Atlantic Monthly to Feature Epic Exploration of Second Life Next Month

Leslie Jamison's avatar in Second Life (pic by Gidge Uriza posted with permission from The Atlantic)

The Atlantic, among the world's most prestigious news and culture magazines, is going to feature an in-depth exploration of Second Life in the next two-three weeks, both online and in print. It's written by acclaimed writer and novelist Leslie Jamison,  author of The Gin Closet and the bestselling Empathy Exams, who's also a columnist for the New York Times. During its preparation I talked with Leslie for nearly two hours, and to judge by her probing questions (and then the exhaustive follow-up queries from the Atlantic's fact checker), she's brought her considerable talents to the task.

"The most fascinating aspect of writing this piece was absolutely, hands down, talking to a wide variety of Second Life users and hearing about the varied, surprising, and often deeply moving ways they have found meaning in the world of Second Life," she tells me. "I found users generous and acute and incredibly thoughtful about why Second Life was meaningful to them, whether it had to do with building a family, building a virtual national park, building a relationship, building a musical career, building an alternate identity, or just building a house. I immensely enjoyed spending months in conversation with users, and spending time with them in-world as well."

The journey, of course, also came with daunting challenges:

"I was certainly a bit of an idiot when it came to actually navigating Second Life--my avatar kept running into things--but thankfully my subjects were often kind enough to help me learn my way around. I also struggled with the larger questions that emerged from the piece, about the relationship between Second Life and other modes of digital engagement that have become dominant in contemporary American culture: what do we look for from our online identities? It's a question with a complicated range of answers.

"Even though I don't generally write about technology, I found that this piece ended up tapping into some of the questions that my work often comes back: How do we forge connections with other people? What constitutes intimacy? Where and how do we find meaning in surprising places?"

All pertinent questions posed in what could be the most essential article on Second Life written in its roughly 15 year history. More when it hits the stands!

RL photo of Leslie via The Paris Review.

Comments

[Iggy 1.0]

I'm really surprised that The Atlantic is running something like this. Their tech pieces do not tend to cover gaming or anything like a VR very often.

As a subscriber of more than 30 (!) years, I cannot wait to see the article.

[Argo Nurmi]

I second Iggy's remark - a serious journalist taking a careful look. My one reservation is can she pack all SL many facets into one article. When so many before have failed to do justice doing it right will take a lot of skill and a bit of luck. I am an optimist.

Hamlet - see this below and if interested check the URL of the larger report from which it was drawn at the end.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/opinion/twitter-first-amendment.html

Tim Wu, the author, calls out virtual worlds as the place with the first and earliest occurrence of the censorial digital mob.

[Wagner J Au]

Hmm I'm not seeing a mention of virtual worlds in the NYT editorial, or am I just missing it?

[Ciaran Laval]

The virtual worlds comment is in the linked full essay from the NYT article but I'm struggling to find the reference from there to a more in depth article.