If you're familiar with Second Life, it's a pun you've heard before. Heck, you've probably even told it yourself. It's a typical straight-faced setup by someone talking about Second Life followed by the obvious punchline. It goes something like this:
Person enthusiastic about Second Life: "Something something something Second Life something something avatars in a virtual world something something create and do anything you can imagine."
Person new to Second Life: "Something something FIRST life!"
*rimshot*
The joke's formulaic, and and it never gets old because of things like sex-balls, furries, role-players, and other escapism elements of the imaginary "dark side" of Second Life that everyone's heard about that's supposed to be 99.999% of virtual worlds. People are willfully ignorant that the Internet has the *exact same stuff* and so poking fun of geeks who log into virtual worlds is an easy target, and hence, the easy "first life - second life" pun is dropped.
Case in point, Funky Winkerbean today:
http://www.seattlepi.com/fun/funky.asp?date=20090412
No, the artist doesn't mention Second Life specifically - possibly because the artist is clever enough to realize that they don't need to, possibly because most comedians realize that good parody and satire should make it obvious what's being poked fun at, without having to state it outright. And, in the comic, it's obvious, if not for the "First Life" punchline, but also for the use of the word "island" and also that Person Enthusiastic About Second Life is using a furry avatar or the standard "What is Second Life?" response being given - the kind we all give to people who are new to Second Life.
Truth is, the joke's gotten really really old for those of us who work with Second Life. But it's a joke inherently tied to the name. It's an obvious joke, and it has gotten to the point that when I, as a professional, am showing Second Life to someone new, or merely talking about it, I am waiting for that punchline. It's that frequent, and it gets in the way, because inevitably there's either an awkward explanation that follows, or worse, and uncomfortable silence.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Same Old Second Life First Life Joke
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7 comments:
Perhaps the solution in those situations is to short circuit the joke by telling a variation of it yourself at the beginning of the explanation. Something like, "I know many of you will wonder what's the point of a second life when you're struggling enough with your first life. Well, let me show you how Second Life can actually help you with that."
Just a thought.
I was wondering why (a) Les was wandering around in the Teen Grid, or (b) his 16-year-old daughter was wandering around in the main grid (18+).
Hiro, m'boy, it's like this: I think Second Life is the ultimate allegory to human life itself. It is as if God himself created the world, the lands, the heavens, and then gave man the tools to shape it in any form he wanted. He said to man “Here, I want you to have absolute creative freedom, I want to see beautiful cities rising over the waterfront, I want to see the exotic canals of Venice, I want to see outer space and detailed in a stunningly new and perfect vision.
Then man said “thx bro” and built a series of strip malls that sell VHS tapes of the finer points of Zebra / Goat fucking.
Yeah, that is VERY annoying indeed. I'm really tired of the fact that once people have made up their minds about something (in this case, SL), they dismiss it forever.
I find it the most hypocritical when members of other online communities (World of Warcraft, Digg, etc.) make snide remarks like "Second Life still exists?" or that SL residents need to "go outside and get a first life." Most of them spend a lot of time in front of their computer screens, too.
It's not the fact that the naysayers dislike SL; it is their smug self-righteous attitude about it that irks the hell out of me.
The fact that you use words like "online communities" indicates that you spend too much time in said "community"
GO OUTSIDE. NOW. The graphics are even BETTER, I assure you. You might even have a chance at having some kind of sex other than e-sex (smelly awkward sex with a crackwhore counts as sex fyi)
"... you spend too much time in said 'community'" says the person who spends her or his time trolling the comments of blogs.
I know several people making a living being creative and even helping kids learn in SL (I know them in real life too and they have normal lives and are far from the introverted 'geeks' the stereotypes suggest.) So I'm not knocking SL.
I explored SL and everything it offered from the commerce, the building, the fantasy role playing and my speciality of art galleries and concluded that it wasn't for me, not because it wasn't fun or challenging or rewarding but that it was too easy for a person like me to lose myself in my avatar.
The more I became a SL zealot the more I lived in a ghetto. Everything revolved around SL as the more time you spend there, the more you get whether it's friends or money usually both with a little effort. It wasn't enough, I wasn't growing, I was settling for the limitations and grimly enduring the lag to get my time sink in.
Too many people I knew only existed in SL and while I didn't really care to see their real life picture I was keenly aware of the separation of real life and SL, especially when I tried to communicate with them outside of SL. There is a reason why people make jokes about it because there are people who live vicariously through their characters.
I might pop in again and see what's changed though! (I am Daz Honey btw)
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