No, It's Actually Not Second Life's 12th Birthday Today

It’s Second Life’s official 12th birthday today, but it's only "official" in the sense that the world's corporate owners have designated it to be, to wit: "Back on June 23rd, 2003 Second Life was launched officially by Linden Lab and today Second Life reaches its 12th birthday."

So June 23rd, 2003 is actually just the date when Linden Lab opened Second Life as a commercial service. But there was actually a thriving Beta-era community for over a year before that, and it was they and their talents who proved that Second Life was actually viable enough to even launch at all. (And many of them are still active in SL.) It's more accurate to say Second Life was "born" in March 2002, when it received its first user, Steller Sunshine, who created Second Life's first user-generated content, a giant beanstalk game. Between then and June 2003, a vibrant community of about 1000 people flourished, establishing many of the cultural conventions that still exist today. And as an actual war raged in the Middle East, they even literally (virtually) fought to determine what kind of world the world would be:

Jessie was home to most WWIIOLers in Second Life, and many of them felt boxed in from all sides by hostile communities. Some outsiders would make frequent guerilla raids into Jessie, targeting members at random; but when the WWIIOLers got their guns and went after them, to retaliate, the insurgents would flee into an adjoining simulator, where violence was strictly forbidden. Killing them off-territory meant risking the wrath of the international authority -- i.e., Linden Lab. (And a lot of them did, and were duly punished with suspensions.) The Jessie residents would get terrorized by sniper attacks, firing with long-range rifles from the safety neighboring sims. To be sure, the WWIIOLers who’d caused so much mayhem had provoked much of this prankster hostility. But they were still isolated in a single geographic area, where they could be easily targeted, and antagonized.

From "War of the Jessie Wall".

Comments

[Brace Coral]

Well ok. Rain on everyone's parade LOL But I do see what you're saying. Nice picture chosen for the article btw. Le SIGH.

[irihapeti]

is like Queens Birthday

Queens Birthday day is not the Queen's actual birthday day

is the annual day the nation celebrates that they are a nation

+

same Independence Day in the USA. Independence was actual secured on July 2

[Shuichi Shinji]

An animal or human being also already exists before they are born. Their birth is just the official "release" into the world :-p

[Amanda Dallin]

"Independence was actual secured on July 2."

American Independence was proclaimed on July 2, 1776. It was secured on October 19, 1781 with the British surrender at Yorktown. It did take nearly 2 years for the Brits to admit defeat though.

[irihapeti]

@Amanda

true that (: