The Alphaville Herald

Open Letter to Your Boss about SL

by Alphaville Herald on 26/08/09 at 7:58 am

Help promote serious business in Second Life 

by Pappy Enoch

I done read the “Open Letter to Your Boss” that them Linden Gorillas put up on the Interweb thing and them Lindens done left out a thing or two. So I took a crack at that-there letter myself.  A city feller from a college (not wantin’ to do real work) helped me transmogrify it for folks who talks like big-bugs and so forth.

SLCC-09 participants' user generated content enhanced this real life business – why not yours?

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‘Hello <insert your worthless manager's name here>,

Yesterday, when I mentioned that we should explore why I was masturbating while playing, I mean working, in Second Life. I thought that to save my job in the social-darwinist hell into which the world economy has descended, I might convince you how SL can benefit us as a collaboration, learning, recruiting, and marketing tool.  And make me rich.

You raised several concerns that many enterprises and government organizations have about Second Life. These include stability, rampant perversion, lost inventories, Baby Furs in dirty diapers, wholesale departure of major corporations from SL, Jumpman Lane, IP theft, and Pappy Enoch. I would like to share with you more information about how Second Life is a moral-building business tool we should consider using since we are soon going out of business anyway.

Second Life Solves Real Business Problems: Leaving our desks to goof off means decreased productivity as compared to goofing off while staying in one spot. Companies are using Second Life with good reason—they are desperate, the world economy is tanking, and shooting griefers with virtual AK-47s might prevent real-life massacres when the next round of layoffs comes down. With the drastic reduction to our travel budgets and the head-chopping from central office, why not raise morale by letting employees play SL while pretending to use it for work purposes?  With our remaining staff cowering in many different locations, we need to look at more powerful technologies to tether them to their desks when they waste money, pretend to be tragic female vampires, engage in pointless drama, and masturbate. 

Teleconference calls, video conferences, and web-based presentation sharing technologies are important, but they can’t do what Second Life can: let you be naked at your desk while weighing 400 pounds and pretending to be a supermodel.  In fact, the Wall Street Journal published a story on “The Second Chance for Second Life”, but I think we should ignore this since I have evidence that Rupert Murdoch’s avatar is a vampiric T-girl stripper and cat-fighter named Stella “the Tranny from Transylvania” Onnatop.  Instead, we should turn to the Alphaville Herald for all the reasons to do business in SL. We’ll keep our staff chuckling until they go on the dole, since no efforts on our part can save this pathetic firm.

We Can Keep our Workspace and Data Secure: You might not know that nearly every branch of the U.S. military is using Second Life in some capacity. Our brave warriors need good laughs, and being flies on the wall in any sufficiently populated region in SL provides those by the case-lot. 

Second Life is the De Facto Leader in Virtual Worlds: There are several virtual world companies that are creating solutions for enterprises, and if they get rid of vampires, Furries, Goreans, and drama-queen fashionistas they may actually create something of value. But Second Life is the best choice for diverting us while Rome burns and our remaining assets are transferred to my private banking account in the Cayman Islands. This is why I recommend giving me a private region in SL and storing all of our financial records there under my supervision.

The Adult Content is Contained: Yes, there is some sexual content in Second Life, but since we will all be cavorting nude under assumed names, who cares? Our partitions are high enough to screen our wanking, so I propose that we turn up the Classic Rock station on the PA system so Steppenwolf will cover our moans, then embrace the adult-content lifestyle. In fact, Linden Lab has recently taken steps to ghettoize Adult content from the mainland to a separate continent. If we have a snowball’s chance in hell of saving our worthless company, it will be through opening a whore-house in SL and getting our lazy front-desk staff to put out and return the profits to you and me. They are already playing Solitaire and watching YouTube all day. Now they can work on their backs for the firm and we’ll realize ROI for our expenditures in SL. 

Let’s Start Small and Build on Our Success: The good news is that getting started in Second Life is relatively inexpensive. I only need a million dollars transferred to my account in the Caymans. You spent that much on that god-damned SLR MacLaren and your last divorce. Now it’s my turn.

I hope that I’ve addressed your primary concerns about working in Second Life, but I’m sure that you have plenty of questions. Just shut the hell up. You are over 50, so what do you think you know about working online? You can’t even get your avatar’s talking genitalia to attach to the right spot.

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