Turf Day
by prokofy on 22/04/07 at 8:50 pm
By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Community Affairs
A resident named Honey Wendt visited the Dell island today to make an environmental protest and got threatened with the virtual boot by Boliver Oddfellow, CEO of Infinite Vision Media. She challenged Dell’s concept of how to help the environment in RL and began saucily debating Oddfellow, whose company built the Dell sim — and was turfed out.
Hope then posted her chat log at the Silicon Valley Sleuth, a website that ran a critical article of Dell’s effort to get in the green spirit today by handing out virtual trees in Second Life.
Writes Silicon Valley Sleuth:
You can argue that handing out free virtual trees helps with Dell’s image, just like handing out free T-shirts at a trade show makes for very happy goody hunters.
But labeling this marketing stunt as environmentally friendly is utter nonsense, if not just plain deceptive. It has nothing to do with planning a real tree. The Second Life trees don’t offer any benefit to the environment. In fact, they increase the demand on Second Life’s servers, thereby increasing their power consumption and growing the carbon footprint of this virtual world.
Hope’s questioning of virtual worlds’ claim to help the environment, like Tony Walsh’s “Open Letter to the SL Environmental Council” on Clickable Culture, got started from an article quoting Nicholas Carr. And following the mind-memes that have virally spread around this one rather lightly- researched concept, is a fascinating study in how progressive causes and the Internet feed into each other — but ultimately simply aren’t persuasive to people who also use that same Internet to try to get answers.
Neither Silicon Valley or Hope asked the question of whether people staying home and online chatting in a virtual world in fact are saving a lot of energy expenditure by not driving around in cars and burning fossil fuels.
Clearly, this debate is shaping up to the virtual equivalent of the disposable versus cloth diaper battles that incessantly rage among new parents. Yes, the one kind fills up landfills and despoils the land, but yes, the other kind causes laundry delivery trucks to have to drive around. Blah blah blah.
As a founding officer of the SL Public Land Preserve, which has parks and wilderness and even one of those Friend of the Forest $20 US trees that supposedly helps plant trees in RL, I simply opted not to organize Earth Day events today. Why? Because, well, Earth Day is for the *earth*. You know, that brown and green stuff where our feet walk? I went outdoors today to see what the kids in the neighbourhood were putting on with various Earth Day activities and planted a real-life flower.
Can virtual worlds help build more awareness about that carbon-based stuff we leave behind when we immerse? Um, I think so, but I’m not really sure there’s a really helpful model for this yet.
While Bolliver’s response may have been unnecessarily harsh, he’s operating in a climate where all kinds of annoying fucktards constantly grief and constantly try to make their case on your sim, for free, instead of buying their own sim and running their causes there.
Dell at least was trying to do something positive in trying to connect a virtual and real tree concept and make people think. Of course, it was for crass commercial motives, but then…how crass and commercial are you really when you’ve signed on for this really risky and crashy adventure called “Second Life”?
Ultimately, I view a lot of environmental campaigns to be a turf war. They are, writ large, a war about who gets to control resources, and how they are expended. They are a war about the economic ideology you use to run a society. The environmental meme is merely used to shame this or that company or government that espouses an economic ideology or concept that someone doesn’t like. It’s a stand-in for the real issues of economic control — because frankly, most of the things that the emo Westerners and Northerners do to get all greeny make little impact, waste more energy than they save at times, and while laudable given how much these wealthier countries consume, don’t begin to touch the energy expenditure and pollution of the global South and East. It’s a lot more complicated than it looks.
Spankubux
Apr 23rd, 2007
Wow, Prok’s been on a roll with salient commentary lately. What’s up with that?
Of course, labelling this as an op-ed would have been nice.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 23rd, 2007
Posted by Prokofy Neva on April 22, 2007 at 08:50 PM in Op/Ed | Permalink
Bluesapphire
Apr 23rd, 2007
Have to say, very surprised at you Boliver. I would of thought with your rhetoric about professionalism you wouldn’t be dragged into this mine field. Surely, you realized this would happen?
Also, my friend, you know better than to push yourself forward as a spokesperson for a company. Why didn’t you refer this person to the official channels? Very poor. I would of thought better of IVM, I’m quite dissapointed, I will now take you off my recommendation list for our clients.
Blue.
