Get a (second) life
Progressive Gold has got some interesting feedback on the question of campaigning in Second Life and other virtual worlds, which I discussed here.
"These developments may be inevitable, but I doubt I'm ever going to get my head around why anyone thinks it advantageous in any way to exist in a virtual world like Second Life when all it is is a simulacrum of this one. What is the point of having a virtual world in which the conditions can be anything, anything at all that mathematical modelling allows, but which just replicates the meatworld you're actually existing in? What a bloody waste of time, effort and bandwidth.
To bring RL money and politics into such a virtual world seems to negate the whole point of the exercise. If a socialist party wants to experiment in virtuality, why not create a socialist world on their own server somewhere to see how theory works in practice? Seems to me that'd be a lot more productive than canvassing Second Life denizens, most of whom can't vote for them anyway. I'd've thought any actual electoral returns the SP get from SL'd be minimal. The only point of it is for the PR value, but who wants to get lumped in with xenophobic losers like UKIP?
I can see why they'd canvass in SL if it were for a SL election: I suppose even virtual worlds must have a government - but the campaigning in SL is not aimed at SL government, it's meant to affect a RL election. If it's leftist geeks they want to reach, there must be better ways than this.
Personally I've never been a big MUD fan and Second Life does not appeal at all so perhaps I'm biased. I've always though that if I want greed, crime and political shenanigans I can get them here in spades."
Fair points. Also I wonder if people even want to encounter politics in a space that most probably go to for pure escapism and to "be someone else". But a few SSP members have recently got together and are planning some stuff for a new "Scotland" zone in Second Life. Experiments really at this stage. I logged in and am finding it a bit laggy but will see what I can do.
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2 Comments:
Yep. There's this massive contradiction between SECOND and REAL life. Much as I'm all for the left being web savvy I think it's best for more lefties to blog rather than go hyper real...but I guess if we are allowed our imaginings, imagining up a socialist Scotland seems a worthwhile activity
By
Dave Riley, at 9:17 am
I am still debating with myself whether virtual worlds are just a fun waste of time or whether they are the 'brave new world' of the future. I think at the moment they are on the fringes. But in a year or two they have the potential to be huge. Young people especially will have no fears or qualms about them. They will take to them like they take to MySpace and bit-torrenting mp3's. Still, the experiment is ongoing and we have secured some office space and I was checking out the Socialist Party of Second Life last night!
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