{"id":990,"date":"2006-09-02T08:30:58","date_gmt":"2006-09-02T12:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=990"},"modified":"2008-05-28T21:26:22","modified_gmt":"2008-05-29T01:26:22","slug":"virtual-capitalisms-ugly-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=990","title":{"rendered":"(Virtual) Capitalism’s Ugly Side"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I happened across an unfortunate thread on the soon-to-be-closed Second Life forum (Link)<\/a> that called out what appear to be real life threats on another, SL-related forum (I won’t be posting links and you should understand why after you read more). Here is one threat posted under a thread titled “Kill Kill Dies Bitch!”:<\/p>\n

Did MadmaG go to any SLCC’s? I am going to the next one and if I see her I am whooping her ass if I don’t shoot her first!<\/p>\n

Anyone else wanna take a “stab” at her while I hold her down?<\/p>\n

Read it ….
\nBITCH!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For those who are unaware, the “SLCC” is a real world event<\/a> and has gotten sufficiently large to attract media attention. Here’s another implied threat posted by another user (maybe) as a poll titled “How to rape MadamG Zagato?”<\/p>\n

How would you prefer to rape her or see her raped?
\nTake the poll then discuss.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d rather not post the options available.
\n
\nNow here’s the thing: while this stuff is disturbing and, at least in the case of the first direct threat, illegal, I’m not sure that either person making these comments is not the same as the person targeted. For all I know the target is targeting themselves. Why would someone do that? Simple. The thread on the SL Forums has started to become a series of advertisements for replacement forums; a place where users can go after the Linden Lab forum shuts down. Everyone wants a piece of the controversy and the pie. Everyone wants to attract eyeballs to their<\/em> forum.<\/p>\n

So while these threats might<\/em> be real, there is the possibility that they might be manufactured… or at the very least encouraged (note that the people defending the forum allowing those posts to remain, effectively trumpet how they want a forum free from moderation and oversight – which may actually be just a way to draw a crowd). Just like the newstand rags that print garbage, there is potentially some money to be made.<\/p>\n

Second Life<\/a> now has over 600,000 registered users with about 250,000 users active over the past 60 days. On a daily basis at any hour of the day anywhere between about 4500 and almost 10,000 people are logged into the world. Assuming that people spend 8 hours a day in SL (I’m being very conservative here as that’s quite a lot of time), it’s reasonable to assume roughly 20,000 people are active on a daily basis. And those numbers are growing.<\/p>\n

Now imagine you run a popular forum and can attract just 1\/100th of that number every day. That’s 200 people. And if they make, say 5 visits a day to the forum, that’s 1000 visits. Now imagine they’re somewhat involved and don’t just stay on the main forum page, but visit various threads. That’s additional page views. Let’s now assume that on a daily basis those 200 people hit 5 pages per visit. That’s over 5000 page views a day. Not bad. If the forum owner starts throwing up banner ads and adds AdSense, they could bring in some money. If they take custom<\/em> ads from the virtual content creators… well, I’d simply direct you to the Second Life front page where – at this moment – apparently $386,000 has been spent between users in just the last 24 hours.<\/p>\n

So whether this is a real threat or a manufactured threat, one thing is clear: people are intending to use it for their own personal gain.<\/p>\n

I recently commented over on another blog the following response (Link)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When I rephrased one of the lines in an earlier comment, I was making a clear distinction: “mimic” means that SL actively tries to be like Real Life. But SL is undirected. It doesn’t try to mimic anything. It’s the users who come in and make it like it is. It has become what the people wanted.
\n…
\nbecause it is what we make of it, not what someone else (directly) tells us it should be. Thus it shows how ugly our Lives – our Real Lives – really are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For those who thought the Metaverse was going to be a Utopia, think again. It may turn out to be a showcase for the ugliest side of both human nature and capitalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I happened across an unfortunate thread on the soon-to-be-closed Second Life forum (Link) that called out what appear to be real life threats on another, SL-related forum (I won’t be posting links and you should understand why after you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}