So Why Do We Bother?

A month ago I started blogging about Second Life, thinking, "This will be fun. I will post pictures of myself and my friends and write about parties, clubs, and stores."

Instead, I have become a war correspondent reporting from a disaster area, knee deep in the flood plains as the pixilated bodies drift by.

In this one short month, the CEO quit, new copyright guidelines have panicked grassroots supporters, and the infamous Wagnerian Grid has been about as stable as pill-poppin' Hollywood starlet.

Next the U.S. Congress turned its all-seeing eye upon the world and declared it a likely recruiting ground for terrorists.

Comedy Central followed them in, calling Second Life "the online game for people who don't have a first one" and depicting us as naked anthropomorphic dolphins.

The outside world regards us with horror, disdain or indifference; ninety percent of those who try Second Life give up in the first week; and the company itself seems hell-bent on alienating players and destroying the art of ballet.

Even the players in other virtual worlds -- who will eagerly spend hundreds of hours linearly progressing through a pre-packaged pixilated product in order to earn the same flapping hippogriff owned by every other Level 50 Nerd -- consider us freaks squatting in a cubist garbage dump beneath a perpetual rain of plastic penises.

In short, blogging about Second Life is like being a medieval monk chronicling the Dark Ages:

4-6-2008: This day the servers were raided and pillaged, and there was much lamenting.
4-7-2008: Woe unto the dancers! For King Linden hath banished prostitution.
4-8-2008: On this day, five thousand heretics were banned for violating the Brand.

So why do we even bother? This is where I was going to write something amusing and uplifting, but I confess I haven't come up with a thing to say.

On the other hand maybe I figured out why there are so many subbies in SL -- only the masochists remain.

:)