Second Life Sketches: Things People Buy
By Warren Ellis
The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.
When I started this series of reports, I figured that a year of watching Second Life on a professional basis would lead to my recording either the ascension of the world to the position of mass media, or its collapse and dissolution.
Today, I can’t access half my inventory. This means I’m being punished for taking part in Second Life commerce. I cannot teleport, which means I’m being punished for taking an interest in the entire grid. I cannot use group instant messages or group Notice sends, which means I’m being punished for using the offered networking tools.
This is exactly what a group of people had in mind, it seems, when they drafted an open letter to Second Life operators Linden Labs. LL is being taken to task by business operators and inworld veterans who would very much like to know why they’ve been courted by LL and then left out to dry by a non-functional operating system. Because these aren’t weird, transient bugs. These are persistent problems that seem never to addressed by new versions of the client software. In fact, client updates seem to add new functions, or simply subtract functions, without fixing the things that actually make the world go.
The worst thing is the lack of inventory. Because what really makes the virtual world go round, for lots of people, is inworld commerce. If you entered Second Life for the first time today, you’d be quite simply staggered at the number of stores inworld. Giving a list of links would be pointless — the number seems infinite. Pretty much any object you can imagine — and some you’d rather not imagine — have their virtual equivalent available for purchase. Up to and including a working artificial phallus based on the anatomy of the brown bear. Yes, that’s what I said.
I recently opened up an area on my patch of SL, Winterstate, for people on my network to sell their own virtual crafts. Within a day, Brigid McKenna (in RL, Rachel Young, one of the moderator staff on my message board, The Engine) was selling an avatar tattoo from my forthcoming new comics series DOKTOR SLEEPLESS. By the end of the week, there was a complete costume available for the protagonist of my sf graphic novel TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and a selection of things that turn your avatar into an abstract arrangement of shapes that make you look like you fell out of an 8-bit videogame. Realistic belts that look like they were made from engine parts, skins that turn you into a zombie, and, bizarrely, a box of gizmos that turn you into Cthulhu.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can buy things that’ll turn you into a dog or cat and have you walking on all fours. You can buy yourself a robot body. In fact, you can buy yourself hundreds of robot bodies, they’re everywhere. You can buy “skins” that turn your avatar into, I swear, Justin Timberlake. I came across several places just last night that specialise in “celebrity skins.” It’s like crossing “Silence Of The Lambs” with the National Enquirer.
I’ve been walking around in a David Lynch-vintage Fremen stillsuit for the last two weeks, just for the hell of it. It even comes with exact replicas of Lynch’s goofy “weirding module” headset and handset. Fire the handset and, in addition to shooting a (goofy) bullet, it plays a soundfile of Kyle McLachlan from the film yelling the “chuuuuuk-SA!” voice activation.
Seriously. What do you want? Someone will have it for sale. A burning “hobo barrel” oil drum? A dumpster with animations attached so you can appear to be dumpster-diving? Do you want your avatar to pop kung-fu moves? Would you like to appear drunk, and fall over occasionally? Want to move like a pole-dancer, twirling around The General and putting your ankles so far behind your head that people can see what you had for dinner from twenty meters away? Sold.
Mountains of crap that you wouldn’t ordinarily be seen dead near? Oh, yes, that too. It’s hard to effectively describe the prevalence of Crap Stores. An absolutely useless, inoperable handbag that sparkles with animated bling? There’s piles of the bloody things everywhere. Mutated-looking six-packs, or maybe G-cup breasts to stick on to your rail-thin avatar so you look like someone’s nailed two medicine balls to a plank? Right here, you mediocre little freak.
This is, of course, the nightmare of Second Life’s accidental founding document, Neal Stephenson’s SNOW CRASH: mindless kids buying Barbie avatars off the rack. The amount of stuff that no-one would be seen dead in just boggles the mind. That is, of course, before getting to the roaring trade in Furnishings Even More Boring Than The Ones In Your House, that even a character in The Sims would retch at. JG Ballard always promised, or threatened, that the future would be boring. The proof of his miserable dictum is all over the grid.
It doesn’t take too long, though, to find the really interesting stuff, made by the real artists. Happy Bivouac, for instance, produces beautifully designed alternate-world gear for the discerning uchroniac. A myriad of stores across the Caledon and New Babbage regions will happily supply you with lovingly made neo-Victorian gear — I always recommend Ordinal Enterprises as a good commencement. For those starting out inworld, Yadni’s Junkyard is a necessity, as he gives away all his stuff in big boxes, either for free or nearly so, and it’s not crap, either. There are several places where you can obtain huge working spaceships if that is your pleasure. Or is a giant travelling antiquitous airship more to your taste? I’m just scratching the surface of what’s out there. And all this leads to a shocking amount of money being passed between people all day every day on Second Life. You’ve all heard the stories about the inworld economy. This is what people are buying. This is, in fact, a large part of what keeps people inworld.
Of course, if you can’t actually pull it out of your inventory and do something with it because Linden Labs have broken the inventory system and thereby denied you the use of your purchases… well, you too might be compelled to send them a letter. God knows my own letter to them would not be open and would be substantially less polite.
