[tt] [technoliberation] Different world, same rat-race: Consumerism in Second Life
Eugen Leitl
<eugen at leitl.org> on
Fri Sep 14 09:15:32 UTC 2007
----- Forwarded message from Michael LaTorra <mlatorra at gmail.com> -----
From: Michael LaTorra <mlatorra at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:21:06 -0600
To: WTA Talk <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
Cc: technoliberation at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [technoliberation] Different world, same rat-race: Consumerism in Second Life
Reply-To: technoliberation at yahoogroups.com
INTRO: Perhaps we should not be surprised that people like buying the
same sorts of things in a virtual world that they do in "meat space":
clothes, cars, McMansions. But what really surprised me is how they
paid for stuff. People who could easily afford these things by paying
US dollars (most items cost from a few pennies up to few dollars,
except for real estate [fake estate?]) actually seem to prefer to work
at some low-paid, in-world job in Second Life so they can spend their
hard-earned Linden Dollars on stuff. -- Mike
...............................................
"Even in a Virtual World, 'Stuff' Matters"
Ed Regan for The New York Times
[1]http://tinyurl.com/373ghw
Janine Hawkins with her Second Life avatar Iris Ophelia. In the
virtual world, Ms. Hawkins earns Linden dollars and spends them
freely.
By SHIRA BOSS
Published: September 9, 2007
IT'S payday for Janine Hawkins. Not in the real world, where she is a
student at Nipissing University in Ontario, but in the online world of
Second Life, where she is managing editor of the fashion magazine
Second Style.
Linden Lab
The fashion-conscious female avatars in Second Life often shop for a
provocative look.
Ms. Hawkins, who in Second Life takes on the persona of Iris Ophelia,
a beauty with flowing hair and flawless skin, keeps a list of things
she wants to buy: the latest outfits from the virtual fashion mecca
Last Call, a new hairstyle from a Japanese designer, slouchy boots.
When she receives her monthly salary in Linden dollars, the currency
of Second Life, she spends up to four hours shopping, clicking and
buying. After a year and a half, she owns 31,540 items.
Living it up in Second Life is a break from Ms. Hawkins's part-time
job as a French translator, but she works just as hard in the virtual
world.
Last month, she earned 40,000 Linden dollars ($150), for interviewing
designers, arranging fashion shoots and writing about trends in Second
Life, called SL by frequent users. "I usually spend what I earn," Ms.
Hawkins said. "It's entertaining."
It also says a lot about the real world, especially when it comes to
earning and spending money.
When people are given the opportunity to create a fantasy world, they
can and do defy the laws of gravity (you can fly in Second Life), but
not of economics or human nature. Players in this digital, global game
don't have to work, but many do. They don't need to change clothes,
fix their hair, or buy and furnish a home, but many do. They don't
need to have drinks in their hands at the virtual bar, but they buy
cocktails anyway, just to look right, to feel comfortable.
Second Life residents find ways to make money so they can spend it to
do things, look impressive, and get more stuff, even if it's made only
of pixels. In a place where people should never have to clean out
their closets, some end up devoting hours to organizing their things,
purging, even holding yard sales.
"Why can't we break away from a consumerist, appearance-oriented
culture?" said Nick Yee, who has studied the sociology of virtual
worlds and recently received a doctorate in communication from
Stanford. "What does Second Life say about us, that we trade our
consumerist-oriented culture for one that's even worse?"
Second Life, a three-dimensional world built by hundreds of thousands
of users over the Internet, is also being used for education,
meetings, marketing and more obvious game playing. It's a wide world
with a lot going on, in multiple languages, and it can be real-life
enhancing for populations who are isolated for physical, mental, or
geographic reasons. But as a petri dish for examining what makes many
of us tick, Second Life reveals just how deep-seated the drive is to
fit in, look good and get ahead in a material world.
Many residents have lived the American dream in Second Life, and built
Linden-dollar fortunes through entrepreneurship. In what could have
been an ideal world, however, or one where anyone could be a Harry
Potter, Second Life has an up-and-down economy, mortgage payments,
risky investments, land barons, evictions, designer rip-offs, scams
and squatters. Not to mention peer pressure.
"Second Life is about getting the better clothes and the bigger build
and the reputation as a better builder," said Julian Dibbell, author
of "Play Money," which chronicles his year of trying to make a living
by trading virtual goods in online games. "The basic activity is still
the keeping up with the Joneses, or getting ahead of the Joneses, rat
race game."