Reality
Apr 23rd, 2007
“Posted by Prokofy Neva on April 22, 2007 at 08:50 PM in Op/Ed | Permalink”
Hmm? No I do believe what was meant by labeling it an Op/Ed was this: “Op/Ed: Turf Day” – not some little tag at the end of the article which no one really pays attention to.
Thank you, please come again.
Khamon
Apr 23rd, 2007
I’m not a tree; but I play one on The Grid All Hail The Central Grid. Promoting trees and flowers and parkland in Second Life is more about providing vistas and comfort to users who are cramped into real life cities and prisons. It’s a valid mission but has nothing to do with Earth’s ecology even from an educational perspective.
On the other hand, some of us who live in small towns near beaches, and have lovely gardens to wander through, fantasize about visiting well built, useful, virtual cityscapes which are far too few. Perhaps Dell can provide us with some nice virtual office and apartment towers one day. Oh and can they please throw in some working traffic lights and steamy manhole covers? Frankly though, it’s impossible to create a city atmosphere as you can’t fit enough avs, or their stuff, into that small a space. Is this one reason Second Life qualifies as a “better world?”
Anonymous
Apr 23rd, 2007
They certainly seem to be rude bastards at Dell Island. I went there a few weeks ago to look at the computers they had for sale. I sent an IM to the sim owner asking if they were going to be offering slightly newer or more powerful models (virtually everything for sale was an older model featuring XP)and she sent me a very poisonous response. Good work, there; I went from having a fairly positive image of Dell to making sure that I always recommend that people not buy their products. If they are going to use their sim to alienate potential customers, rather than to attract, educate and inform them I’m not sure why they really need it.
Khamon
Apr 23rd, 2007
I haven’t checked. Are the inworld Dell reps linked to real life identities or are they hiding behind The Most Divine Holiness of Blessed Anonimoty? If the latter, we have to expect to be treated like ants under their feet.
Oh and they need it for the press releases. It’s obvious most commercial-based sims are built for the express purpose of being the basis of press releases. Make it look good, damn usefulness.
Xerses
Apr 23rd, 2007
As a member of a group in Second Life with over 200 members that works to replace large spinning billboards, porno ads and general advertising clutter with trees and flowers, I think that saying the Second Life is not an environment is missing the point of virtual worlds. It is not a physical environment, but a mental one. And efforts to create a better “environment” can take the form of art, culture, and yes, even virtual trees.
We understand that planting trees in SL is symbolic, but does help to promote an environmental culture here that will hopefully carry over into the real world.
With many companies looking to market to SL without giving back, I think this is one of the more inventive ways to connect with things that are important to residents.
I agree that if your efforts are contained within SL, then the effectiveness is limited. But Dell does plant trees in RL just like people don’t really “walk” in the Relay for Life, but it still raises tens of thousands of dollars for a RL cause. If a RL company is coming into SL, I apprecate it when they at least take the time to find out what is important to residents and connect their efforts here to things that are beneficial in RL.
Xerses
Apr 23rd, 2007
As a member of a group in Second Life with over 200 members that works to replace large spinning billboards, porno ads and general advertising clutter with trees and flowers, I think that saying the Second Life is not an environment is missing the point of virtual worlds. It is not a physical environment, but a mental one. And efforts to create a better “environment” can take the form of art, culture, and yes, even virtual trees.
We understand that planting trees in SL is symbolic, but does help to promote an environmental culture here that will hopefully carry over into the real world.
With many companies looking to market to SL without giving back, I think this is one of the more inventive ways to connect with things that are important to residents.
I agree that if your efforts are contained within SL, then the effectiveness is limited. But Dell does plant trees in RL just like people don’t really “walk” in the Relay for Life, but it still raises tens of thousands of dollars for a RL cause. If a RL company is coming into SL, I apprecate it when they at least take the time to find out what is important to residents and connect their efforts here to things that are beneficial in RL.
Sean @ Dell
Apr 23rd, 2007
Prokofy – Appreciate your perspective. I work on environmental issues at Dell and just weighed in on Techdirt’s post about our decision to introduce the program in SL (http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20070420/130341#c466).
Nacon
Apr 24th, 2007
Prok, are you actually enjoying by the fact that SL Herald have you to write anything that you “truly” believes in that they “believes” at every words you put in? Just to use you to write “creative” crap to keep the Herald itself flowing with more crap to keep their traffic flowing for their ads to be paid for?
I mean… good job writing more crap.
NigrasOnMyLawn
Apr 26th, 2007
They should add fat penises growing out of the trees, then theyd be a big hit in SL