Week 8: Flushed Away
I’m a nerd. Not the sexy, technoliterate paper millionaire type, more your classic comic-book-steeped, standardized-test-beating geek. The Internet boom turned the traditional jock-nerd order topsy-turvy. Become a star in football, and you can make millions. Become a star in cyberdom, and make billions. And own the football team.
The tech-unsavvy geeks among us, however, were left out of the loop completely, just smart enough to know the next big thing after we saw it go blazing by.
When I first heard of Second Life, I assumed it was for the Dungeons & Dragons set. It’s an online multiplayer game, basically a virtual world where players (over one million strong, now) create characters, or "avatars," that roam about this world and interact. That’s it. There’s no object to this game, no way to "win." Its more popular rival, Worlds of Warcraft (over 7m strong), is your more typical fantasy game, where you go around killing warlocks and acquiring strength points and whatnot. In Second Life, people just…live (if you can call it "life"). You can start a business, hang out at bars, go clubbing, etc. All within the rigid order of Second Life house rules (e.g., no intolerance, no harassment of other players, no "adult" behavior outside of designated Mature Zones, etc.).
At first, I wrote it off as a pastime for people who taught themselves Middle Earth dialects. Then in May of this year, I read a Business Week cover story about Second Life (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm), profiling a (real) woman who makes a (real) low six figure income developing and selling virtual real estate in Second Life. And I thought, hmm. Later, I would read about Suzanne Vega performing a concert exclusively within Second Life to the delight of thousands of avatars. And I thought, hmm. Three weeks ago, I read about Sun Microsystems unrolling one of their new platforms exclusively within Second Life (to reach a wider audience of programmers). Interesting. But not my thing.
What ultimately piqued my interest was the discovery that one of my Harvard Law professors, Charlie Nesson, was teaching a cyberlaw class for the Extension School. Exclusively through Second Life. (http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2006/08/prof_charles_nesson_now_permanently_high.html)
I still didn’t understand it, but I knew this was something big. And I knew there was only one way to figure it out.
Three weeks ago, I downloaded the game onto my computer and created an avatar, named "Motykade Emu" (a combination of the log-in name of one of my colleagues and "emu"). I spent much of the time trying to drown him (not deliberately—you start on something called Orientation Island, and I kept walking into the ocean). I hit on the first attractive avatar I saw (which, in retrospect, was probably some 45-year-old help desk tech in Duquesne) and was promptly rejected (prompting a "Your loss, b*tch!" in flagrant disregard of the harassment policy). After thirty minutes of abject boredom, I parked my guy in a public hammock, where he’s been sleeping ever since.
There are webzines about style trends in Second Life (http://www.secondstyle.com/). It has its own Reuters correspondent (http://secondlife.reuters.com/), a thriving fashion industry (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115888412923570768-zVZuILNMf6YlpTXqtuGcTAWcrWY_20070925.html?mod=blogs), and a real estate market (http://secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php). Virginia politician Mark Warner participated in a townhall meeting in Second Life (http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7963538). Toyota sells cars in Second Life, Adidas sells sneakers, and Starwood has hotels in some of the most desirable locations (http://gigaom.com/2006/08/20/adidas-toyota-come-to-second-life/). Duran Duran has performed inside of Second Life, as have Chamillionaire and Regina Spektor (http://secondlife.com/community/music.php).
"I still don’t get why people play this game," I said to my neighbor Debbie.
"I bet it’s these low-level computer programmers in real life, who don’t have a whole lot of control over their lives," she opined. "In Second Life, they can be attractive, and own nice homes, and interact with people who aren’t going to make fun of them—"
"Actually—"
"—well, when you’re not on. I mean, look at the rules, right? It’s almost like they were designed by people who have been bullied their whole lives. Maybe it’s not just a game for them; maybe it’s a better life they can escape into."
But it’s not like people even escape into Second Life to do cool things, like open a hangliding courier service, or walk around in a suit of live dogs. A lot of people just go in there and set up regular businesses where they work and interact with other avatars. I toyed with the idea of setting up a branch office of my firm in Second Life, promptly leaving work to log on at home and bill several more hours. I’d show up for work looking exhausted. ‘What’s wrong?’ Debbie would ask. I’d look at her, bleary-eyed as I gulped down a 32 oz. cup o’ joe. ‘My cases in Second Life are heating up. Everybody in our office is getting slammed.’
***
This past weekend was our five-year Harvard Law School reunion.
People, for the most part, looked the same, or better. It made sense; considering the age at which most of our classmates started law school, add five years of maturity, plus a steady income, and we were all pretty much coming into our prime.
