'I'm real. He's Fake."

A highlight of the SLCC10 conference was the showing of Life 2.0, a documentary film -- or should we call it a docu-drama -- about real people in Second Life.

The film concentrates on the lives of three characters, an American woman who finds online love with a Canadian and then disappointment; a young man who makes a girl child avatar and dredges up his repressed memories of abuse as a child, losing his RL fiance in the process; and Asri Falcone, a black female entrepreneur from Detroit who makes a successful prefab and fashion business, but then has to fight in a class action lawsuit to defend her intellectual property rights.

The movie therefore touches the dark depths of Second Life -- and some would argue, unnecessarily so -- before swimming up for air and having the various characters marched through their Bildungsroman into a resolution that involves at least insight if not happiness.

The film, made by Jason Spingarn-Koff, was shown at Sundance, and has now been purchased by OWN, which is Oprah's network.

Like I said, The Society of the Spectacle is your book for this occasion...

In an after-talk after the showing, Spingarn-Koff, who shows himself throughout the movie as basically a silent guy with a camera on his shoulder, detached from the world, referenced reality TV "which began in the 1970s" as the history for this genre in which his SL film is situated.

I don't know if he meant to reference the Loud Family -- "An American Family" on PBS -- which was a kind of 1970s cult classic -- he is perhaps too young to remember it or even know it. I remember the Louds, and the gay son Lance, who introduced Andy Warhol silver hair and swish posturing for the first time on mass TV. Poor Lance died at the age of 50, a meth addict with hepatitis C, but in his glorious youth, he and his mom would walk arm and arm around Washington Square Park and Times Square and have heart-to-heart talks, then he would repair to the Chelsea Hotel, where he'd lounge on the beds with his friends and talk about parties and art in the emerging gay scene in the Village in those days. It's strange to see their big glasses and big scarves and hear their funny faintly southern drawl of those days -- they were from California, but they spoke in the sort of precious tonality of the newly self-aware that you often hear in TV voices of that era that you don't hear today.

The Louds divorced on TV, and all their problems were there for everyone to discuss, only then, it was riveting to people -- the way the Supreme Soviet was riveting to Soviets seeing their parliament real and on TV for the first time -- and hard to understand in hindsight as much of anything special.

Of course, there is much contrived in "reality TV," and this "documentary" of SL has selectivity and dramatization of its own, which proved grounds for a furious debate at SLCC. Jason parried a number of hostile and hurt questions from the audience which likely he never had to hear from any of his others showings.

The hurt whining -- nay, shrieks -- went like this:

"SL isn't like this. You're only portraying the dark side."

"We're educators. You didn't show us. SL isn't all sex and divorcing RL spouses. It's about enlightening builds and projects and you're not showing that."

"Why, my wife and I have been married for five years, we met in SL, and we're still together, and we have a happy life, and it's nothing like that."

I asked if he meant to have a cinema verite or documentary or drama -- a work of art, or a news chronicle. Because it was more of the "work of art" sort in picking *these* dramas -- as common as they are. Merely because he picked ones with if not exactly happy endings, then at least progress.

There was one moment when somebody was standing up and ranting about how education wasn't shown, and *an entire faction* at SLCC that looked to be about 40 people *all sitting right next to each other at several tables* went up in a roar, "Yeah! Educators!"

I goggled -- and began to loathe even more --these politically-correct freaks who couldn't grasp the fundamental even PC message of this film that they'd usually be promoting in another setting:

BLACK FEMALE EMPOWERMENT.

HELLO!

Now why didn't anyone mention that? I had my hand up to ask a second question about this, but there wasn't time. But I *marvel* at these self-righteous Marian Librarian types that couldn't embrace and celebrate Asri's story. What the HELL is wrong with them?

Afterward, hanging around with some of the PC geek and edu set, I asked them. One remarked, "But she was portrayed negatively in RL."

SNORT, says I. Why? Because she is shown getting up at 6 pm in the evening in a messy basement apartment with boxes strewn around, and waddling over to her PC in her pajamas. Yay! You get to play SL and make money in your pajamas! You go girl!

She is also shown with her family eating Mom's homecooked food, which had plenty of ribs and mac and cheese and such. Yay!

But for the PC set, this wasn't acceptable or appropriate for their crusading messaging. She was portrayed "negatively" just because she was portrayed *in reality*.

