cash remains rare and many people turn to suppliers such as gold farmers to get money to outfit avatars with better gear, weapons or a mount.

The full paper is available here.

The opportunity seems to be limited to MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft though – I can’t see how the model would translate to Second Life, since Linden dollars can be purchased directly, without the need to employ anyone to spend time “farming” them.

The returns are hardly stellar by western standards – £77 a month on average. Unsurprisingly, 80% of the trade is based in China, where that represents a decent income. Still, if things keep going the way they are, gold farming might start looking like an attractive prospect here too.

Filed under Economics, Second Life Tagged with ,

Alone Again Or

August 2, 2008 by Leave a comment

I just visited Second Life for the first time in about a month, to find that my annoying neighbour has cleared off of his property, taking his inconsiderate landscaping with him, and restoring my view to one of virgin mountainside:

You can see that I changed the colour of my house from garish blue to a more subdued green, so it wasn’t that that made him move. Maybe he had one of those sub-prime mortgages.

I shouldn’t gloat though – the land is up for sale again, and the people who move in next might be even worse.

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