The first night, I had dinner in Pound Hall at a table full of ’01s with whom I had the sort of generalized familiarity where I couldn’t be sure I’d ever actually met them before. It was tough to catch up with people I’d never actually known law school. But, for the most part, we were all still lawyering. Trade school murders that promise of unpredictability you find at high school and college reunions.
The conversations all weekend ran pretty much the same. ‘Oh, hi (stealing glance at name tag), what do you do now?’ ‘I work at [firm].’ Or, ‘I used to work at [firm] and now I work at [firm].’ ‘That’s great! I hear that’s a good firm.’
Maybe some of us mixed it up by going into teaching, or getting married and having kids, but the past five years were pretty neatly summed in a sentence or two.
On Saturday, I attended a panel discussion by a group of ‘01s. It was thoroughly entertaining, and midway through, I began wishing I had gotten to know more of these people when we all went to school together. Then I began thinking back to how they looked then (how I looked then!). There are reasons, right or wrong, why we associate with the people we do, and were I to encounter them today as they looked the way they were, I don’t know that I would act any differently.
In a sense, maybe what I was seeing were my classmates’ avatars, projections of their best selves, how they had wanted to be back then. And maybe these are the people most likely to return for reunions, sending these stylized versions of themselves to interact with other avatars in this artificial world no longer real for us.
Sharing a cab ride back to my brother’s place, Brandi remarked that it didn’t feel like much time had passed, as though we were all coming back to campus after really long internships. And the tragedy of it is, maybe we haven’t realized where all the time has gone, working at firms. Was this October materially different from how we spent October of last year, or the year before? Would we come back for our ten-year reunion, with just two more sentences to tell each other about what we had done in the past five years?
One night, I tried socializing with alums of different classes. I had the pleasure of running into Gene D, class of ’61. He came over to the table where Soheil and I were sitting with a table full of ’01 women, and exhorted them to grab one of us while they still could. Eugene is like a charming old grandfather, at once acerbic and gregarious. He also has the single greatest business card I’ve ever seen. It reads (center):
Gene D
Retired – No Money
World Traveler
International Lover
Last of the Big Spenders
And in the four corners of the card (clockwise):
No Phone
No Worries
No Address
No Business
I couldn’t help but think that if there were a way to win this game, Gene D has found it.
Onto the game. . .
Wherever the Dallas Cowboys play this season, you can be assured of two things: a wholly media-fabricated WR Terrell Owens controversy and comparisons between QB Drew Bledsoe’s mobility and Stephen Hawking’s. (I think it would be funny if this criticism followed him to other parts of his life as well. Like, if the Bledsoes were contemplating a switch at carving duty on Thanksgiving because Drew "holds onto the knife too long.") This past Sunday, all eyes were on the Cowboys, not just because it was a prime time game, not just because it marked the debut of the enigma, Tony Romo, at QB, but because the Cowboys were taking on the most beloved franchise in all of professional sports, America’s Team, your CAROLINA PANTHERS!
For a quarter, the Panthers were the fearsome machine that led many sportswriters to declare them Super Bowl champs before a game had been played. The Team of Destiny scored the games first TD; then, in the first play off of a Cowboys turnover, Delhomme to Smith 24 yards for a second touchdown! Panthers up 14-0!
The Cowboys would bring it to within four to end the half, but the Big Cat D was suffocating. A demoralized Cowboys squad headed back to the locker room as their fans back home popped open another beer and started listening to some retard song about getting dumped by a girl or kicking Saddam’s ass or a combination thereof.
In the second half, the Panthers dropped the ball. Literally.
Steve Smith, RB DeShaun Foster (whose yards per carry are somewhere between Edgerrin James and an Easter Island head), and QR Keyshawn Johnson all dropped passes. FB Brad Hoover fumbled a punt return, resulting in a Cowboys TD. Steve Smith dropped a punt return, resulting in such bad field position that Delhomme threw an INT to avoid a safety, giving the Cowboys another score instead. If holding onto the ball was going out of style, then the Panthers were the coolest guys in the room.
In the end, though, all the credit in the world has to go to Coach John Fox. Whereas less visionary coaches would have simply put away the inept Cowboys after the first period, Coach Fox understood the psychological edge the Panthers would have playing all of their playoff games on the road, just as they did during their miracle run to the Super Bowl. With the league’s best defense and most versatile offense, why risk bad karma by competing for home field advantage?
For those of us sitting at the feet of genius and gazing in wonderment, all we can say is, why indeed?! The Cowboys left with a technical victory, but the Panthers returned to their locker room head held high, with a standing ovation from a sold-out Bank of American stadium, knowing that the road to the playoffs had officially begun!!!!