In fact, her story was generally a positive one. Here was this black woman in Detroit, with relatives either unemployed or having to work menial low-paying jobs requiring getting up very early in the morning, who was able to break out, and make a decent salary from this virtual world. She claimed in the movie she was making six figures at one point -- a claim that one finds hard to believe, mainly because you wonder why, with that kind of dough, she didn't transform her RL house.

But...it's because her business was terribly precarious and suddenly, when thieves swept in and stole her stuff and began selling it for free everywhere, she was terribly vulnerable. She had to close...and then started a lawsuit with others with the famous Frank Tanner -- it was the suit against the guy named Raise Kano or something who copied stuff with the sim reset trick. She only was able to win about $500 US back, but it emboldened her to reopen with a new line and persist.

And I can see why even this politically-correct pitch-perfect story didn't satisfy the fussy edutarians. *She didn't give away content for free; it wasn't "progressive"; it was CMF high heels (er, that stands for "come fuck me," did you know that? lol I didn't).

In the PC edutopia that these freaks live in, unless black people come and make installations about how we can save energy and fight evil oil companies for free in edu-sims, they aren't acceptable.

That's really what it's all about. Here's a remarkable film, that gets us away from all the stereotypes of the black female -- the performer, the star, the long-suffering mom with numerous kids, the whore. And instead, shows us a savvy and sharp business woman who gets up a business in SL and makes it work and keeps making it work and builds a community of customers and friends -- and defies the stereotypes. The deepest and most positive relationship shown in the film is between Asri and another Second Life heroine, Misty Rhodes (former Mia Linden), the grandmotherly helper extraordinaire (an actual RL grandmother) in SL who many people found as newbies (myself included). There's a scene where Asri and Misty run toward each other in Las Vegas meeting for the first time at a meet-up that's been arranged for SLers, and you realize that this sort of black-white friendship, made possible in SL, is still infrequent in RL and that SL helped make it possible.

But of course, that wouldn't fit the PC edu-stereotypes of SL, where they'd rather claim that blacks experience racism and that evil corporate commodification exploits minorities, or some other claptrap.

So shame on the educators. Shame on them! I was FURIOUS. This really pulled the lid off their entire shtick for me. I added to the many reasons I find them hateful and phony -- their inability to see that this film embodies the very values that they claim to have been teaching us for years -- and yet when it arrives, they can't accept it because it just isn't quite *socialist* enough for them, now, is it?

If Asri had made a reproduction of Guantanamo and hung out with Tech Soup, then they would have loved her. If Misty wasn't a Linden or a newbie helper who loved shopping but was in AWGroupies fixing opensource bugs, they would have loved her. But they weren't. They were real! Real people! God, that scares educators!!!

The other figures studied in the movie of course were less positive, but their experiences were REAL too. They were typical -- bog-standard typical. All of the people in this movie are MY TENANTS. There are way, way, WAY more of people like them in SL than there are opensource nutcakes and edu sourpusses fussing about the inability to copy their build...which is a...box with power point textures on it about solar energy lol.

The American who met the Canadian is a 30-something woman who somehow gets on SL and finds she is spending more and more time and getting more and more smitten with this lanky Canadian who shows her a wonderful time on various exotic islands and settings and engages her in hot avatar sex. Her husband is never shown or discussed in the movie, which gives us our first indication that all was not well with him even before she logged on. Her daughter is about 9, and perched on a pet virtual world.

The woman seems sort of goofy and almost drugged through most of her discussion about her torrid SL love affair. That's how people get. The man seems somewhat enigmatic, and basically a hustler -- he brings her to have Zen breathing lessons, then urges her to "strip down to our loincloths" (*rolls eyes*) and handily has the sex poseballs right next to the meditation pose balls -- which is one of those tacky Western Zen sorts of scenes that are as common as dirt in SL. Of course there is tantric yoga and all that, but most Zen meditation exercises aren't set up as foreplay for their practitioners -- there's something low-life about it all, of course.

No matter. This is popular culture on the Internet, and people find it compelling. The two become so engrossed that they even go on Skype after SL, and lay down in their beds and gaze at each other's faces on Skype video as they fall asleep. They have a RL meet-up, and he comes for a trial life together -- and it doesn't work out.

