Apologies for the long overdue post, everyone! I’ve quietly been working on a new site (which is where the previously-published Amazon Apps post will be relocated), and it’s been taking a lot more time that I had anticipated. I’m keeping it under wraps for a bit longer, but it will be ready to be revealed soon! And speaking of revealing …
I have a confession to make. For the last 7 years, off and on, I’ve been leading a double life. Not in a spy-like manner akin to my personal favorite double agent, Sydney Bristow, but you could say that I have been secretly moonlighting as someone else. Not quite a doppelganger or an evil twin – instead, she’s my puppet to be toyed with, a flexible marionette whom I can make go anywhere, say anything, and disguise with endless variations. You could even say that I can have sex with her, or rather, have sex using her.
Confused yet? Welcome to the occasionally wondrous, often wild, and permanently weird world of Second Life.
Some call it a virtual chat community; others accurately describe it as an MMOG without quests, goals, or even a true purpose. Perhaps the best way to describe Second Life is as a metaverse, which comes from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. In Neal’s fictional metaverse, humans (as avatars) interact via a three-dimensional, virtual environment that exists as a metaphor of the “real” world. If it sounds fascinating, it really is – but the trouble is that an exceptionally small percentage of Second Life’s “residents” have figured out what the hell to do there. More than 18 million people worldwide have registered accounts, but the average number of people logged in (or “in-world”) at any given time is usually between 30K – 80K, with the estimated number of active members at around 750K. Yep, that means that only 3% of registered members actually spend any time in-world.
Personally, I’ve taken extended absences from Second Life. My first account was registered in 2003, when the program was barely out of infancy. A good friend of mine worked at Cyberlore Studios, the company that developed the first Majesty game, and at the time Linden Lab (developer of Second Life) was contacting game development studios to get employees involved in beta testing. My friend told me about it and invited me to set up an account, and back then “the grid” (resident slang for the virtual world) was a ghost town. You might see a few dozen people logged on and grouped closely together in a handful of “sims” (regions), but no one really knew where to go or what to do. Over time, my friend got into designing custom builds and avatar clothing, eventually eking out a good living that allowed him to quit his real-life job. Myself, I lost interest – especially considering how horribly the viewer ran on my old Dell PC – and I pretty much forgot about it.
Then in 2006, I heard about Second Life again in passing, and decided to sign up a new account with the express purpose of earning some extra money. I spent a few months toiling at designing clothes in Photoshop and hoping to make a few bucks selling them in-world, but by that time there were hundreds – if not thousands – of “fashion designers” in SL, and it just wasn’t worth the trouble trying to compete. Not to mention, making money in Second Life takes work. At the time of this writing, the conversion rate is 265 Lindens (the in-world currency) to 1 USD. So to make $100 real-life dollars, you have to sell 26,500L worth of items – not an easy task for a new brand that no one has ever heard of. Pimping your products in Second Life is highly dependent upon your ability to kiss the ass of the hundreds of SL fashion bloggers out there, and often requires spending a pretty penny on purchasing advertising on various SL-related websites, which I just didn’t have the funds to do.
In 2007, my interest was piqued again, and that third account is the one I still use today. I’m coming up on 3 years since I “rezzed” with my latest avatar, and I can honestly say that I still have absolutely no clue what to do in Second Life. I have a cute avie with a custom shape, more hairstyles and skins than any respectable person would ever need, and thousands of inventory items collected over the years. But for what purpose? When I log in, my typical M.O. is to rezz into my skybox (a small, nondescript home-base that I’m charged $72/year for the privilege of owning), where I spend a few minutes picking out an outfit, hairstyle, etc. Then maybe I’ll teleport to a random sim and wander around for a while, looking for someone witty to chat with, most often to no avail. And I think that’s my primary issue with Second Life. In my perfect “metaverse”, it would be a place to meet cool, like-minded people with whom one could have interesting conversations. But Second Life is plagued by something aptly called the Crowded Empty Paradox – meaning that tens of thousands of people might be logged in, but the majority are either ensconced in their own “homes”, congregating in a handful of popular places, or off having virtual sex on the designated “adult grid”. And let’s be honest – that’s what you’ve been hoping I’d write about this entire time. ;-)
Stay tuned for Part II!