Next week: bye
Prediction:
Panthers 3, Bye 0
Until next time.
RROWRRRRRRRR!
The tech-unsavvy geeks among us, however, were left out of the loop completely, just smart enough to know the next big thing after we saw it go blazing by.
When I first heard of Second Life, I assumed it was for the Dungeons & Dragons set. It’s an online multiplayer game, basically a virtual world where players (over one million strong, now) create characters, or "avatars," that roam about this world and interact. That’s it. There’s no object to this game, no way to "win." Its more popular rival, Worlds of Warcraft (over 7m strong), is your more typical fantasy game, where you go around killing warlocks and acquiring strength points and whatnot. In Second Life, people just…live (if you can call it "life"). You can start a business, hang out at bars, go clubbing, etc. All within the rigid order of Second Life house rules (e.g., no intolerance, no harassment of other players, no "adult" behavior outside of designated Mature Zones, etc.).
At first, I wrote it off as a pastime for people who taught themselves Middle Earth dialects. Then in May of this year, I read a Business Week cover story about Second Life (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm), profiling a (real) woman who makes a (real) low six figure income developing and selling virtual real estate in Second Life. And I thought, hmm. Later, I would read about Suzanne Vega performing a concert exclusively within Second Life to the delight of thousands of avatars. And I thought, hmm. Three weeks ago, I read about Sun Microsystems unrolling one of their new platforms exclusively within Second Life (to reach a wider audience of programmers). Interesting. But not my thing.
What ultimately piqued my interest was the discovery that one of my Harvard Law professors, Charlie Nesson, was teaching a cyberlaw class for the Extension School. Exclusively through Second Life. (http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2006/08/prof_charles_nesson_now_permanently_high.html)
I still didn’t understand it, but I knew this was something big. And I knew there was only one way to figure it out.
Three weeks ago, I downloaded the game onto my computer and created an avatar, named "Motykade Emu" (a combination of the log-in name of one of my colleagues and "emu"). I spent much of the time trying to drown him (not deliberately—you start on something called Orientation Island, and I kept walking into the ocean). I hit on the first attractive avatar I saw (which, in retrospect, was probably some 45-year-old help desk tech in Duquesne) and was promptly rejected (prompting a "Your loss, b*tch!" in flagrant disregard of the harassment policy). After thirty minutes of abject boredom, I parked my guy in a public hammock, where he’s been sleeping ever since.
There are webzines about style trends in Second Life (http://www.secondstyle.com/). It has its own Reuters correspondent (http://secondlife.reuters.com/), a thriving fashion industry (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115888412923570768-zVZuILNMf6YlpTXqtuGcTAWcrWY_20070925.html?mod=blogs), and a real estate market (http://secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php). Virginia politician Mark Warner participated in a townhall meeting in Second Life (http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7963538). Toyota sells cars in Second Life, Adidas sells sneakers, and Starwood has hotels in some of the most desirable locations (http://gigaom.com/2006/08/20/adidas-toyota-come-to-second-life/). Duran Duran has performed inside of Second Life, as have Chamillionaire and Regina Spektor (http://secondlife.com/community/music.php).
"I still don’t get why people play this game," I said to my neighbor Debbie.
"I bet it’s these low-level computer programmers in real life, who don’t have a whole lot of control over their lives," she opined. "In Second Life, they can be attractive, and own nice homes, and interact with people who aren’t going to make fun of them—"
"Actually—"
"—well, when you’re not on. I mean, look at the rules, right? It’s almost like they were designed by people who have been bullied their whole lives. Maybe it’s not just a game for them; maybe it’s a better life they can escape into."
But it’s not like people even escape into Second Life to do cool things, like open a hangliding courier service, or walk around in a suit of live dogs. A lot of people just go in there and set up regular businesses where they work and interact with other avatars. I toyed with the idea of setting up a branch office of my firm in Second Life, promptly leaving work to log on at home and bill several more hours. I’d show up for work looking exhausted. ‘What’s wrong?’ Debbie would ask. I’d look at her, bleary-eyed as I gulped down a 32 oz. cup o’ joe. ‘My cases in Second Life are heating up. Everybody in our office is getting slammed.’
***
This past weekend was our five-year Harvard Law School reunion.
People, for the most part, looked the same, or better. It made sense; considering the age at which most of our classmates started law school, add five years of maturity, plus a steady income, and we were all pretty much coming into our prime.
The first night, I had dinner in Pound Hall at a table full of ’01s with whom I had the sort of generalized familiarity where I couldn’t be sure I’d ever actually met them before. It was tough to catch up with people I’d never actually known law school. But, for the most part, we were all still lawyering. Trade school murders that promise of unpredictability you find at high school and college reunions.
