New World Notes

Has Second Life Been Fully Gentrified? Thoughts from My BBC Interview

Pictured: A steampunk city in SL from 2008; a Kim Kardashian ad campaign using SL from 2018

Here's the full episode of BBC's The Digital Human which expands on the short excerpt I featured last week. The show's larger topic is gentrification of the Internet culture and online communities, which often lose their unique character as they become more mainstream and commodified. I talk about how this happened to some extent during the 2006-2008 hype wave, when MTV and other companies became (briefly) interested in Second Life as a marketing platform, and how SL culture has greatly changed since then. For the original early adopters, I say:

They had this unique beautiful thing that existed basically only there on the Internet; they built these really beautiful intricate steampunk experiences and they had the fashion to go along with it... [but] there really was a feeling that they'd lose that uniqueness. That's at least partly right: The Second Life culture that existed in the beginning is still there but it's really been crowded out. Kim Kardashian recently did an advertising campaign using Second Life avatars and it was not actually surprising because the avatar fashion and styles [popular in Second Life now] had started to look more and more like a Kim Kardashian aesthetic, a cheesy virtual version... For a lot of the original users, I think they could feel that they'd sort of lost that unique spark that they had.

This isn't to say there's something intrinsically wrong with a Kim Kardashian style if that's your thing, just that it's so inescapably pervasive across all media -- even now in virtual worlds which once offered a respite from all that. And that might just be inevitable now that virtual world culture has become mainstream (hello, Marshmello), but hopefully we'll start to see the cultural influence flowing in the other direction more often.

Oh, in case you haven't seen the 2008 steampunk city tribute I mentioned above, it's still on YouTube here:

I Tell the BBC About the Culture War in Second Life During the Iraq War

Here's a fun new segment from a BBC podcast called The Digital Human, in which I tell longtime Internet culture reporter Aleks Krotoski about the "War of the Jessie Wall" in Second Life, which you can read more about here. (Also briefly mentioned is this story about a virtual mansion built by someone while homeless in real life.) I believe this is a segment to a much larger episode, but in any case, hope you enjoy, and see you next Monday!

Dutch Readers: Second Life Retrospective Featured on Netherlands' VPRO

Here's a long new article on a frequently recurring subject: "Will Second Life Life Get a Second Life?" Written by Hans van Wetering for VPRO, which I gather is kinda sorta the NPR of the Netherlands, I offer some comments and Bryn Oh art is featured. It's in Dutch ("Krijgt Second Life een tweede leven?"), so if you're a reader fluent in that language, we'd be grateful for a general summary in Comments. Here's the starting paragraphs:

 

LA Times Features Anthropologist's US Government-Funded Study of How Virtual Worlds Affect Disabled Users

Good LA Times write-up of Tom Boellstorff, the UC Irvine Anthropology professor who's been exploring Second Life since 2004 (and full disclosure, became an IRL pal along the way). The Times' focus is on Tom's latest work, which is funded by the US government, and focuses on the many disabled people who use virtual worlds like Second Life:

Boellstorff and co-researcher Donna Davis of the University of Oregon got to know about 200 disabled players. The researchers found the virtual world provides a way for the mentally and physically disabled to socialize and forge meaningful relationships. “We so often hear about the dark side of technology,” Davis said. “But I think that Tom and I have found that there is a bright side. People can connect in these virtual spaces in really important and meaningful ways.”

Boellstorff’ has received $277,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation since 2015 to research how online environments affect social interaction, self-awareness and the disabled experience. Boellstorff, who is writing a second book on his new research, hopes that his research will cause technology developers to pay heed to the issues of disabled people when creating virtual reality products.

“This is an important thing for these CEOs to look at,” Boellstorff said. “Over and over again, if you look at the history of technology, often the tech gets developed assuming the consumer is able-bodied."

Well said. Much more on the LA Times site here. Tom's work, of course, has been featured on NWN many times, including:

Kim Kardashian Personally Requested Her Second Life Avatar-Based Social Media Campaign, Says SL Creator

SL avatar pics by Liz Milan West featured on Kim Kardashian's fragrance line Instagram

Twentysomething make-up artist Johnathan Ramirez was recently checking his online messages, when he saw one from someone who was somewhat familiar: Kim Kardashian. This, he tells me, is how the social media campaign featuring Second Life avatars promoting Kardashian's new fragrance line came to be.

"Kim reached out to me herself about a fun project," says Ramirez, who's known as Liz Milan West on Instagram, and lizzylo1212.xue in Second Life and on the SL Marketplace. Apparently Ms. Kardashian saw his SL fashion pics on Instagram or elsewhere. "She told me that she loved my work and had a super fun idea she wanted me to be apart of."

From there it was a matter of working with her social media staff on creating it:

Kim Kardashian Continues Using Second Life Avatars in Her Social Media

From Kardashian's Instagram feed

Turns out that Kim Kardashian Second Life avatar from last week wasn't just a one-off to promote her perfume brand -- Ms. Kardashian-West just posted this pic above featuring three SL avatars on her social media channels. And so many, many years after any major pop brand has integrated Second Life content into their media, Kim Kardashian remains an outlier. I really can't think of a precedent to this; I mean, Drew Carey used to talk about his favorite Second Life creators on Twitter, but even Carey would agree that this Kardashian campaign is many multitudes more massive. The mystery is how it came to be.

