second life

ever since seeing second life in the flesh I've been kind of intrigued by it. it's really interesting to see an entirely fictional online forum for interaction that strives to be realistic. The addition of avatars and three dimensions really fleshes out the experience, while making it more fake at the same time. A webcomic author (toothpastefordinner.com) whose blog i read recently explored second life and wrote about it, making some interesting observations.

the first thing that he noticed was that everyone in second life is attractive, the first concession to vanity that people make when they are online. having the freedom to create and entirely new persona allows for infinite freedom but really we all want the same thing, to be pretty. this leads to the next thing people like to do in second life, have sex. the funny thing about this is that they tend to pay money for this, ie to get the proper equipment one has to buy a penis. then they go to the online strip club and pay more for some virtual lap dancing. This is in contrast to the earlier forms of the internet where people were still having sex all the time but they did it for free once they found a willing partner. The new level of complexity is fabulous.

Of course there's also legitimate business going on in Second Life, but the porn was the first thing, just as any new media is capitalized first for sex and then for regular business. So, in the future the seedy conglomeration of strip clubs and sex shops will give way to a tidy street filled with upstanding business but one must never forget the sleaze that made it all happen.

the meta blog

comic on the left shamelessly stolen from xkcd.com

So, I'm starting my blog and I've decided that the proper thing to do in this day and age is be really self aware and blog about blogging. I was talking with friends over the weekend about journals, and the people that write them. We ended up deciding that they're not really written for the author, who can relive the experiences in memory, but with hopes that someday someone will read their work. Blogs take this feeling to the next level, people are almost guaranteed to read them so long as they are posted. Gone are the days of the private journal, now anyone can post their thoughts online and be read and criticized by the countless denizens of the web. But this comes at a cost, most people don't really have anything to say that's novel or compelling.

This is where the comic I posted comes in. The blogofractal is really just a garbled conglomerate of senseless statements that are constantly being recycled and made "new" again. It's the same way that 24 hour news channels broadcast news, and then broadcast about how they presented the news the first time until something better to report on comes along. This creates a realm of information where thoughts spread virally and infect everyone for a few days/weeks, ie any internet fad ever, and then is forgotten and thrown aside. the community as a whole is very dynamic and ultimately, fascinating. I can't wait to see what comes of it.