Public Relations and Second Life
Amanda Chapel (a.k.a. Strumpette) has published a guest column by Urizenus Sklar, founder and contributing editor of The Second Life Herald. The essay is an acerbic rant — do NOT continue if you are easily offended.
[tease]
There goes the Neighborhood; Revenge of the Fucktards
by Urizenus Sklar.
In February of 2006, I took a sabbatical from Second Life to pursue other projects. When I returned eight months later I was flabbergasted by what I saw.
Second Life, now with 1 million subscribers, was being invaded by an army of old world meat-space corporations, ranging from Reebok and American Apparel to GM and Nissan. The traditional news media was hyperventilating in its awe of the old meat-space corporations and the “innovative” things they were doing in second life, and could not stop writing about it.
But what were these corporations in fact contributing? Rather than use Second Life to create new and exotic things, the corporations brought their old tired ideas with them.
Fantastic flying vehicles gave way to scale models of Scions and Sentras. Psychedelic builds and castles and mushroom hotels gave way to scale models of the next Starwood Hotel. Flaming jet boots gave way to scale models of Adidas. Golden battle suits gave way to American Apparel yuppieware. Giant snail races gave way to pathetic in world broadcasts of the MLB’s home run derby in a traditional looking stadium.
And then came the public relations and media marketing firms, trying to show what groovy hepcats they were. They came late to a world they didn’t understand and hyped what they thought they saw without research, reflection, or understanding. [snip]
Editorial note from Amanda Chapel:
Urizenus Sklar, a.k.a. Peter Ludlow, Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, is author and editor of numerous books, including Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias (MIT Press, 2001). In June, 2006, Ludlow was called “One of the 10 Most Influential Video Game Players of All Time” by MTV.com.
October 29th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
I suppose in June 2006 he was one of the most influential video game players, but the times, they are a’ changing. Nothing has changed, and it’s really not in the SecondLife Herald’s interest to scorn the newcomers.
Make fun of them - yes. Scorn? No. There’s plenty to make fun of by the new entries, but the other issue that the SecondLifeHerald has is that at least some of the contributing writers and editors have stakes in SecondLife and apparently let their emotions guide their keyboards.
Acerbic? If ‘fucktard’ is acerbic, I wonder what profane would be? :-)