Kardashian's official @kkwfragance perfume brand on Instagram has even more SL pics

I have, of course, reached out to Kardashian's social media people, and will let readers know when/if I get a reply. By the way, some have speculated that these SL avatars are from her Kimoji mobile app, but having just downloaded it, that doesn't seem to be the case. The Kimoji avatars all appear to be from IMVU -- look:

Kim Kardashian Promotes Perfume Brand With Second Life Avatar of Kim Kardashian

If you follow Kim Kardashian West on Twitter (as you are obligated by law to do), you may have seen her retweet this tweet yesterday:

#KIMOJIPERFUME launches in 3 DAYS at the Pop-Up in @WestfieldCC on 07.14 and online on 07.17. The first 200 people who buy #KIMOJIPERFUME in-store will receive a free Kimoji Laptop Bag valued at $40 #KKWFRAGRANCE pic.twitter.com/HuTOIuNxHt

— KKW FRAGRANCE (@KKWFRAGRANCE) July 12, 2018

Which she did in order to promote her perfume brand, cleverly called KKW FRAGRANCE [sic], which is of course a very Kim Kardashian thing to do. What is perhaps somewhat more surprising is that she's doing it not with a photo of, you know, Kim Kardashian... but with a screenshot of a Second Life avatar of Kim Kardashian.

Yes: According to the brand's Instagram account, the campaign (there are several SL avatar images in it), it was created by a Second Life user who posts screenshots to her Instagram account (@lizmilanwest).

Assumptions aside, it's not actually too surprising that Kim Kardashian would use an avatar to promote her brand. For one thing, she has a hit mobile game where you roleplay as her avatar, and more key, major brands are now often turning to avatars to promote their brands on Instagram. And why spend upwards of $10,000-20,000 on a professional photoshoot you need to attend when you can stay in bed with Kanye and have your avatar do all the work?

Read: Excerpt from the AFK Series, Detective Novels Set in Second Life

AFK is the name for a series of novels about a virtual detective in Second Life (yes those exist in SL) who goes by the avatar name Definitely Thursday, whose work exposing avatar-based infidelity unexpectedly uncovers a web of murder, revenge and terrorism. Written by longtime SLer Huckleberry Hax, these five novels are crisply written and immediately engaging, and now, available in a single volume -- details for getting that on Hax's blog.

As a teaser, here's an excerpt Hax just shared with me, creating these pics to illustrate it:

She was lying across her bed with her back to the door, so her laptop screen was facing us and I got a clear view of it when we entered.  What I assumed to be her avatar - a female humanoid wearing army boots, camouflage combats, a tank top and a neon green mohican - was standing on a builder’s platform.  A line of orange particles connected her outstretched hand to an assortment of pine cubes.

 

She rolled onto her back and looked up at us.  “What’s up?”

 

“Joy’s angsting,” Jesse said.  “She’d like to clean our kitchen and bathroom for absolutely no money and she’s worried we might take offence.”

 

She laughed.  “You bloody house guests… coming over here and doing all our cleaning.”

 

Jesse turned to me.  “Satisfied?”

 

I punched him on the arm.  “Satisfied.”

 

“Then my work here is done.”  He turned and went back upstairs, taking them two at a time in a sudden sprint which I realised I’d already started to recognise as his style.

 

I peered at Jade’s screen.  “What are you playing?”

 

“Playing?” she repeated.  Then she followed my gaze.  “Oh, it’s not a game.  It’s Second Life.  I’m building.”

 

A Facebook Page Full of SL-flavored Memes Only SLers Would Understand

Second Life: The Memes takes the memes you know and love, gives them an inside baseball SL twist, and then, of course puts them on a Facebook page:

Where 10 year old avatars look a day old, where people still don’t know that face lights are a f*cking nightmare, where everyone knows a furry, where grown adults act like small children, where people carry around talking, sh*tting dolls, where you are asked to give $100L so someone can pay their $1,250L rent, where people refuse to understand mesh, and where dudes use chick avatars, and adults use child avatars. 

Launched last month, it only has 900 subscribers, but definitely deserves 9,000 or 90,000 more. Or all 900,000 users that Second Life supposedly has (LOL people fudging SL user numbers for the media could be a meme in itself, it's more like 500-600,000). 

Speaking of memes, here's the one I made riffing off "First World Problems" a few years ago:

I Tell Vice Why VRChat Has Gone Viral While Social VR Platforms Like Sansar & High Fidelity Have Not

Really good Vice article by Matthew Gault, giving an in-depth view of the madness, virality (and yes, unchecked racism and misogyny) that is VRChat. Matthew asked me why VRChat has gone viral where other social VR platforms haven't:

"VRChat seems to be taking off due to three factors that contributed to a perfect storm of viral growth,” Wagner James Au, author of The Making of Second Life and the social VR blog New World Notes, told me over email. “[It] lets users upload their own avatars via a Unity SDK [a popular and accessible game making tool], and has a basic physics engine,” he said. “[It] can be accessed without having to wear a VR headset, enabling more gamers to join in on the fun. YouTube and Twitch streamers discovered this potential for freeform, grabass anarchy and went nuts creating lots of VRChat-based videos that quickly went viral.”

More than anything, VRChat reminds me most of the very early days of Second Life (2003-2005), when much of the main activity and excitement happened in the free build sandbox areas, where people would collaborate on all kinds of impromptu, wacky creativity. (While Linden Lab did a better job keeping the user abuse down to a dull roar.) Contrast this with local favorites High Fidelity (with a daily peak concurrency under 10 people) and Sansar (which by Linden Lab CEO's own admission, is "still low"):