eMarkLee

What is this Second Life phenomenon that is printed in every other BusinessWeek and Economist? What is this Matrix that people keep talking about?

Let’s find out.

I had the chance to attend a talk by Second Life CEO Philip Rosedale on how he started Second Life, what his vision was, and what the F it is. It looked great when he busted out his classic character that you can see on the front page of the Second Life website:

Phillip basically went over his vision for what Second Life could be, which admittedly sounded fascinating. He gave us a demo of his character doing some stuff in God-Mode (what I will never have) and showed us some interaction with other SL characters. He also showed us Circuit City and IBM as they exist in Second Life. All in all, it is interesting….but I still don’t really get it.

There’s only one way to find out….I’ll give Second Life a second try (I tried it a little while back but couldn’t figure out wtf). So first things first, I edit my character. I had a black shirt on, but then lost it when I decided to take it off…couldn’t figure out how to put another shirt on…oh well

Ok, I have a character now (Beastman Magellan). Now let’s go somewhere cool in Second Life. I click on the Search button on the bottom of the screen to give me the list of most popular places:

The most popular destinations pretty much look like the rest of the Internet. Pr0n, Pr0n, Gambling, Pr0n, Pr0n. I guess that’s to be expected…ok let’s try the club:

There is streaming techno, there are characters dancing all over. It’s actually kind of cool….if I was on shrooms. Probably was I didn’t know how to dance and nobody was talking to me, so I felt kind of out of the party. That sucks. I can’t really figure out what to do in there other than walk around and look at other characters. I guess people ask that same question in their first life.

But what about all the Linden currency that flow through SL? They have a whole currency, the Linden dollar, that is traded, with Linden Lab acting like the Fed. People build items and sell them to others, whether it is necklaces or penises…yeah penises. My character has a 19″ schlong. Apparently there is a good 4 million dollars worth of Linden dollars trading through every day. There are stories of people making 60-70k on SL just opening up shop and selling virtual goods.

I don’t really get it, and apparently neither does an analyst who thinks SL is a pyramid scheme. While I won’t go that far, I’m not completely sure how easily one could monetize on this Matrix. At least eBay still allows virtual Second Life items to be sold, unlike World of Warcraft artifacts.

All in all, Second Life is interesting and a great story, but I just don’t get it. If you are on Second Life and you want to hang with my character’s 19″ penis, let me know.