Linden Lab, You Fail at Advertising

Second Life is not yet a successful communications technology. There are many flaws, but I feel the biggest flaw it has is its current reputation. Before I knew I was going to have to use Second Life in this class I had seen it in a few different places. Both of which were on different television shows.

The first place I saw it was in an episode of CSI. The writers of CSI made it seem like some cool type of technology, but the role it had was in a slightly lesser light. The basis of the episode was that a serial killer was hunting down her different targets through Second Life. She then stalked them, and found their profile for personal information. This is how she found them in real life, and how she ended up killing her targets. Any game that you could be stalked through and killed would be unappealing, no matter how cool it looks.

The other place I saw Second Life was on an episode of The Office. One of the characters, Dwight, explains Second Life as “not a game. It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn’t have points or scores. It doesn’t have winners or losers.” To which the character Jim responds “Oh it has losers.” Later in the episode, Dwight creates a a game called Second Second Life within Second Life. This is for people who while playing their avatars, want to play avatars. This representation makes Second Life look like a dorky game that only losers play.

Just recently I was talking to one of my friends across the hall. I was talking about how we use Second Life in class to help us with our writing. My friend said something along the lines of “isn’t that one of those games that 30 year old losers play in their mom’s basement?” It is this image that is hindering Second Life’s advancement in the communication technology front. To someone who doesn’t know anything about Second Life, he had the “creepy” vibe. Linden Lab needs to fix this, and use their money to better promote Second Life, not as a serial killers paradise or loser hot spot.