The Alphaville Herald

The Avatar’s Got “Talent” – or something

by Pixeleen Mistral on 02/07/07 at 11:41 pm

by Mariner Trilling, new media reporter

While surfing the grid one night, I found a crowd of green dots at the NBC studio sim and decided to check out what was going on. Outside the studio there were signs announcing the “Avatar’s got Talent” contest tryouts. The event was modeled after the NBC primetime show, “America’s Got Talent” in which people who find themselves entertaining try to convince celebrity judges that others will find them entertaining as well. I don’t have any particular stage talent myself but curiosity got the better of me and I went in.

When I first walked in, I thought the event had been overrun by some griefer group. There were some bizarre avatars milling around the stage with some of them carrying incomprehensible signs. Seated in the row of judge’s chairs were a clown, a mailbox and some other thing that I didn’t know what the hell it was. I also saw a number of reporters from various SL press standing by the stage. Expecting that any minute the studio would get bombed by giant penises, replicating prim weapons or other photojournalistic fodder, I took a seat in the audience.

“Okay!” The clown judge announced. “We’re ready for our next contestant!”

“Me! Me! Check it out! Me!” A strange spindly avatar wearing a tall Abe Lincoln hat, carrying some incoherent protest sign started jumping up and down on stage. “Me! Me! Watch! Watch!”

The studio got still and all the chat quieted in anticipation of his yet unknown talent. Once all eyes were on him, he suddenly jumped on another contestant standing on stage and started humping her. “Look! I’m humping! I’m humping! Woo hoo! Hump! Hump!”

Seated in the audience next to me was veteran SL music performer Cylindrian Rutabaga. I asked her if she really was planning to try out for this and she explained that voice and music streams weren’t allowed. The contest was for gestures and animations only.

“So…the humping guy is a valid contestant?” I asked. “…and you’re not?”

“I guess.” She answered. “I just came because I heard Joan Osborne was going to be here.”

One reporter muttered in chat, “I passed up a paying assignment to be here.”

While one of the judges commented on the strength and consistency of the contestant’s humping action another bewildered contestant on stage asked, “Was that guy just humping me?”

After it became clear that there would be nothing as interesting as a major grief attack, I went on my way and didn’t think any more about the incident until two weeks later. That’s when I saw a TV commercial on NBC for “Avatar’s got Talent”…” the first network broadcast from inside the virtual world of Second Life!” Holy Crap! SL was going to be on TV!

The idea of a primetime broadcast from SL brought mixed emotions. It would be really nice to see SL get some coverage that didn’t focus on pedophilia or rape fantasies. It seemed like most reports about SL had something to do with sex. Sure, we have some terrific orgies in SL but I’ve never seen a report on the writers groups, poetry readings or amazing architecture.

The idea of some positive exposure for SL was tempered by the realistic view of the impact this might have. The brief spike in concurrent online users might break sixty thousand, setting a record and pushing the infrastructure to its crash point. It would also mean a few hundred thousand more accounts, eighty percent of which would be abandoned after a few weeks leaving the databases clogged with more vast unused inventories of freebieware.

For now, my excitement is slightly edging out my concern. The truth is that only time will answer the two big questions: Does the “Avatar got Talent?” and “Does LL have a stable, sustainable VR platform?”