Second Life meets Television

No doubt like most of us, you already have problems explaining to your mother, your spouse, or other "concerned" relatives exactly why you have become a stripper / hooker / gambler / nameyourvicehere in SL. But brace yourself, it is gonna get worse. At least three major prime-time TV shows (The Office, CSI:NY, and Law & Order: SVU) have now aired episodes in which SL, or an obvious SL clone is prominently featured, and all within a few weeks of each other.

We knew it had to happen, a phenomenon like SL has a built in audience, with numbers the like of which TV advertisers drool over. But the recent exposure of SL in prime-time viewing is less flattering than how we SL addicts would like to be seen.

The least worrisome is perhaps The Office, which is described by Caroline McCarthy on the CNET blog Crave:

On Thursday night's episode of The Office on NBC, dweeby Dwight Schrute (played by Rainn Wilson) revealed himself to be a Second Life addict--something that doesn't require any suspension of disbelief. The Second Life banter began when Dwight's notably less nerdy co-worker, Jim (played by John Krasinski), asked Dwight if he was "playing that game again." "Second Life is not a game," Dwight replied authoritatively. "It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn't have points or scores; it doesn't have winners or losers." With all the deadpan wit that's made The Office the hit that it is, Jim fixed his glance on Dwight and commented, "Oh, it has losers."

So in SL we are all nerds. Not necessarily a horrible image. A tiny bit more worrisome is the CSI:NY episode that features a killer (yep, you guessed it he has an avatar) who is tracked down by the forensic team with the help of Linden Labs and some SL residents. SL Insider notes that:

Second Life, as it is portrayed, is given a pretty reasonable treatment--the skepticism of many of the core characters is not unusual--however, this is not the Second Life you know, just as CSI is not the forensics department you'll find if you go downtown.

Oh, but wait... you missed that episode. Never fear. Aside from being able to watch it on the web through the CSI:NY site, you can now get in the game in SL too. Just go to CBS's Virtual NY and join up to help solve virtual crimes. Yes, the TV marketers have noticed that you are spending more time on the computer than as mindless zombies in front of the boob-tube and they've decided that if they can't lick SL they can join it. All very exciting (like you don't have enough to do in-world already). And you can buy CSI paraphenalia and brands in-world. So we are nerds and they want our money. No surprize there.

The one that was the most problematic was the Law & Order: SVU episode called "Avatar," that aired a couple weeks ago though. In this one it's not called SL, it is "AU," Alternate Universe. And the interface looks like a cross between SL and Facebook. (Watch out all you Internet social networks, you're on the list!)

The difficulty with this episode is not the storyline itself: a young woman is kidnapped from her home by a lunatic who stalked her in the virtual world first and chose her there to be his RL victim. Nor is it the obvious distaste the police have for the idea of virtual worlds, though they gain a grudging respect for the Lab that runs the AU world and which is instrumental in the crime solving. The difficulty is the way this virtual world is portrayed and that all the residents there are seemingly sex-starved pedophiles. I have ranted about this episode before, so I won't go into it further here, except to say that it still makes me angry. More so now having looked again at the website for the show and seen a recent viewer post:

Lexi says: "Every Parent of a teen or pre-teen should have their child watch the 10/2 Avatar episode. It shows what can happen and even has a short "how" it happens. Normally I find the content a bit too mature for my little one, but this epison is six stars in my book for it's educational value."

Lexi clearly missed the point that there are no children in this episode. At all. Ever. That the crime was against a 20-something young woman. Instead what she took away was a need to warn her child about SL-like environments. Oh boy, yeah, that'll keep her baby safe on the street. (I hope Lexi spends more time reading to her kids than she spends watching adult shows with them; besides, given her spelling and punctuation, she could use more reading time herself.) I am not really surprized that Lexi missed the point. It was a convoluted plot. But the take-home message of that show was that SL-like virtual worlds are is a breeding grounds for sex-offenders.

My point here is not to "diss" concerned loved ones, but rather to point out to those of us who do engage in SL activities that we may have the same fight on our hands that the music industry and the gaming industry has dealing with people who want to blame heavy metal music for suicides and video games for school shootings. These recent television offerings with SL or SL-clones will only reinforce the opinions of those who see virtual world residents as nerds or worse as perverts.

So what do you do? Well wouldn't it be nice to see more of the stories about the kindnesses we find in SL? How about sharing some of those with the people who are concerned for your SL/RL welfare? Like the one about the SL widow whose partner died in RL and all her SL friends raised funds to get her a plane ticket to the funeral? Or romantic stories of the real people who meet fall in love and get married in SL as well as RL? And let's not forget the in-world art, concerts, even fund-raising events for RL charities.

Yes, there are people with problems, even violent people with psychoses, in SL--just like there are in the real world. Yes, there are sexual relationships in SL, from flirtations to marriages, and even divorces--just like in the real world. And there are also friendships, love, pain, joy, broken-hearts, great romances, and great creativity--just like in the real world, too. Yes, you can find all that in SL. You also find the bad with the good in the real world . . . But I don't see anyone advocating giving up on real life just because real humanity has its problems and downsides, too.