That’s an extreme way of handling Second Life’s blurring of truth and artifice. None of the other reporters interviewed for this story went quite so far. But for all the potential for slipperiness, for hamming up the reporters’ voice or overlooking the inability to touch or smell these things and people manifested in a virtual place, for all the chances to miss the true motivations of the puppet masters behind the puppets, the virtual world has also proven to be a laboratory for an unusual form of accountability. In a land where conversation is typed chat, and chat can be saved in Microsoft Word, the reporter has little room to misquote and not be busted—there is a transcript of every interview. In real life, a reporter in a far-flung bureau can tell the readers back home what he sees and hears, and the readers have little choice but to accept the journalist’s account. In Second Life, the places I write about—that American Apparel store, the Herald office, the casino, the sex shop, the virtual UN—can be visited by any reader who cares to check my story. Outside of Second Life, the reporter who sweats about having blogs and online comment sections and other creations of the digital age undermining and second-guessing his work certainly understands how all this can both strengthen and aggravate the reporting process.
In early 2006 Linden Lab and Au parted ways. Au was focused on writing a book and could make more money not working for Linden Lab. Rosedale saw enough reporting elsewhere in his world that he was content to let Au go. Both told me the split was amicable. Au has continued reporting about Second Life through his New World Notes blog. Linden Lab gave him a parcel of land and rights to his old articles. He had to drop the Linden last name and now reports as Hamlet Au. He estimates he has 25,000 to 50,000 unique visitors to his site a month. His book will tell the history of Second Life and will be published by Harper Collins later this year. Terdiman is also writing a book, on how to succeed in Second Life as an entrepreneur. Ludlow and Wallace are crafting a history of The Alphaville Herald and The Second Life Herald. Mistral wants to write a book, too, but only when she’s done with Linden Lab’s world. “What I would write would get me in trouble with the Linden’s [terms of service] and get me banned,” she says.
Undeterred by the limited financial rewards, people keep applying to become reporters in Second Life. Despite offering only about $3 a story, Mistral says she is inundated with applicants seeking to write for Second Life Herald. So, too, is Susie Davis of the Second Life News Network, who says good help for her volunteer outlet is hard to find. (Au pays the most, $25 apiece to contributors to his blog.)
Some reporting ambitions have changed. The in-world Wired, C-Net, and Reuters bureaus—places that Second Life experts say cost thousands of dollars to build—do not get much traffic. “We had an idea that it would be all about getting people to the [Reuters bureau] island,” Pasick says. “It was a foot-traffic game.” Aside from big interview events, like his virtual sit-down with Arianna Huffington during last year’s G8 summit, however, the place is anything but packed. The bigger marketing success has been the advent of free in-world gadgets that residents can install in their virtual homes or just have hover over their view of the virtual world. These gizmos flash an alert when a new Pasick story arrives, and provide links to his pieces.
Nevertheless, rumors abound that other big media outlets are coming in.
Everyone knows that there are real people behind the avatars, and the use of alts (alternate accounts) and avatars that bear no relation to the real person opens up any resident or journalist to deception.
This potential for deception (benign or malicious) is something that Second Life residents simply grow to understand.
Until recently I syndicated my advice column (http://www.heartunbreaker.com) through the Second Life Herald, and I continue to write it... and I am certain that some of the questions I get are simply made up. Some I am positive are completely real. There's a huge grey area, and I try to answer each with the understanding that true or not the question or scenario has some legitimacy.
For Second Life, reality is as mutable as ones avatars appearance. But under the veneer is a real person with real ambitions, problems and conflicts.
Posted by Heartun Breaker
on Thu 2 Aug 2007 at 01:22 AM
There are two profoundly influential factors on real-life and Second-Life journalism you did not mention: 1) censorship and banning of undesirable commentators and 2) corporate sponsorship of blogs and press. For example, Hamlet Au is sponsored by Millions of Us, founded by former Linden employee Reuben Steiger and Mark Wallace's blog 3pointD.com is sponsored by Electric Sheep Company, also close to Linden Lab. The Herald has a variety of sponsors including Anshe Chung Studios. The influence that pro-Linden corporations have may be subtle, but given their financial interest in a positive take on SL, they can work extra hard to counter the criticism that comes from outsiders like the Los Angeles Times, Valleywag, or Clay Shirkey.
The Herald itself recently moved to forcing all writers to clear their copy through Pixeleen Mistral rather than allowing some to keep their previously free posting privileges on par with the editors and publishers precisely because some of the subjects of the unsavoury side of SL began to threaten them with (specious) libel suits and takedown notices to their blog hosting service. This fear of the vulnerable critical SL media is a fear that RL media, with its experience in defending reporters and the First Amendment, and with seasoned lawyers and deeper pockets to fend off lawsuits, rarely has to take seriously.
The controlling of speech in and around Second Life is phenomenal, precisely because very serious corporate interests are at stake; it's owned by one company and a network of technically independent companies still dependent on LL for their platform were spawned by it and are fiercely loyal. That's a context that every reporter has to be mindful of, and report on as part of the SL story.
If, within this controlled context, Hamlet Au was able to report on something like the "prim tax revolt" you have to dig deeper even than the already deep-digging you're doing. The prim tax revolt -- one of the hagiographical stories of Linden-approved SL history -- was already anticipated company policy by the time Au was blogging on it; one of the leaders of the revolt went on to become a Linden employee; the Lindens themselves had come to hate their own prim tax because it rewarded prim-hoarders and harmed artists and forced them to leave. The prim tax revolt wasn't against Linden Lab, which quickly retired the police; it was against the player class who supported the tax because they themselves as large land-owners benefitted from it.
Anonymous avatars like Pixeleen Mistral can reap all the rewards of anonymity precisely because others at the Herald like Peter Ludlow, or myself, when I posted there, took the heat for the articles in the form of sometimes really horrid and nasty personal attacks based on dredging up details from our real lives by those playing "Internet psychologist". The fire and ire against the Herald tends to fall on those who have revealed real-life names and had them forcibly revealed by the Herald itself; those without that connection can blissfully go on playing their avatar role-play secure in the knowledge that no one will ever harass them for having an avatar opposite of their RL gender; or having children that angry posters ridiculously claim are being ignored and starved each time a reporter undertakes defense of their story in critical posts -- and all the rest of the nasty repertoire of typical blog commentary that the CJR itself avoids (unlike the Herald!) by having a very strict posting policy.
The anonymous avatars of Second Life who stand by their anonymity could do so with far more credibility if they did not rely so heavily on those of us who do not make our avatars anonymously, and have been willing to talk to the press and link our RL names. We've had to take incredible heat for Second Life that they are spared. Their call to create an insular, private walled garden where everyone can be perceived only for the content of their character instead of any RL identifying trait like race or class is a noble one; it depends on others constantly suffering harassment for speaking out with RL names for them to maintain their fictions.
Posted by Prokofy Neva
on Sat 4 Aug 2007 at 03:06 PM