TO have a Second Life, one needs a computer, the Second Life software,
and a high-speed Internet connection. You use a credit card to buy
Lindens, and Lindens earned during the game can be converted back into
dollars via online currency exchanges. Players start by choosing one
of the standard characters, called an avatar, and can roam the world
by flying or "teleporting" (click and go). Nobody can go hungry, there
is no actual need for warmer clothes or shelter, and there is much to
do without buying Lindens.
But walking around in a standard avatar, when there are so many ways
to buy a better appearance, is like showing up for the first day of
school dressed differently than all the other kids. You stick out as
different, as an SL "newbie."
"It's hard not to fall into that," Mr. Yee said. "There are shops
everywhere, so it's easy to say, 'Oh, O.K., I guess I'll get a better
pair of jeans.' "
Second Life was started in 2003 by a Silicon Valley techie inspired by
a sci-fi novel, "Snow Crash." It is owned by a private company called
Linden Lab. The original idea of the game was to unleash creativity.
Residents don't have to wear the latest fashions; they don't have to
look or act human at all. They can take any animal, robotic, or
inanimate form they want.
And while there is a minority population of animal characters, and
wearing butterfly wings is currently in vogue for humans, for the most
part the population is young women bursting from their blouses and
young men bulging with muscle. (Underneath the clothes are cyber
genitalia, sold separately. Mark Wallace, a blogger who writes about
Second Life, explained that the parts are not fashion accessories but
rather "a functional appliance" for, ahem, entertainment purposes.)
While a frequent criticism of Second Life is that spaces are often
empty and that there's "nothing to do," a crowd can be found at the
mall, just as it can in suburbia. For example, the Xcite! store, which
sells body parts, is "always crawling with avatars," said Mr. Wallace,
co-author of a forthcoming book, "The Second Life Herald." Fashion is
big business in Second Life, along with entertainment and land
development.
Big corporations like Toyota have set up islands in Second Life for
marketing. Calvin Klein came up with a virtual perfume. Kraft set up a
grocery store featuring its new products. But those destinations are
not popular.
"These brands that have this real-world cachet are meaningless in
Second Life, so most are ignored," said Wagner James Au, who blogs and
writes books about Second Life. "Just showing up and announcing 'We're
Calvin Klein' isn't going to get you anywhere." American Apparel
closed its virtual clothing shop, and Wells Fargo abandoned the island
it had set up to teach about personal finance.
Second Life exclusives do exist: A magic wand was a hot item at one
point, and the sex bed is currently in demand. ("If you lie on it with
more than one avatar, it's like you're in a porn movie," Mr. Au
explained.)
But the more mundane items are what really drive the economy: clothes,
gadgetry, night life, real estate. "People buy these huge McMansions
in Second Life that are just as ugly as any McMansions in real life,
because to them that is what's status-y," Mr. Wallace said. "It's not
as easy as we think to let our imaginations run wild, in Second Life
or in real life."
Mitch Ratcliffe, an entrepreneur and blogger, was an early resident of
Second Life and built a house with a lake. But he was soon
disillusioned with the upkeep involved with owning the property. "I
don't see why I would want my second life to be about the same
striving and profit that my first is," Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in a blog
entry about his Second Life adventures. He eventually reincarnated
himself as Homeless Hermes.
"People come by, see the user name and tell me how sorry they are that
I don't have a home. Why?" he wrote. "It's very middle class, very
staid in the way economic stigma is attached to a failure to get to
work." In the meantime, Homeless Hermes took up buying and selling
virtual land and has pocketed the equivalent of $800.
Land is the biggest-ticket item in Second Life, with Linden Lab
selling islands for $1,675, plus a $295-a-month maintenance charge.)
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, a Russian translator in New York who in
Second Life is a landlord known as Prokofy Neva, got into the game
three years ago and now owns hundreds of apartment buildings, houses
and stores that she rents out to about 1,500 tenants who pay from
$1.50 a month to $150 a month. She takes several hundred dollars a
month out of the game to pay real-world bills. Prokofy Neva herself
does not have a house. "If I did, I would rent it out," she said. "Why
not make money from it?"
She has, however, turned over virtual acreage for a land preserve and
public use. She and an architect friend were initially entranced by
the idea of creating artistic homes that could defy gravity, but they
discovered that there wasn't demand for that in Second Life.
"The average person wants a ranch house or a beach house," she said.
"They don't want even Frank Lloyd Wright." (She added, "These people
are my customers, so I respect that.")
