
Since no post about virtual pro wrestling is complete without a follow-up about the AI-driven death of the Internet as we know it, here's a provocative new Philip Rosedale essay predicting just that, in what he dubs the Ultraviolet Catastrophe:
AIs are now easily able to create accounts, establish IP addresses, and send plausibly important or interesting messages at effectively zero cost. This means that the internet will soon be saturated with websites, social media, YouTube, and Twitter accounts creating messages at millions of times the rate at which humans can create content. Worse yet, many of these messages will deceptively claim to be from real people.
[Y]ou may be also suffering from the fantasy that these messages for some reason won’t fool you. In sufficient quantity and quality, they certainly will. And even when they don’t, they will “flood the channel”, making it impossible for you to find actual useful information.
I've definitely seen early signs of this effect while researching my various writing projects.
Google Search is being eroded by "AI summaries" which are often wrong or just rampant bullshit, even on well-known topics (see above!), while whole channels of content are AI slop. Earlier today, I came across a YouTube channel called "Second Life" which has nothing to do with virtual worlds, but is instead a slew of weirdly messianic gen AI videos. (No, I'm not linking to it.)
Anyway, as a consequence of all this, Philip believes we'll begin withdrawing from the Internet as we know it -- though I'm not sure this will include legacy virtual worlds (i.e. Second Life, etc., but more on that down the way):
Should Linden Lab Add Revenue Sharing Tools for SL Merchants & Their Subcontractors?
Lots of interesting comments on last week's look into Second Life's shadow mesh economy, including this one from Peter Stindberg, creator and lead scripter of popular SL-to-Discord bridges. As he explains, mesh makers and mesh riggers aren't the only ones whose skill are often subcontracted:
The same goes pretty much for scripting: There is a demand for commission scripting, and I get 2-3 requests per month, some of my scripter friends even more. I usually turn them down and refer them to my scripter friends (and help them negotiate prices, as I am the biz-mind).
The key is to negotiate a good rate for the project, and make sure you actually DO get paid. Everyone knows that the scripts you write as commission get used in commercial products that will make the merchant many times over what they pay for the script. But that's fine. They do the marketing, they do the sales, they do the customer service. A freelance scripter can focus on the scripting, and does not need to deal with other people.
Peter goes on to discuss the topic of shadow subcontractors getting a cut of sales from brands they work for. Is that even feasible?
Maybe, he suggests, if Second Life had the tools for sharing sales with many creators:
Continue reading "Should Linden Lab Add Revenue Sharing Tools for SL Merchants & Their Subcontractors?" »
Posted on Monday, June 30, 2025 at 04:20 PM in Comment of the Week, Economics of SL | Permalink | Comments (1)
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