This is the part I'd love to watch over again to try to figure out what went wrong. Maybe she began to detect that all was not so well in paradise with him. Maybe he was starting to show too much wierd agression and the Zen mask was starting to slip. In any event, even though they both break with their spouses, and upset the kid by having the online boyfriend move in, they end up breaking up. Or so it seems. He describes in a strange trance-like interview at the end that they have "broken free from Second Life" but he's gone to India to an ashram or something.

She suddenly says, with painful clarity, "I'm real. He's fake." Haven't we all been there in Second Life!

The story of the man who makes the little girl in SL is definitely creepy, and I'd be happier if I had not watched it. To be sure, the film sanitizes out any possible sexual angle, portraying the character as basically PG and not acting out any adult sexual relationships, but even so, it has all the creep factor that you always suspect in SL from people who insist that their kids are just innocent role-players.

This man is more addicted than the others and without the benefit of a job, like Mia Linden, or a business, like Asri, or even at potential RL relationship, like the American woman. His creepy little girl in her school uniform goes on murderous rampages with machine guns and suicide bomb belts and gets banned.

It's then that Philip Linden comes on. He explains with a kind of disconnected technological briskness that Linden Lab cannot govern people's lives for them. Sure, if they disrupt the experience of others to the point of machine-gunning everybody at a pool unexpectedly, yeah, they'll ban them for 24 hours, and permanently if they keep doing that. But if marriages break up, if people act out dark fantasies, if shit happens, well, that's not his problem because he is only a platform provider.

I'm paraphrasing, but that's how the eerie Zen calm that is Philip, the engineer of SL and of human souls as a consequence, comes across. And of course, that has more creepy consequences even than the loathsome little suicide-bombing girl-child.

There isn't a quick answer here, because you can't have Linden Lab in charge of saving people's marriages, or preventing them from breaking up or even, except for the extreme limits, oppressive dark and murderous fantasies.

It's the Society of the Spectacle, after all.

Comments

[melponeme_k]

The Love Machine world...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7kwcIImGM8

Philip Linden doesn't understand the world he created anymore than the dark underpinnings of his own behavior toward the people inside it. He is brilliant, no denying that just not wrapped tightly.

[Steam Bunjie]

Hate to bust the bubble but everyone's fake, your only real when you get to explore yourself in Second Life.

How ever dark that maybe....

The real world is just a bunch of bollocks, where by everyone puts on the best fake face they can, in order to get that new job, promotion, or opportunity.

When you can be anyone but yourself, you will end up finding out your true self.

I'm sure that would make sense to sigmund freud.

[Debi Latte]

The behavior of people within the technology of Second Life is no different from how they behaved in chat rooms since the early 90s. I've watched relationships form and flourish.... I've seen marriages come to their ends because of the fantasy created in the minds of the people behind the computer screens. The technology doesn't make this happen.... people do. The difference in SL is avatars and animations.... things chatters had to use their imaginations to "see" in years past.

So... no... people's behavior isn't Philip's responsibility. He had the vision to create this 3D world which would allow the users (residents) to create their parts within it. It's not going to be any more perfect than the real world is. If we go in-world thinking that it will be some perfect rosy-colored-glasses world, then we are truly mistaken.... and, quite frankly, just don't "get it" at all.

[melponeme_k]

No, Philip Linden has responsibility for what goes on in SL.

The people who created the chat rooms of hold had responsibility.

They are responsible to instill ethical policies in their worlds and in their employees. Something none of them did. Which means the internet and it's worlds are a reflection of the poor social abilities of it's creators. We live in a world created by people who really didn't like other people. And oh boy how it shows.

[Treasure Ballinger]

I like the title. Can I wear it on my new upcoming Display name tag? /me ponders black/white friendships, nods. Is true what you said. In that aspect, the internet has made things better; when you know the heart of someone, before seeing their face, you have less tendency to run; fear of the unknown is always powerful, there is mostly no fear of the known. I didn't know any white people until I got to college. I had to widen my comfort zone, and still..it's hard to open your heart to what you've been afraid of. At any rate, hats off to Asri, awesome story and I wish I'd seen it. I wonder if they'll show that film, anywhere else now that Oprah's company owns it. And yes, shame on the educators who could not see the value in something where the value should have been obvious.