Some residents do wear grunge clothing itself a status symbol in
Second Life because of the difficulty of replicating ripped and
stained clothing digitally. But the largest slice of the population
follows the crowd, and the crowd is not dressing up as dragons.
"The money is in the real-looking stuff: making skins with red lips
and smoky eyes, and stiletto boots," said Ms. Hawkins, the Second Life
fashion writer. First comes something popular, then the knockoffs.
Soon everyone has one. "People go for similar looks and similar
things," she said.
In Ms. Hawkins's online closet are avatars that let her move around as
a rubber ducky or as a fruit salad encased in gelatin. But those
identities are novelty items that usually stay on the shelf. When she
goes out in virtual public, Ms. Hawkins usually takes the form of Ms.
Ophelia, who has more than 250 pairs of shoes.
Items are real-world cheap an outfit usually costs $2 to $5 but they
can add up quickly. "It's so easy to buy something, you don't realize
how much you're spending," said Carrie Mandel, a homemaker and mother
in Chicago who spends two work days a week as well as evenings and
weekends on her Second Life business, selling pets.
One coveted status symbol in Second Life is a souped-up muscle car
called the Dominus Shadow. It currently costs 2,368 Linden dollars,
about $9 at the current rate of 268 Linden per dollar. Many players
pay that much every month for premium membership that lets them own
land, and all are sitting at computers with high-speed Internet
access. So why don't more people treat themselves to the prized
possession of a Dominus?
"It's expensive in-world," said Daniel Terdiman, author of the
forthcoming book "Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life." "You don't
think of how much things cost in real dollars; you think in Linden
dollars. When something is expensive, even though it comes out to a
few dollars, a lot of people don't want to spend that much money."
Although Linden dollars can be bought with a credit card, there is
evidence that the in-world economy is self-sustaining, with many
players compelled to earn a living in-world and live on a budget.
Surprisingly, many take on low-paying jobs. They work as nightclub
bouncers, hostesses, sales clerks and exotic dancers for typical wages
of 50 to 150 Linden dollars an hour, the equivalent of 19 to 56 cents.
A recent classified ad stated: "I am looking for a good job in SL. I
am sick of working off just tips." This job seeker listed potential
occupations as landscaper, personal assistant, actor, waitress and
talent scout.
Second Life players are evidently discovering what inheritors have
struggled with for generations: It's not as much fun to spend money
you haven't earned. Apparently, despite the common lottery-winning
fantasies, all play and no work is a dull game, after all.
"People don't take jobs just for the money," said Dan Siciliano, who
teaches finance at Stanford Law School and has studied the economies
of virtual worlds. "They do it to feel important and be rewarded."
And to buy more things. "A lot of exotic dancers want to become
models, so they can earn more money to buy more clothes," Ms. Hawkins
said.
It's not just vanity that drives people to dress up in Second Life.
It's also seen as good for business. Ms. Fitzpatrick, the landlady,
says she doesn't really care about how her avatar looks. But she cares
about what prospective tenants think. "I felt I had to go, finally,
and buy the hair and the suit," she said, "or my customers might think
I'm too weird."
Appearances count in Second Life's financial world, too. Banks and
stock exchanges are housed in huge, formal structures draped in marble
and glass. "People in the banking industry wear shiny silver suits and
are absurdly tall and have hired a couple people to walk behind them
in black suits with ear bugs and shoulder holsters," said Benjamin
Duranske, a lawyer who blogs about legal issues related to the virtual
world.
THE stock exchanges and banks in SL are imposing, but they are
unregulated and unmonitored. Investors fed Linden dollars into savings
accounts at Ginko Financial bank, hoping to earn the promised
double-digit interest. Some did, but in July there was a run on the
bank and panic spread as Ginko A.T.M.'s eventually stopped giving
depositors their money back. The bank has since vanished. With no
official law and order in Second Life, investors have little recourse.
Robert J. Bloomfield, a behavioral economist at Cornell University,
studies investor behavior in the real world and recently became
interested in how investors behave similarly in Second Life. "We know
the little guy makes lots of dumb mistakes," Professor Bloomfield
said. "They tend to be overly impressed by the trappings of success.
We see that magnified in Second Life."
Some Second Life residents are calling for in-world regulatory
agencies the user-run Second Life Exchange Commission has just begun
operating and some expect real-world institutions to become involved
as the Second Life population and economy expands. "It's a horse race
as to whether the I.R.S. or S.E.C. will start noticing first," Mr.
Duranske said
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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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