I’m glad that someone with some heritage and history in Second Life has come out and said this: Second Life Herald: Gallery of Lies. And said it very loud. I’d have loved to have written this piece, but as my Second Life consists of about 2 hours of time over 6 months (and I work on the fringes of advertising) I’d have felt like a total charlatan saying it.
One of my favourite bits:
I would say it is a case of a bunch of desperate clueless fucktards trying to show how bleeding-edgy they are, and, given that SL is the bleeding-edgy flavor of the month, they are wraping themselves in the Linden cape of bleeding-edginess.
Read it and see what anger looks like.
Interestingly the crux of the issue is not about advertising or the corporatisation of Second Life as such, but seems to be about big ad agencies claiming the space as theirs, or at least making out that they are the innovators. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like shops and businesses and offices are actually OK, as long as they’re done right. But the message is, loud and clear, don’t claim that you invented this stuff.
I’ve got a thought. Why aren’t advertisers, or people who are trying to ‘import’ brands from their First Life forced to wear some kind of huge advertising helmet? It’d protect them from rocks thrown by irate Second Lifers as well as marking them out as advertisers.
If only my 3d modeling skills were as hot as my illustrating skills ;-)
[EDIT] – I just spotted this follow up post: http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/10/uri_does_strump.html it’s much more reasoned and well argued, and the author has calmed down a lot. He makes some great points about the de-fantasisation of Second Life which I think is key.
Why would you want your Second Life to be just like your first? With the same brands using the same retail techniques, or spend time in the ‘bored rooms’ of big corporations. Why not meet on the deck of a pirate ship? Or in a treehouse full of penguins? Or watching underwater firework displays orchestrated by a gerbil that’s 3 stories high?
Uri concludes his piece:
In the end, I wonder if I should even care. Even as I write, Second Life residents are avoiding the new corporate builds like the plague (and who can blame them given the inferior content; do I want to drive a flying saucer or a Scion? Hmmm, that’s a tough one), and if large corporations want to pay Crayon good money for nothing, that’s fine by me. If the meat-space corporations successfully borg Second Life and suck the life out of it, we will just move on to another place, and the corporations and the PR firms will just have to breathlessly keep running after us, claiming their hollow “firsts,†while their arrogance fuels their ignorance, and they fall further and further behind.
Blimey! I just read the comments about this over on SL Herald.
It got/is getting quite heavy, and I felt a bit woozy/palpitationary at it all, just like when it kicked off over the Agency.com thing.
At least it takes the heat of Edelman and the Wal-Mart kerfuffle.
I particulalrly enjoyed the suggestion: ‘Well, stick this in your pipe you trembling little snarkiness-fearing bitch.”
Not exactly how Alan Bennett might have expressed it, but close enough.
Recently SL veteran (less angry one but that was more than a month ago before the tippinng point) said:
“Will Second Life, that realm of individualism and pure creativity and spontaneity, get plastered over by the same mega-brands and mass culture that have, arguably, made the physical world such a homogenous place? In real life, many avatars argue, big business tends to push out small artisans. If the same happens in Second Life, the metaverse will lose its raison d’être”.
They are damn right and as a non-gamer, SL refusnik I was pissed off as well from that pathetic flocking of brands/marketers into SL, so I’ve started to craft a list of the coming ‘firsts’ on Second Life:
http://nomansblog.typepad.com/no_mans_blog/2006/10/the_first______.html
A.
There are only around 100k active visitors on 2nd life. There are probably about 100k ad people in the world. If we sell the ad-helmets at a dollar a pop we’ll have $100k. Easy money! The best thing about 2nd life is it’s the best way to market other ad people. brilliant!
Hell as no fury like a nerd scorned.
If you have someone shouting at you, do you stop listening? That is what the article really is, and doesn’t allow for conversation. When you call someone stupid, it’s quite different from telling them what they have done is stupid.
Would-be communicators would be advised to know the difference, because they don’t look really smart when they cut off their noses to spite their message.
Fair point.
I wasn’t suggesting that the point has been made in the best way possible to get agencies to listen. It’s a rant plain and simple. But it shows how passionate people feel and how much they care about ‘their’ environment.
Hell as no fury like a nerd scorned.