Does Second Life accurately reflect “first” life? Upon entering Second Life you quickly realise that without Linden dollars (Lindens) you can’t really do very much. A quick glance at the most popular places in Second Life shows that most of them are either commercial or simply offer the chance to acquire Lindens for free.
Rather than being a simulation of the first life, Second Life takes several tendencies of modern life (ie North American democratic capitalism mediated via the web) and extends these, while at the same time dropping irrelevant details such as the past or anything else that detracts from the experience of self-gratification, the accumulation of wealth and getting on in life generally. To this extent, it could be argued that modern American life – if not America itself – is itself a sort of Second Life – a kind of Europe 2.0 where the bugbears and hang-ups of the old world were ditched in favour of a forward-looking, dynamic adventure of self-discovery and nation building.
Along with the homesteading of territory and the centrality of acquisition / consumption, SL also reinforces the idea of autonomy and individual will. The ability to customise your avatar is at the heart of SL: identity is something you choose, shape and create. Overall, then, SL represents a kind of neoliberal fantasy – individuals (almost) totally unconstrained by social rules able to fly from one consumer experience to another. Entrepreneurs are able to operate equally without any of the burdens and obstacles of real life – while at the same time building business empires that effectively enforce a monopoly on the “free” market.
What would happen if the citizens of Second Life formed themselves into some sort of political entity and started voting? What would a Second Life government be like – and would there be Linden taxes?
