La Tourista
by Pixeleen Mistral on 04/11/06 at 1:26 pm
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
please ignore the missing textures and grey avatars
Rushing to fill a temporary lull in the breathless Second Life main stream media coverage, Urge Gainsbourg‘s meatspace typist – Matt Gross of the New York Times – published a carefully airbrushed account of his experiences as a weekend tourist in SL titled“It’s My (Virtual) World …”.
Experts agree – this gripping tale of virtual world tourism is a masterpiece of literary misdirection, starting with the implication that anyone can just happen to go to a Ben Folds show in SL. However, in “our world, our reality”, access to the Ben Folds event was tightly restricted to media and hand picked fans. Perhaps in gratitude for getting on the “A” list, Mr. Gainsbourg carefully averted his eyes from the two avatars with “missing texture” outfits and the grey goo clad avatar in article’s the photo.
After the obligatory a shout-out to Starwood Hotels’ Aloft property – which will somehow usher in an era of SL tourism – despite the fact that the “hotel” has only one model hotel room and you can never check in – Mr. Gainsbourg continues down the well-worn path of meatspace reporter tourist attractions with a trip to the American Apparel to buy clothes. Of all the clothing shops in SL, Mr. Gainsbourg somehow ended up at this standard stop on the Linden PR tour – pure coincidence, no doubt.
As usual, American Apparel is deserted and he reports, “There were no other customers and no model-gorgeous employees”. Evidently it is not worthy of comment that this most heavily RL hyped clothing store cannot generate any significant avatar traffic – except from PR addled journalists who believe wearing American Apparel in SL makes them look less like tourists.
The article continues with more of the obligatory PR shout-outs recycled from other publications – Virtual refugee camps to educate people about Darfur! Virtual Hallucinations experiment! Virtual ecosystem in Svarga!
A vacation is nothing without the spicy suggestions of something naughty – this is gently broached as Mr. Gainsbourg observes, “I considered for a moment going to the strip club I’d accidentally wandered into earlier”. Temptation is resisted somehow and Mr. Gainsbourg briskly moves on to an account of making a delicious RL dinner – then ties it all together with perhaps one of the best long-form ad copy tags I have seen for SL, “an especially satisfying meal — and I knew exactly why: because, as Second Lifers understand all too well, I’d made it myself”.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gainsbourg did not happen upon any of the in-world content creators who want to make things themselves and are deeply unhappy with the LL island price increases and instability of the world. As a tourist is is easy to ignore the petty issues of the locals – particularly on guided tours – but this can come at a price. Mr. Gainsbourg did not touch on the possibility of a case of virtual Montezuma’s Revenge.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 4th, 2006
When I saw this piece I quickly came to the conclusion that ESC and/or MOU saw the Times piece they *didn’t* control that had gone in 2 weeks earlier and featured your humble correspondent being critical about the corporate invasion, and they wished to spin away any of the criticism of corporations in SL so they got the mediameisters working overtime.
They went to work feverishly trying to find a reporter they *could* groom for having the controlled, airbrushed experience and they actually got him to recycle that ridiculous and heavily-criticized Ben Folds event, which was trashed all over the Internet for two weeks, about which Matt Gross remained oblivious. Ben Folds will forever, in eternity, til the heat-death of the sun, be imagined as being ever available in Second Life wielding his light sword and ready to play “let’s fall down drunk in Second Life” with you forever. It’s amazing. He was never available even to those on the ‘special’ list in the first place on a sim that holds only 40 people, and he’ll likely have forgotten all about SL by now lol.
I also marvel at how Svarga keeps getting mentioned over and over again, and yet the salient fact that its owner and creator is trying to sell it and plans to close it is never mentioned. I also marvel that Laukosaurus Svarog, the owner, doesn’t seem to parlay this media saturation somehow into getting the donations to keep it running — but I suspect that it’s becaue one of the hardest things to do in SL is get people to donate to cover tier. She would like to find a buyer, but it’s only after first removing the interesting scripts that create organic-like life — which was its main selling point. Of course, it’s understandable she’d not want to prematurely sell something proprietary that is so interesting which no doubt will increase in value in the future.
Then all the usual chimes are rung — you are so right, Pixeleen, it’s like the deeply-worn groove of Pathfinder’s Picks:
o that guy with the schizophrenia stuff
o American Apparel
o Midnight City
etc.
hank hoodoo
Nov 4th, 2006
Pixeleen, one clarification. In all honesty we had no idea that this ‘Urge Gainsbourg’ fellow was a reporter until this article came out.
Nobody Fugazi
Nov 4th, 2006
La traduccion de ‘Tourist’ en espanol es… ‘turista’, o, ‘la turista’.
The rest of the article was an interesting criticism. Perhaps some Michelangelo is in order:
‘Criticize by creating’.
Urizenus
Nov 4th, 2006
That article by Gross really was a total abortion. Would the Times travel section send someone to Italy and have them report on going shopping at an American Apparel store, staying in a Starwood Hotel and going to a concert by Ben Folds? You can do all of those things in Italy, but only a fool would think that going to those places had anything to do with Italy. So how is it different to come into SL and think those corporate sponsored invasions had to do with SL. Nauseating, really.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 5th, 2006
>In all honesty we had no idea that this ‘Urge Gainsbourg’ fellow was a reporter until this article came out.
Hank, how did he get an invitation to the group then?