The conversations all weekend ran pretty much the same. ‘Oh, hi (stealing glance at name tag), what do you do now?’ ‘I work at [firm].’ Or, ‘I used to work at [firm] and now I work at [firm].’ ‘That’s great! I hear that’s a good firm.’
Maybe some of us mixed it up by going into teaching, or getting married and having kids, but the past five years were pretty neatly summed in a sentence or two.
On Saturday, I attended a panel discussion by a group of ‘01s. It was thoroughly entertaining, and midway through, I began wishing I had gotten to know more of these people when we all went to school together. Then I began thinking back to how they looked then (how I looked then!). There are reasons, right or wrong, why we associate with the people we do, and were I to encounter them today as they looked the way they were, I don’t know that I would act any differently.
In a sense, maybe what I was seeing were my classmates’ avatars, projections of their best selves, how they had wanted to be back then. And maybe these are the people most likely to return for reunions, sending these stylized versions of themselves to interact with other avatars in this artificial world no longer real for us.
Sharing a cab ride back to my brother’s place, Brandi remarked that it didn’t feel like much time had passed, as though we were all coming back to campus after really long internships. And the tragedy of it is, maybe we haven’t realized where all the time has gone, working at firms. Was this October materially different from how we spent October of last year, or the year before? Would we come back for our ten-year reunion, with just two more sentences to tell each other about what we had done in the past five years?
One night, I tried socializing with alums of different classes. I had the pleasure of running into Gene D, class of ’61. He came over to the table where Soheil and I were sitting with a table full of ’01 women, and exhorted them to grab one of us while they still could. Eugene is like a charming old grandfather, at once acerbic and gregarious. He also has the single greatest business card I’ve ever seen. It reads (center):
Gene D
Retired – No Money
World Traveler
International Lover
Last of the Big Spenders
And in the four corners of the card (clockwise):
No Phone
No Worries
No Address
No Business
I couldn’t help but think that if there were a way to win this game, Gene D has found it.
Onto the game. . .
Wherever the Dallas Cowboys play this season, you can be assured of two things: a wholly media-fabricated WR Terrell Owens controversy and comparisons between QB Drew Bledsoe’s mobility and Stephen Hawking’s. (I think it would be funny if this criticism followed him to other parts of his life as well. Like, if the Bledsoes were contemplating a switch at carving duty on Thanksgiving because Drew "holds onto the knife too long.") This past Sunday, all eyes were on the Cowboys, not just because it was a prime time game, not just because it marked the debut of the enigma, Tony Romo, at QB, but because the Cowboys were taking on the most beloved franchise in all of professional sports, America’s Team, your CAROLINA PANTHERS!
For a quarter, the Panthers were the fearsome machine that led many sportswriters to declare them Super Bowl champs before a game had been played. The Team of Destiny scored the games first TD; then, in the first play off of a Cowboys turnover, Delhomme to Smith 24 yards for a second touchdown! Panthers up 14-0!
The Cowboys would bring it to within four to end the half, but the Big Cat D was suffocating. A demoralized Cowboys squad headed back to the locker room as their fans back home popped open another beer and started listening to some retard song about getting dumped by a girl or kicking Saddam’s ass or a combination thereof.
In the second half, the Panthers dropped the ball. Literally.
Steve Smith, RB DeShaun Foster (whose yards per carry are somewhere between Edgerrin James and an Easter Island head), and QR Keyshawn Johnson all dropped passes. FB Brad Hoover fumbled a punt return, resulting in a Cowboys TD. Steve Smith dropped a punt return, resulting in such bad field position that Delhomme threw an INT to avoid a safety, giving the Cowboys another score instead. If holding onto the ball was going out of style, then the Panthers were the coolest guys in the room.
In the end, though, all the credit in the world has to go to Coach John Fox. Whereas less visionary coaches would have simply put away the inept Cowboys after the first period, Coach Fox understood the psychological edge the Panthers would have playing all of their playoff games on the road, just as they did during their miracle run to the Super Bowl. With the league’s best defense and most versatile offense, why risk bad karma by competing for home field advantage?
For those of us sitting at the feet of genius and gazing in wonderment, all we can say is, why indeed?! The Cowboys left with a technical victory, but the Panthers returned to their locker room head held high, with a standing ovation from a sold-out Bank of American stadium, knowing that the road to the playoffs had officially begun!!!!
Next week: bye
Prediction:
Panthers 3, Bye 0
Until next time.
RROWRRRRRRRR!
posted by Panther fan at 9:06 AM
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