Category: entertainment

The week’s big news is that Reuters spilled the beans. Thanks to their new Second Life News Center the entire world knows about Second Life. Orientation Islands are neck-deep in new arrivals, the peak daily usage has jumped to over 12,000, and Infohubs are overrun with newbie avatars.

The other day, I heard a CBC radio interview with Adam Pasick — the new Reuters bureau chief for Second Life. He’s quite articulate, and seems to have a strong understanding of what Second Life is all about — that it is not a game. The CBC interviewer, sadly, completely failed to grasp the concept of a shared virtual online environment, and repeatedly referred to it as “fictional”, and suggested that any news about the Second Life world would be like writing a movie script.

Here’s a tip to anyone in the news media: Second Life lets real people interact as real people in a virtual environment. Events in Second Life are as real as anything on the Web, for example. You might as well claim that Amazon.com isn’t real.

I suppose that, like any new technology, it may take several years for it to gain general acceptance. Until then, it will be a curiosity on the news websites. (But then, maybe news websites aren’t even real either?)

Second Life also hit the Yahoo.com home page with a Yahoo Tech article, which sent another surge of sign-ups our way. Other mentions of SL in the media include Wired.com, as well a host of regional and local newspapers. Sadly, most of the comments on the Yahoo page are things to the effect of “get a real life, you fat losers”. However, most who make those comments don’t know anything about SL beyond the one Yahoo article, and even then they failed to comprehend what they were reading.

Be sure to visit an Infohub to say hello to our new residents. If they want go skydiving, send them to Abbotts. Fat losers are welcome.