"then they fight you..." -- Tracking Negative Reactions To SL

Yesterday Boing Boing highlighted a fascinating story from Science News on the many research applications scientists and academics are creating in Second Life.  It features Luciftias Neurocam, in real life a Drexel University neuroscientist, Horace Moody, a purple furry who's also a chemistry professor, and more. 

These scientists are using SL, notes Boing Boing's David Pescovitz, to build "a virtual frog to study the neural pathways involved in hopping... a nuclear reactor as a training tool... the simple sim tools of SL to create immersive science learning experiences."  To judge by the post's comments, readers are mostly intrigued, but someone named "TeenageMutantNinjaLincoln" posts a response (pictured above) where you can almost feel the rage pouring through the screen.  It's a typical species of reaction, one that I sometimes even sympathize with when, for example, the media was inundated with press releases about this or that real world company setting up a (non-interactive, non-staffed) site in Second Life.  Now, however, the anger seems to be driven less by irritation, and more by irrational panic.

It's intriguing, and it makes me think of that unsourced Gandhi quote about the way people react to a radical idea.  If they ignore you in 2003, then laugh at you in 2006, then fight you in 2008, what comes next?

Comments

[Brian]

Part of me wanted to do a parody comment in the style of the one pictured above, but... I just couldn't bring myself to be that annoying.

[Sophrosyne Stenvaag]

Thanks for the link!

What's even better? I get those comments about SL - from people in World Of Warcraft!

Who says irony is dead? :P

[Corcosman Voom]

The more or less vitriolic exhortations to "get a life" from people sitting at computers wasting time commenting on something they don't like and probably don't know seems beyond ironic.

I suspect these are all the work of a previously unknown 'bot - The ObtuseBot.

[Cubey Terra]

Why don't you people get a FIRST LIFE lololol!!!!111

Seriously though, I think we can ignore those reactions. If those commenters had a first life themselves, they wouldn't bother posting vitriolic posts in response to harmless news articles.

[Laetizia Coronet]

In some circles it is always fashionable to reject those things deemed a hype, a cult or simply popular. If it's popular it can't be good, right? The writer probably thinks he's earned himself some brownie points with the intelligentsia and is right now probably listening to Kurt Schwitters' Urlautsonate in the reassuring knowledge that he is one of only five people worldwide who does so. What he does to enjoy himself... oh you know, enjoyment is so overrated.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Soeething tells me that someone calling himself "teenagemutantninjalincoln" probably spends enough time gaming to make his post rather humorous.

[cyn vandeverre]

I just don't understand people like that -- it's as if SL burned his house down, sexually assaulted his dog, and rolled him in tar and feathers. Why bother manufacturing outrage about a pastime which does not affect you in any way unless you choose to get involved?

[Barry]

*yawn* I'm getting rather indifferent to these kinds of reactions. Still, I'm usually tempted to bait people like that, but what good would that do?

I've got a friend who "Hates" second life. He was expecting something on the level of WoW, not understanding that you make your world. Although he did have a point with the rather daunting interface.

I distinctly remeber similar reactions from people back in the mid 1990's when the internet was becoming popular. There were a few vitriolic comments I'd hear here and there about how it's a fad and how everyone on it needs a life, or is a loser from hooking up or making "Online friends".

Anyway, Mr TMNL should come over to my house and see all of the non-work I've done outside in the garden because I never get outside now and then.

[Ezra Clay]

How about we accept that there will always be stereotypes and move beyond the idiots who adhere to them? Seems simple enough to me.

[Two Worlds]

Dissenting opinion about Second Life? Not in my blog!

Keep on with that groupthink, Wagner, lest your opinions actually be challenged. Overdependence on Second Life isn't wrong, Second Life is NEVER wrong, Linden policy is ALWAYS right... Are you sure you didn't work in the Bush Administration in a previous life?

[John Tabin]

Every blogger, no matter what his focus, gets comments like this: Either "stop blogging about X" or "you're ignoring Y." A bizarre number of people seem think it's a horrible affront to blog about what you're interested in and ignore what they're interested in. I don't think says anything in particular about the trajectory of SL.