John Edwards' Campaign Enters Second Life

politics 2.0 writes "It may not be an official effort — yet — but thanks to a grass-roots effort, John Edwards has become the first presidential candidate to set-up-shop in Second Life. Jerimee Richir, whose avatar is called Jose Rote, paid-for and developed Edwards' virtual headquarters, and, on a voluntary basis, is managing the in-world campaign. Considering that Second Life's user numbers are much smaller than other social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook — aside from generating press coverage — will campaigning in Second Life actually win many votes? Rote says yes, and that 'Second Life users are a unique audience, in that, they are first adopters. It is a smaller community, but I would argue it is a more influential community.'"

Comments

Second life is influential? Its a scam!

[tomhudson]

"It is a smaller community, but I would argue it is a more influential community"

Second Life is a ponzi scheme.

http://randolfe.typepad.com/randolfe/2007/01/secon dlife_revo.html
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/24/ 1319236

Re:Second life is influential? Its a scam!

[vadim_t]

That article made no sense at all.

(typing from memory, so I might get details wrong) Economist goes into SL, tries to earn cash from their internal currency which is *controlled by Linden Lab*, fails, and declares SL a scam.

There's one important detail he missed here: LL controls the currency, and buys and sells as required to maintain a stable value. That means that after the percentage LL takes for buying/selling, the amount you can earn from simple buying/selling of currency is very little, if anything at all. No surpsise that he failed. But then, since when "making money in SL" was supposed to be done like in a stock market?

SL has a services based economy. You make/do something for me, I pay you for it. The concept of a ponzi scheme simply doesn't apply in that situation, because a Ponzi scheme is an investment scam, and nobody sane earns money in SL by investing it. What there is is a straightforward system of supply and demand.

in other SL news

[asv108]

Second Life population figures are completely inflated.

From Valleywag.

Now that Linden is publishing actual user numbers, we can see that the Residents figure, as expected, is a big overcount over actual people (about 50% inflation, in fact, accounting for over a million ersatz users). Second Life doesn't have two million users. They have had two million users over the life of the service, and they've lost most of them. Of those users, the majority -- something like 5 out of 6 -- bailed in the first month.

I'd like to ask him

[doomy]

What his views are on rape and pedophilia.

I've been in SL for over 2 year now and it seems to draw the worst kind of people.

For instance there are huge communities of people who are obsessed over the torture and enslavement of women, to the end that they treat women as animals. This has also leaked onto real life (ala Kaotians). Not to mention the horror stories I've heard from people who got into this after being involved in similar cults online.

I've had a friend from UK, who used to be a slave in one of these online cults. Her online Dom (Master) ordered her execution after not being satisfied with her. The order was carried out by her roommate who was also a slave to this dude (guy is in Denmark). This girl tied a rope around my friend while she was unconscious and tied the other end to her car and drove. Lucky the rope snapped and broke, but it put my friend in hospital for over 200+ days. While the girl who did this is in prison, the person who ordered this crime is still free.

Then there are the pedophiles, I've been campaigning against them for quite a while in Second Life. For the life of me, I cannot think why an adult want to have have sexual role play with another who is pretending to be a 2 or 5 year old boy or girl, and wears a photo mapped skin of real child (completely realistic with nothing censored). I do not understand these people and I think by their use of the photo mapped skin they are doing something illegal.

I've asked many times why Lindens allow this, but they have refused to answer this question.

Mod up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at the Feb 15, 2003 protests in Raleigh, NC. You know, the protests BEFORE the war, to PREVENT the Iraqi quagmire the Neocons dragged us all into. It was obvious as hell at that time that the Iraq invasion was based on lies. Yet Edwards would not come out and say so. The pictures in the media of Edwards holed up in his home were priceless.

Unfortunately it looks like NO candidates in the major parties are worth supporting this go around. Sigh ... a Dean/Kucinich ticket would have stomped Bush, but the Dems couldn't actually come out and be Democrats that year.

Re:Who actually *plays* SL anyway?

[CronoCloud]

I'll try to answer that question, as best I can anyway.

SL is more popular in the US than in other parts of the world, but the demographics are changing. (Mor French and Italians showing up, for example)

SL appeals not to hardcore geeks, or to the WoW crowd but to several groups:

artistic folks, like those who use photoshop for work/study in RL, RL jewelry designers, clothing designers, art students, etc.

social geeks: these folks might have hung out in certain communities in IRC and do pretty much the same in SL, The furries might be considered part of this group

those who see something interesting in the scripting and object creation tools and try to make cool stuff.

but overall, everyone who is in SL is in there just to have whatever fun and enjoyment they can find that they like. It could be pr0n and boobehs, it could be just hanging out with friends, it could even be shopping, or playing Tringo.

I guess SL is what the individual makes of it.