Keanu Reeves Turned Into Breathtaking Gray Market Avatar in Second Life - Watch This Machinima Parody of His Cyberpunk 2077 Appearance

Keanu Reeves, as the entire Internet knows, is making an official, digitized appearance in the upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077. And as the entire Second Life community knows, any Internet popcult phenomenon is near-instantly absorbed by and recreated into the metaverse. So watch above: Created by SLer "Novata", a machinima tribute to the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer featuring Keanu Reeves, co-starring quite a few avatars which seem to be arthritic mannequins with horrible speech impediments. (Actually they're victims of Second Life's out-of-date lip sync system.)

"There were some limitations as you can clearly see," Novata acknowledges on Reddit, "but we wanted to have Keanu in our Second Life." She created the video to promote the debut of Keanu's avatar at Equal10, an SL fashion event launching next month. And if you want to be breathtaking in the virtual world, Keanu's avatar comes with many options:

"The skin comes with the shape and body applier so, you can make your avatar looks like Keanu," she tells me. "Works with Catwa." (A popular mesh body shape.) The skin itself was created by Antonietta Canucci aka Raohausen. But at press time, it's not clear if, and also not likely that, Keanu's appearance in Second Life is authorized.

"Isn't this like cosplay?" Novato wonders.  "[Raohausen] she sometimes makes celebrity skins." 

Yes she does: For instance, meet Second Life avatar "Brad", and Second Life avatar "Taylor". Who look like, well, you know.

And far as I know, whether it's OK to avatarize a celebrity without their consent is a gray area, at least when it's used in fair use parody. Then again, like William Gibson himself likes to say, the whole point of cyberpunk is the street making its own uses for things.

Update, 6/28: William Gibson says I misinterpreted that quote from William Gibson:

I never meant it as the point of cyberpunk, put rather as the nature of technologies in human society.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) June 28, 2019

Comments

[Cake]

Celebs sue when their faces are sold on unofficial merchandise, so that's probably a no on whether it's okay.

Also, that skin looks creepy as hell.

[Samanthaatkins]

I imagine using a celebrity's name to promote your own stuff without permission would get you in legal trouble.

[Darius]

I think it’s unfair to sell them. D

[get on top]

Should not represent a celebrity without their consent, this may lead to a violation.

[huh]

i doubt he even knows what sl is or cares

[sirhc desantis]

First thought was not to worry too much about Reeves but watch out for the dev company except - turns out its a CD Projekt offshoot and they have a bit of a non standard approach to say the least. Could be interesting to see how they react.

And Oi - on behalf of a section of 'the whole internet' this is the first I have heard of this thing =^^=

[Beev Fallen]

this machinima clearly shows where SL belongs in a technological hierarchy of realtime 3D media. the bottom.

[Wagner James Au]

"i doubt he even knows what sl is or cares"

Keanu was doing press tours for the final Matrix movies right as Second Life was starting to pick up press attention, so I bet reporters asked him stuff like if he thinks SL is the start of the IRL Matrix. In fact from 2004-2005 or so, the homepage of Second Life featured this quote about SL from Time Magazine: "Like The Matrix without the evil machines!"

[Large Marge]

@ "Like The Matrix without the evil machines!"

Were they really evil? or did they just understood humans can never be trusted as per the Animatrix Series!

Reminds me of this video the irony.
https://youtu.be/IjJmTeBSEzU

Humanity is doomed as they cannot see what they really are or see the true nature of themselves, we do not need machines to destroy us when we are born and raised in a system that makes us believe we are the center of the universe and all the damage we do or see is someone else's fault.

Machines by default are honest and true. its always easy to create a boogie man to blaim when in the mirror we are all to blaim. while not far in the distant future events have already happened that will leave this world a barren rock we only await the moments when the time arrives. the future is set, the door is shut.