Get a Second Life

Second Life, you’ll recall, is a phenomenon of the online world in which some 6.6 million "residents" create avatars, or representations of themselves, and move around in a virtual environment, making virtual friendships and spending virtual (or sometimes real) money.  Many real-life companies thought it would be really cool–and would lead to real-life money–if they put up billboards, shops, and the like in the virtual world of Second Life.  One of them was ABC–no, not us, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (If this ABC is out there, please let me know; it’s a big company.) But perhaps they made a mistake.  Why do people play in a virtual world?  Perhaps to get away from the real one?  If you go there, do you really want to run into traffic…or billboards…or your boss? So the Australian Broadcasting Corpoartion’s news site reports that the "island" it built in Second Life "has been devastated in an act of digital vandalism."  Lifers call such acts "griefing." "Somebody has nuked us in some way, shape or form, and they’ve obliterated almost every object on the site," said Craig Preston, head of technology for, er, that other ABC. Of course, in a virtual world, virtual destruction takes mere hours to clean up.  The half-life of radioactive fallout in Second Life is…well, is there any? Luke Plunkett of Kotaku.com (a hat-tip to him, and Jonathan Silverstein of our staff, for the heads-up) writes, "the perps plastered the craters with Nike and Puma logos. Strange. Probably some comment on the increasing commercialisation of the nominally-government-funded TV station. Or something." Of course, the joke may not just be on the Australian ABC.  In March, World of Warcraft, the online role-playing game that offers a virtual world of its own, claimed 8.5 million players.