And so it goes.
On January 22nd, we’re poised to lose Conan O’Brien as a fixture of late-night television – at least for a time, if NBC’s proposed contract settlement is carried out. (It’s been said that they’ll ban Conan from hosting a new show for anywhere from 1-1/2 to over 3 years, evil bastards.) It’s a poignant thing, what feels like an end of an era. After all, Late Night With Conan O’Brien debuted when I was just entering the 8th grade, and I remember it being a minor mark of bad-assery if you were able to sneak out and watch it after your parents went to bed. (Hey, this was 1993. No one had the internet and we took our small rebellions where we could get them!)
Myself, I didn’t really discover my interest in the show until the late ’90s, when I was a little more worldly and appreciative of the ribald humor. And even though he’s 17 years my senior, Conan always felt like that massively cool (yet utterly dorky) older brother who was whip-smart, humorously self-deprecating, and would do just about anything for a laugh. And it was that perfect blend of brilliance and dweebery that made him so endearing to so many in my generation. You know, my grandparents always preferred David Letterman. My parents were occasional watchers of Jay Leno. But Conan – he belonged to us. We of the “X and Y” generations – the ones who prefer our humor with an equal dash of snark and smarts, and an extra dose of jackassery. And what can I say? I feel an especial kinship to the man, given that we’re both tall, Irish gingers who are practically translucent. ;-)
Heh … I just re-read what I wrote and it almost sounds like I’m giving a eulogy. But it doesn’t feel so far from the mark. Honestly, I never thought The Tonight Show was right for Conan. It was too steeped in certain expectations and traditions – and above all else, too damn early in the schedule. Talk about crampin’ mah style! After all, Late Night was the reliable show you could turn on after a night of watching bad movies over beers with good friends. It was just late enough to fall asleep to, and just early enough so you could watch the whole thing and still have hope for a reasonable amount of sleep before an early morning class or commute. While Conan certainly had the moxie to reinvigorate The Tonight Show back to its Carson-esque glory, who knows if it would have worked out – even had dumb ol’ Leno actually retired as promised.
Speaking of which, many people are looking to Leno as the bad guy in this equation, and I’m not sure what I feel. It was a shitty stunt to pull – to decide in 2008 that instead of moving on, he’d start hosing his own talk show as a lead-in to the Conan-helmed Tonight Show. But I suppose we can’t fault him completely for the abysmal ratings that his 10pm spin-off received, which effectively led to a domino effect against the rest of the late-night lineup. Still, why is NBC being Leno’s bitch? Why are they so dead-set on keeping him happy? Why not put him on a six month hiatus and see if Conan’s ratings improved without Leno mucking up the lead-in? It seems like so much could have been done without resorting to NBC’s attempts to “demote” Conan to his previous time-slot. I agree with his statement – which I’ve heard had Conan in tears while writing it – in which he asserted that changing The Tonight Show’s format and schedule would effectively destroy the show. It could have been heading for destruction (maybe even cancellation) anyway, but Conan is a resilient fellow who pulled Late Night out of creative and ratings-based slumps before. I’ll bet he could have done it again. But I guess now we’ll never know.
So I’m with Coco – whatever that means, at this point. Boycotting Jay Leno? No problem, I never watch him to begin with. But what’s left to do? Hope that Conan finds a loophole in the settlement that would maybe permit him to produce a web-based show until the dust settles? It could be a brilliant maneuver, and I’m sure that sites like Funny Or Die would love to partner with him to produce something groundbreaking and awesome. I guess we’ll just have to wait to see. But one thing’s for certain … The jolly red giant may be lost, but not gone forever.
