Nobody Fugazi; Down and Out In Second Life

Someone I know sent me an invitation to Second Life, so I decided to look into it. After all, BusinessWeek did an article on it, talking about how much real money can come from a virtual economy. OK. So I create a login; it requires a first name and allows you to select the last name.

'Nobody' is a good first name. 'Fugazi' was chosen as a last name... it's Italian slang for something which is not authentic. So 'Nobody Fugazi' logs in, goes through some basic avatar customization training, and flits about with no money in his wallet. Of course, you can buy the game currency with U.S. dollars. Or you can build things and sell them.

Of course, what you can create is apparently pretty interesting. When I first got in, one lady sat on a turkey which, apparently, someone had created. She got up, and the turkey was no worse for wear. When I approached one person in my wanderings and asked him where he got the nifty light-saber he was tossing around, he handed me some teleportation coordinates. When I got there, there were a few people standing around. Talking amongst themselves. So I sat around and realized that Nobody Fugazi was broke.

Down And Out In Second Life

You start off broke when you get a free account. Even as I write this, Nobody has made $4 Linden dollars (the virtual local currency) in the last 10 minutes, sitting at a money tree. What fun. So I decided to write this and get it over with while Nobody wastes time and bandwidth making $24 Linden dollars an hour. Hard work. There's a Darth Vader lookalike off to one side, and a bunch of people away from their keyboards as the money tree cranks $24/hr into their virtual accounts.

It's newbie welfare. Not that anyone needs to eat here. After all, everything is purely cosmetic. I suppose one could make a case for social software, but it's like any other society. It sucks to be broke.

Skid Row in Second Life isn't a real crowd pleaser. And since Nobody is Fugazi is visiting on the cheap and is new to all of this, he hasn't really figured out what it is to build that people would want.

Of course, there are obvious eye-candy benefits. Even broke people here can look as attractive as they want (see picture), and they don't smell funky. Your avatar can't even look emaciated if you wanted it to. In time, I think I'll make Nobody into an ugly little freak and see how others interact with him. That will be an interesting experiment.

Building

I tried my hand at building. I learned the hard way that you can't just build anywhere, you have to go to a 'public sandbox' or on land that you own to build anything. The cool thing is that you retain all rights for things you create.

Unfortunately, Nobody got screwed. His user doesn't really do graphical design very well. So he's a disadvantaged and broke avatar. It's tragic. He's on virtual welfare because of his lack of skills. He and I put our heads together and decided to teleport to a 'public sandbox' and make fools out of ourselves.

We tried our hand, and through pure magic we came up with Pedestrian Speed Bumps (PSBs) on the very first try. Dreams of cornering the market on PSBs abounded. Virtual World domination. All the virtual food we could eat, and we wouldn't have to be on skid row. We could break out of the pretty slums with the pretty people to go to... where? Oh, we could buy land, build a virtual mansion. Virtual steak and virtual lobster every evening, the best virtual wines, and...

Wait a minute. Avatars can fly in Second Life. Oops. Back to the drawing board... and the money tree.

Escapism By Another Name

Granted, I think this is an interesting diversion, and maybe a few people are making real money off of it, but I can't eat anything there. Feeding escapism is good business, I suppose. Maybe I'll visit, maybe I won't, but in all... I don't see myself getting wrapped up in Second Life.

It's pretty, if you have enough hardware. But if you look really hard, so is the real world. It's probably addictive, but I don't know why other than escapism, loneliness/a need for social interaction. I'm pretty sure nobody on there looks like their avatars. And it's the imperfections in humanity that I am really fond of - I don't love what is 'perfect'; I cherish flaws because flaws in themselves are perfection revealed.

It's pretty interesting to explore and see what others are doing - I may go back and do that, but I don't see a lot of time being invested in Second Life otherwise. Of course, other people's mileage will vary - and if you like that sort of thing, go for it - and enjoy it. But if you want a world experience, look around the real world. Human relationships, for some reason, are most gratifying when they are grounded in reality.

It might be a good way to kill some time on weekends... I feel a bit like a virtual anthropologist in a world full of sock puppets when I vist. And that, in it's own way, can be very amusing because it's not too different from the real world.