When I was talking to that Government Body That Shall Remain Nameless about regulation of metaverse platforms, and plans to start calling public hearings before Congress and EU Parliaments, they were surprised when I mentioned that this already happened in 2008 with Philip Rosedale and other metaverse developers.
"Yeah," I said. "Jon Stewart even did a segment about it on The Daily Show."
"Really?"
Yes really and you can watch it here. (Note to Comedy Central: Did you forget to enable embed settings?) Jon Stewart even had an embedded reporter in Second Life: Rob Riggle as the bodacious avatar Beowulf Porpoiseburg.
OK, not really Second Life. Here's what happened:
Here's the inside story, at least as I recall it:
The producers with the show did contact Linden Lab, asking the company to create and shoot a Second Life machinima featuring Rob Riggle as the big boobed dolphin. At that point, however, the company was getting hit with waves of bad press that roughly fall in the category of "SL is a Weirdo Sex Thing". Which isn't exactly a great thing to happen when you're partnered with a serious and staid company like IBM. So Linden Lab opted not to make the SL machinima for the Daily Show.
"Jon is going to be so disappointed," huffed the production assistant on the phone with Linden Lab. And the show went and created the pseudo-Second Life in some 3D animation software. (Maya, I believe.)
Which seems like a missed opportunity in both directions: Just think of all the fun and wacky SL segments the Daily Show could have made!
As for the Weirdo Sex Thing, that's a topic all the metaverse platforms are dealing with now (here's a randomly Googled BBC report about virtual sex in VRChat), and certainly one that Congress and various Parliaments are going to deal with eventually. Actually, soon.
Comments