February 2010

This is part 2 of my blog about the Second Life virtual world game. Be sure to catch up before reading ahead!

If you mention Second Life to someone who hasn’t ever checked it out, you’ll usually get one of two reactions:

“What the hell is Second Life?” or
“I heard that all people do there is have cyber sex.”

Despite its appearance in some mainstream TV shows, movies and literature, Second Life has been very poorly marketed here in the States – so much so that it has a very hush-hush underground vibe to it, which only serves to increase the perception of sketchiness. In fact, if you look for information about it on websites that are not dedicated to and/or affiliated with Second Life, you’ll mostly find bewildered or bemused accounts by people who logged in briefly, only to quickly stumble upon the seedy underbelly of the metaverse.

There’s a great line from an episode of The Office where Dwight says that he signed up for Second Life because “my life was so great, I literally wanted a second one.” Unfortunately that sentiment is very rarely the case, as most of the residents created accounts because they were bored and curious, or the far more likely scenario: they just really wanted to escape their first life, even if it had to be virtually. And in many cases, that escape led to indulging in the one thing that has come to define Second Life, sustain its economy, and – in my opinion – ruin what could have been a really awesome virtual world.

And that’s sex. Lots and lots of sex.

“Do you come … here often?”

Sex in Second Life is like chat room cybering on steroids. It can be as vanilla or depraved as one desires, and just about anything your naughty little heart possibly could desire can be found in-world. Nowadays, that is. Believe it or not, there was once a time where having sex in Second Life was actually a pretty innocent and hilarious endeavor. You and your companion would animate your respective avatars on little pose balls, which would in turn simulate a sex act – usually in a somewhat jerky, awkward and altogether un-sexy way. I’m not ashamed to admit that I tried it out a few times way back in the day, sans the cybering, since the whole thing always made me collapse into laughter. “Haha! Every time you grind against me, my hand totally stabs through your chest. And look, my eyeballs are rolled back into my head like I’m having a seizure!” But hey, it seemed like harmless fun. Until things got seriously fucked up.

In 2007, a German television network accosted Linden Lab with images of an adult and child avatar having sex, and a huge age-play scandal erupted. Meanwhile, the software kept improving and content creators kept innovating, and before long those dorky, awkward sex posers had been replaced with complex items of all varieties that were equipped with sophisticated animations, some of which were generated by actual motion-capture. Attachable jiggly-bits became all the rage, with every size and shape of genitalia available for purchase. Strip bars and fetish clubs spread across the grid like a fever, in every flavor from your basic “topless-only” action to bestiality, necrophilia, rape play, and god knows what else. Prostitution became a huge money-maker, particularly for women who were willing to use the newly-implemented voice chat system to provide their johns with as much reality as possible. But it wasn’t until 2 years later that Linden Lab finally realized that they needed to regulate the never-ending sexcapades that were devouring their once wholesome grid. Enter Zindra.

What is Zindra, you ask? And most importantly, how do you get to Zindra? The oddly named, adult-only grid is accessible by anyone with a Second Life account – provided that they’ve been age-verified. This means that you need to provide either a credit card, driver’s license, or other acceptable form of ID in order to gain access. As you might expect, this was a hugely unpopular maneuver. Some argued that it was an invasion of privacy; others claimed that it would be ruinous to their well-established, adult-themed businesses. I say, screw ‘em! (Heh – bad choice of words.) And besides, from what I’ve heard, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Child avatars are still permitted on the adult grid, via some very vague wording in the TOS, and the whole age veritication system has been plagued from the beginning with false-positives and circumvention measures. Apparently, some people will go to any lengths to enjoy anonymous avatar sex – and the more depraved, the better.

So what’s the point in all this? If Second Life disappoints me so, why bother keeping my account around? I don’t know – I guess I’m nostalgic about what it was, and what it had the potential to be. I keep remembering those early clusters of geeky folks chatting excitedly about the possibilities of this new, blank canvas of a metaverse. Watching the pioneer creators begin to tentatively design the beautiful framework for what later became twisted and ugly. And the saddest part is that sex is what makes the (virtual) world go ’round. Without all the money being spent and earned on the many and varied aspects of the sex trade in Second Life, the in-world economy would be severely cripped, and the program would likely cease to exist.

Eh – it’s probably time to give up the ghost anyway. I was never able to truly embrace the idea of a “second life”; outside of the SL-assigned moniker, I was always myself behind the avie-mask. Dorky, cheeky, free-spirited Scarlett – and in the end, one life is more than enough for any person to “bare”. :)

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