Happy (belated) new year, everyone! I can hardly believe that half of January has whisked by already. My days have been filled up with moving preparations and the act thereof, and now I’m happily settled into my new apartment which is literally a stone’s throw from the last. (I stayed in the same complex, just went with a smaller unit to save some much-needed cashola.) With the economy looking to be grim as ever in the first year of the newly minted decade, I’ve been searching my noggin for ideas on how to bring in a little extra for ye olde piggy bank. If you’ve any suggestions, let me know! Just keep ‘em clean – street walking is hardly as glamorous as Julia Roberts and Richard Gere would have us believe. Not that I would know or anything. 
Speaking of looking for lust in all the wrong places, some of you may have heard about the hullabaloo over an online dating website’s recent decision to dump 5000+ members because they “let themselves go” over the holidays. Nothing like some superficial rejection to ring in the new year, amirite? The Beautiful People dating site, which goes out of its way to market itself as an exclusive community with a “strict ban on ugly people”, decided that a number of its members were no longer worthy enough to suck in the rarefied interwebz air of its elite ranks, after said members updated their profiles with post-holiday pictures showing apparent weight gain.
In order to gain access to this mecca of superficial snobbery, you have to upload a photo with your sign-up form, and current members are given 48 hours to rate your image to determine whether or not you are indeed beautiful enough to gain full membership to the site. And the verbiage during the sign-up process even goes so far as to guarantee that your dates will always be beautiful. O RLY? First of all, how does this website check the validity of the photos? It’s ridiculously simple to find pictures of attractive people online – just take a casual stroll through photo albums on Flickr, Facebook, Deviant Art, and similar sites, select one that isn’t too posed and could pass for something candid, and you’re good to go.
Secondly, how can you possibly market an international website that makes claims that its members are all incredibly attractive? By whose measuring stick? The site operates in 10 different languages and has members from all over the world – a world where standards of beauty tend to vary widely. Though unsurprisingly, the highest numbers of member casualties came from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada – suggesting that those three countries likely make up the bulk of membership. In that case, one can get a pretty fair representative idea of what the standards of so-called “beauty” are amongst the majority of members. Rail thin (yet buxom) women of the bland American model/actress variety, and men with perfect six packs and perma-tans, still glassy-eyed from their last frat party. Ugh.
Now there are some who might argue that plenty of “exclusive dating communities” already exist, and indeed, they do. You have sites aimed at those of certain religious faiths, ethnicities, income levels, etc. However, those sites tend to be pretty objective. If you practice the Jewish faith, you qualify for a Jewish dating site. If you’re Latino, you don’t need to be “voted in” by other Latinos. But beauty, to borrow a very cliched phrase, truly IS in the eye of the beholder. And honestly, how desperate for acceptance must you be to let your photo be paraded out in front of a group of Certified Beautiful People to see if you’re worthy of being including in their hallowed halls?
It’s stuff like this that people will point to – those skeptics who insist on thinking of online dating as unsavory and a waste of time. But I’ve been a champion of being open-minded about meeting people online since dinosaurs roamed the earth (i.e., 1999). I suppose I have positive influences though; my mom met my step-dad less than 2 weeks after she got online for the first time in her life. Still, for those of you who may have considered trying online dating in the new year, don’t let the Beautiful People rejects and their holler-than-thou brethren scare you off. There are still several quality, non-judgmental dating sites out there – OKCupid, Match.com, and eHarmony are just a few. I do wish there was something more geared toward folks of the geeky/nerdy variety, and I’ve seen a site or two that purports to cater to that niche, but they were unimpressive at best. Maybe I’ll start one myself, eh? I could even outlaw profile pictures altogether and find other creative ways to pre-select prospective members:
Did you enjoy the Star Wars prequels?
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Who’s hotter – Xena or Sydney Bristow?
Best. Idea. Ever!
“All the lonely people,
Where do they all belong?”
{The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby}
