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The Elevator Effect In Second Life
There is an good video on NPR about how real human reactions translate to the virtual world. It's interesting in view of the question posted here about rape in Second Life. The video covers a little experiment in SL where a reporter gets together with a psychologist to see if some unspoken human rules apply in the virtual world — such as staring or standing too close to someone. Perhaps surprisingly, in this world where you can be or do just about anything, you can't break these unspoken rules with impunity.
The video covers a little experiment in SL where a reporter gets together with a psychologist to see if some unspoken human rules apply in the virtual world -- such as staring or standing too close to someone. Perhaps surprisingly, in this world where you can be or do just about anything, you can't break these unspoken rules with impunity.
Well, yeah, you can, as long as you don't get caught, if you know what I mean.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
you can break all these rules with impunity because there is no real consequence, unlike in actual life.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Humans have human nature and human psychological responses. Film at 11.
Slashdot has never had a great signal to noise ratio, but it sure as hell is getting worse by the day. What a useless waste of bytes!
SL is not really unique or different to any other aspect of the online world. People in forums giving others volley after volley of abuse for very little reason. If it was in the real world and you had to look someone in the eye you react very differently to the online world where I am sitting at a desk typing on a computer which nobody else knows about. Second life isn't showing some unique symptom here, it is simply a 3D and graphical representation of the same type of behaviour that has been occurring since the online world began back in the BB days.
Ok, Second Life may or may not be pretty cool, but why is there one Slashdot article about it every two or three days? World of Warcraft is at least ten times as popular but does not get anywhere near the same coverage as Second Life does. It smells fishy.
:)
For example, there was this article about a woman offering sex for 5000 World of Warcraft gold. It did not reach Slashdot. That ten times as funny and definitely more "interesting" than some kind of psychological experiment.
Football Odds
Maybe you should get a first life?
Second Life is like cyberpunk hell. Want to know what Second Life looks like? Read Snowcrash, then take out anything at all cool about that world. It is one big unending strip mall comprised mostly of casinos, sex shops, and brothels.
Second Life is in no danger of becoming anything bigger. It is messy, awkward to use, and has little interesting going on in it. Something more interesting might grow from the original idea (which in truth, is not all that original), but it has a long way to go before it even begins to touch the sort of mass media acceptance of games like World of Warcraft.
for 15 minutes of server time (minus their own bandwith of course).
What would really be news about 2ndL would be if anything remotely interesting every occurred there other than the opportunity to fulfil Andy Warhol's prediction.
2ndL has reached critical popular media mass and is now the bench mark for any pile of crap broadcast or written about a group of idiosyncratic individuals.
Imagine, if you can, way back in the pre-digital era, what you would have thought if someone claimed to be living a "second life" in the Monopoly Board World where you had your own wee little car and a silver shoe.
There's a lot more rubbish to be written about 2ndL - when it is involved in murder or is discovered to be a conduit for drugs or when something so unbelievable happens that the word "Circus" will not be strong enough. It hasn't happened yet, but it will.
It has been mentioned before many times on slashdot but it always remains worth repeating go: http://www.getafirstlife.com/
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My WoW experience is slightly different. Surely I've seen some cases when WoW characters (or rather players behind them) followed those 'unspoken rule' the video is talking about, but in the majority of cases they didn't. The reason is simple, in WoW all the characters are transparent, there is no 'pushing' effect or anything similar. The chars can simply go *through* each other (and they often do). I am sure you've seen the scenes in the Auction Hall or near mail boxes in all large cities, where literally dozens of chars are standing *on* each other. What social distance! Compared to that, SL does allow some kind of 'physicality' of the contact, which therefore leads to a stronger push to follow the 'social' rules (and stronger punishment for not doing so). Again, I don't want to say that social rules are not present in WoW; they are; in a way, the message of this video is just too obvious for me. However, it also slightly misses the point by not taking into account the qualities of the 'medium' (which as we know, an essential part of the 'message').
Real Life is like soul's hell. Want to know what Real Life looks like? Read [insert religious text here], then take out anything at all cool about that world. It is one big undending strip mall comprised mostly of casinos, sex shops, and brothels.
Real Life is in no ganger of becoming anything bigger. It is messy, awkward to use, and has little interesting going on in it. Something more interesting might grow from the original idea (which in truth, is not all that original), but it has a long way to go before it even begins to touch the sort of mass media acceptance as games like Fantasy.
but it has a long way to go before it even begins to touch the sort of mass media acceptance of games like World of Warcraft.
The interesting thing is that SL is the only online virtual world (for want of a better term) in which inhabitants can actually make a lasting change in the world which is tangible for other players.
In There you can introduce new textures or models at an exorbitant cost and at risk of losing $$$ when your texture or model is rejected. Oh and they approve models which cannot be placed in world due to an error in your model (they still charge you for it). But you cannot drop any object other than a vehicle or a PAZ; eg you can't drop clothing on the ground. Nothing is interactive apart from vehicles (sit and ride), chairs (sit), signposts (read and maybe post text). You cannot have a locked door or container which requires possession of another object (eg a key).
In WoW no changes that the inhabitants make is persistent (except, sometimes, for them). Kill something and it (mostly) respawns. Complete a quest by removing some supposedly unique artifact from some location and for another player the artifact is still there waiting to be picked up. Or, eg, turn someone into a rabbit for a quest and its only you who see the rabbit, not other players who still see the satyr and can talk to it and turn it into a rabbit. It is a truly bizarre, surreal world.
In SL you can actually create something in the world and leave it there for someone else to find.
As much as I hate SL, at least it has a sense of persistent interactivity.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.