The Cost of a Second Life

Dutch Hoorenbeek is a successful entrepreneur. A net worth of $1.5 million, an owner of a mall and several dance clubs, married to a gorgeous redhead, designs lingerie and bikinis, and known the world over as sophisticated and charming, a tall, dark, and striking rogue biker, dressing under his privilege and affluence. He is the paragon of success…

Except his money is in Linden dollars, his real name is Ric Hoogestraat, he is married to a different woman, and he makes 14 dollars an hour as a call center employee.

Hold that thought.

Those who have shared the unique honor and abject horror of meeting me for the first time are usually aware of two things. That I am a modern progressive, and unapologetic about it, and if you remain in contact with me, your life will never be the same.

As a technologically savvy college graduate, a computer nerd and hacker, a twisted combination of introspective nerdy chic and a X-Gen socializing cross between computer gamer and Ferris Bueller, a government contracted Sys Admin no less, I am the last person who should be saying this…

I despise Second Life. I hate everything it stands for. I abhor the concept, and deep down I know why. I daresay, deep down you know why too.

When I was a kid, I fantasized about designing a game like Second Life, although it was more of a fantasy world more reminiscent of World of Warcraft. I told kids at school I was playing it everyday, every question they asked was followed with a detailed description of the game, a complete fabrication, but a lucid one that my childhood friends shared in absurdity and wild excitement, “You mean there are thousands of skeleton soldiers as an army?” It was a dream of mine to one day have the means to produce such a game, to create a complete world, where one could pick up a rock and throw it at the person in front of them, knock down a tree, explore a complex, detailed world, where one could set out alone to find rare artifacts and spells or engage in collective, orchestrated battles of nations. To sail the ocean endlessly, or turn yourself into a gallivanting cut-purse, pillaging and stealing from others.

I have learned a lesson, and that dream is long since shattered and swept under the fridge. Second Life is an attack of the only cure we have against delusion right now. Technology, the free flow of information, mass of data and knowledge, all dangerously fragile, all subject to the same uncontrolled and arbitrary method of destruction that has already destroyed the media.

Escapism.

Never mind for now that Second Life has major crime issues, and virtual fraud. A millionaire in Second Life is not a millionaire in real life, but it would take a real equivalent to match them in the virtual world. In order to obtain multi millions in Lindens, it would cost you real money, and/or real “hard” work. The wall of representation and the seemingly mocking example of our real economic fiat continues. The one way exchange rate is L250 to $1. A banking firm in Second Life now might have to explain to a REAL federal investigator how he lost $L200,000,000, a real life $750,000 to people who used his bank. Think of the law nightmare this creates, and the very real possibility that it could undermine the concept of what is of real value to anyone.

This however, is not my concern.

I have re-read, for the fifth time, Fountainhead. In it, Ayn Rand predicted many things, all of which, I challenge anyone to question otherwise, have come true. From the exploration of space, to the eventual rule of the masses through media. In the most vivid scene to me, Gail Wynand gained control of the Gazette, changed the name to the Banner, and in the first publication, asked for donations to two causes. A starving scientist with promising new research, and a chambermaid with an illegitimate son. The overwhelming response to the story of the chambermaid is used in a staff meeting by Wynand to explain to his workers what the banner will be, sensationalism, and moral stories that nobody will disagree with, when there isn’t news, the Banner will make the news. She predicted Fox News. She predicted The Drudge Report. The is the first problem with Second Life.

Hold that thought.

In I Am a Strange Loop Douglas Hofstadter details the idea of “soul shards”, people as the abstract existence of memory. Imagine a small piece of paper with black dots on it, a written compilation of Beethoven, arraigned and designed perfectly to the exact specifications of the artistic genius composer himself. All of us share Beethoven, a piece of him, a component of his mind, with something as small as a hand-written note. Our memories of people in pictures, writings, works, and anything that gives us one sudden neurological response to them, is in essence all the technological wave, the destroyed of gods has given us. But it is not without its’ power. These shards, these pieces of people effect thousands, millions, and some, billions of people. You will not see your favorite dog, or your mother, or your great-aunt when you die. You can however, look at picture and enjoy the millions of sudden reflections in your mind of that object of sentiment. When you die, others will do the same for you. In this sense, what is your contribution to the memory of your family and friends, those closest now, who, would be the champions of your deepest thoughts and life tribulations. What do you create in a world that is automatically the abstraction. Are you really represented, are you anything remotely yourself. This is Second Life’s second problem.

Hold that thought.

Ayn Rand’s most important lesson was not new, but it was the most detailed. The destruction of the “I”. Selflessness specifically combined with the shameful reality of indulgence of the absurd, the gossip, the fall of great people, the cheaters, the extraordinary, the bold lettered headlines shouting loudly the harrowing mob desires. Second Life is indeed two lives, but not because it rapes from your real life. It is the destruction of the “I” and it is science and technology’s companion to Fox News, The Drudge Report, the modern tabloid and the greatest evils ever perpetuated upon man. The evil of allowing easy access to the destruction of the self, easy access to the dissemination of the amazing collection of real knowledge, the allowance and joyous suppression of the facts buried in the opinions of men who know the rise to power is through the collective and genuflecting “selfless” people, who in their misery of their own lives, seek the justification of their existence in the faceless news reels, the promotion of charity through idea that merely being against something matters, who watch and learn with fast moving and simple moral standards, commentaries by men who have never written an original word honored as heroes of a culture war, public memorials to remove the shame at having watched secretly in desire to see the car crash, the joy of watching starlets entering rehab, gain weight, and fall from grace, so one could suddenly feel righteous by being the first to forgive them, the average housewife detailing the pity shared of husbands of wealthy socialites who cheated, have in turn vindicates themselves, watching in senseless shame a hurricane barely miss a major city, and sigh that it was a pity; these people to be given the idea that they are part of a fair and balanced existence, who, as the spiral of self-loathing continues, drives the repression into the fantasy realms of Second Life and World of Warcraft. These are the people from my end, my side of life that should know better. Instead, the nausea has seeped into the last stronghold of intellectual discourse. A free thinking person should fear the control of the mass mediocrity, the same as one should fear the control of the masses by one.

This is the final blow, the mixing of the real Second Life, the meaning of it all. We are already shells of other lives. Integrity is a dead art. We are escapists in everything, including now, our love, our money, our entire physical lives.

This is the path to a totalitarian democracy.
The future dystopia will have a second life, the greatest conceived tool of the enshrined mediocrity, but I assure you, it will not be called second life.

Sources:
Wall Street Journal
Associated Content