[Debi Latte]

melponeme.... how does someone begin to carry the load for all the responsibility for how people act in something as large as Second Life? And.... who's to say who's in charge of the world, at large? They've set some fairly basic TOS guidelines about not being violent (unless in a role-play scenario) .. and not being "ugly" (for lack of a better general term) toward other races and religions. But..... for someone to be responsible for how everyone behaves?

I ran a "chat room of old" and worked very hard to make sure it was a friendly place where people were comfortable to come meet and talk to friends. BUT.... am I completely responsible for what each person said? Who was responsible when I went to sleep? If someone met a new friend, fell in love, dissolved a marriage, travelled across the country, fell out of love, etc.... was I in charge of their behavior?

And... quite frankly... maybe some of these people should be held responsible... since they created the initial technology upon which the current "internet" resides .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

Eventually... WE need to start assuming responsibility for our own actions. We have got to stop relying on someone else to take us by the hand and remind us all how to behave. We also need to realize that what is socially un-acceptable for us may be perfectly normal behavior for someone in another country or culture. We need to learn from that. No one else (including Philip Linden) is responsible for my actions... either in Real Life or in any iteration of being online... whether it be the "chat rooms of old" or the current, more dimensional metaverse.

[Prokofy Neva]

Debi, I hear you, I think you can't ask the platform provider to play net-nanny, any more than you ask your telephone or electricity companies to do anything -- in that sense they should behave like a utility. Telephone and electricity companies have rules about gross abuse but of course...it's different.

This is a world like a government where in fact the platform "utlity" get very involved. They make decisions that affect the moral code and not only the physical code. They have decided arbitrarily to open up to 16 year olds largely for business reasons to get them out of the jam of ending a product that some people will get angry about, and also merely to increase sign-ups which are lagging. There's no reason they couldn't make it 18 and older only, like a porn site or an R movie, but they don't because they have also aspirations to some higher utopian all ages world.

You don't want Philip Linden to say "I'm going to control it so that people's marriages can't break up." But you would wish he, as the god of the world, as some kind of authority, would say "It's sad, and ultimately that's not what I mean by a better world."

Instead, it comes off cold and cynical if he makes it seem as if he can "do nothing".

Of course, there isn't a clear cut thing for him "to do," other than to say, merely as a citizen of the world, my invention was intended to enlighten, not deceive, but once again, it reveals the dark springs of the human heart.

[Stacy Passell/Ruby Destiny]

I find the particular choice of a marriage-ruining, failed SL to RL relationship not only pandering to the trite media "zomg cheaters" mentality, which has been consistently reported for years out of balance from more positive stories like mine, and it did nothing to fill the dearth of stories about all the successful sl to rl relationships which in fact is desperately needed.

Far as I've seen, the media is still choosing these trite examples of the urban mythology of SL. Shame there aren't more stories about using virtual worlds to find love instead of destroy it. Shame it's always about the back-alley lurid details, as it always is in the media.

http://sl2rllove.blogspot.com/

[Prokofy Neva]

Truth in advertising Stacy, geez, you're lame. You run an online dating service with the email "Virtual Courtship" that promises to help people find true love on line, and apparently sells them skins and rentals. Well, great idea for a business, hon, but you can't expect the professional real-life media to pander to *your* need to flog your business plan.

The media choses examples that are low-hanging fruit for the taking. I've seen numerous relationships EXACTLY like this in my life as a landlord. In fact, some of the very, very famous heavily rotated "dream come true" romances flogged by media in the hype phase of SL ended on the rocks in horrible ways. Addiction to online love that ends in RL marriage often regresses right back to finding a new online love again, in search of that high. I've seen some people go through serial online loves and even marriages in that fashion.

If there are exceptions, great, but don't expect the media to serve as your personal propaganda megaphone because you're feeling insecure that maybe your online love isn't so authentic as you wish. That's what it's about: anger rooted in insecurity.

When there are more happy stories that are genuine, you won't have to come on and flog your line, Stacy. But there aren't, so...that's what you do, getting a high out of your sense of self-righteous indignation.

[True Religion Outlet]

this is her first book of personafdal essays. It was the last part of the review that inspired me to get online immediately and write this entry while the bundle of cuteness pictured above sleeps at my feet.