Peace, protest, and pig grenades in Second Life
By SARA DONNELLY | February 7, 2007
CHANT + WAVE: Avatars speak out just like in reality – only different. |
The January 27 march against the Iraq War in Washington DC attracted tens of thousands of protestors, but did it crash the Capitol? Its virtual counterpart did.
At 2 pm Eastern Standard Time (5 pm in-world time) on January 29, 126 avatars stormed the virtual Capitol Hill in the online world of Second Life to demand an end to the war. Undeterred by a desolate House of Representatives, the virtual activists (in all shades of blue, pink, and pixie) and their disproportionately large signs marched in staccato spurts around the fake mall, gathered (by walking, flying, and teleportation) on the gray steps, and chanted by typing things like “Out of Iraq Now” in a “chat” box and pressing enter, then repeating the process. You wouldn’t mistake it for an old-fashioned “hell-no-we-won’t-go.” When the avatars marched around the mall under the world’s bloated orange moon, they couldn’t talk because they were too busy walking, and sometimes their clothing blipped off. Later, at the height of the rally, a huge red anarchist dragon hovered in support of the effort near the capitol dome.In this online world, where your other you can gamble, have sex, and build fake hookah lounges to get your other you fake high, protestors create a scene not by rallying a thunderous collective chant, but by getting so many people to visit the same spot that a part of the system crashes. Most areas in Second Life can only hold about 100 avatars. So when the online demonstration got crazy, it also got exclusive. Some people who were bumped out when their computers crashed couldn’t get back in. It was sort of like getting stuck on the lame side of a police blockade.
“We had envisioned doing something small and symbolic until . . . we realized that we had clearly touched a nerve in the Second Life community,” said Ruby Sinreich, a/k/a “Ruby Glitter,” a real-world activist who helped organize the virtual-world rally. “ Although we can’t vote in Second Life, we can raise awareness and connect people and show our strength .”
The peace rally was the biggest Glitter had ever attended on Second Life, and may be the largest in the world’s four-year history. But, despite the protest’s respectable turnout, it failed to achieve what most activists in the real world consider the number one reason to take to the streets — to get the message to outsider ears. This wasn’t the avatars’ fault necessarily — Second Life is a hodgepodge mosaic of diverse locations without a central gathering spot. One of the coolest things about it, and the most overwhelming for “noobs” (new members), is that you can teleport between hundreds of different worlds whenever you want. There is no one spot that all avatars must visit, or that all avatars take note of. So social and political activists here have to be creative when it comes to getting their message out, and many of them have only just begun to test the virtual waters .
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