It wouldn't be fair to say that the incriminated Daniel's post and Linden's behaviour in the periods of crises made nothing good. After all, they induced forming of second life's society. We all got used to jokes about king Philip and Lindens as royal family. Was it just a joke? Well no, it wasn't.
But now we see resident's forming groups, and more important, groups are uniting. For the sake of truth we cannot neglect the fact that this early political life is not without all the weaknesses of any early politics.
- Scene is very unclear and not defined. At this moment there are too many groups that can become parties one day. But none of them (correct me if I'm wrong) is strong enough. There was a glimpse of optimism that this will change when all the groups that stood up against verification and, later, provoked by Daniel's blog post. Groups started growing. More important, there was communication between groups which resulted in United Protest. It was nice to see that more than 4000 residents were after the same cause. I know that UP has its own internal problems. That is quite regular situation in early stages of any political life. We shall see more of that.
- Social interaction is slow. World is too big. People do meet but which percent of them meets again? Even if you add each other on friends list, chance is that you will never see each other again. You can sex with somebody you never met before nor you will ever again, but politics is much more demanding. Forming a society asks for public places where people meet and talk. We cannot talk about public places if a sim can handle only 30 avatars at the same time. Thirty is not a high number in a world of over seven million. Beside that, information flow in second life is too slow. Yes, we transmit gigabytes of data every day, but we don't even have inworld e-mail. It is no surprise that most of development of second life's politics is happening in the blogosphere.
- There is not enough time to do politics. If you spend a couple of hours each day in second life, you won't spend them on politics. There are many more interesting things to do. And you are not blackmailed to care about your society as in real life. If the whole second life goes to hell, there are other virtual worlds to find your new home, or you may get back to all those beautiful RL things you enjoyed before signing up.
- There is not enough motivation. Most of the residents came in second life to play and to have fun. If one does not involves in politics for the sake of playing it, there is not much point to lose own time and nerves about it. As long as servers are working and personal freedom is not violated, a common resident will hardly enter the politics of second life. Most of us would be quite happy with Linden monarchy if that means that grid is stable and that we are free on it. But even when grid performance and freedoms are problematic, many residents will choose to leave the world instead of fighting for it.
It is not the question if second life's political scene is going to form, but how long it would take. And most of all, how it will look like when form? Second life is nice field for experimentation. From residents experimenting with different hair-styles, sexual practices, via cybernetics and artificial intelligence to sociological models. Can second life be political sandbox? I think it already is.
How do you feel about political life coming to second life? Do you care? Are you active? What are your predictions and guesses, how all this will look like one day?
Without doubt SL is a forge for creativity, social realtionships, politics as well. It won’t take longer since we’ll be seeing RL politicians promoting theirselves on SL. And I have to say that an italian party named “Italia dei Valori” is already in SL.
So what are we waiting for?
Well the questions risen by Dandellion are well founded. And as usual I can only state my personal point of view, tough I have to admit that I’ve always been the existentialist type and don’t love that much politics in RL, too – even if we all need to cope with it.
To begin, is not *that* easy to find political groups in the search tab, so unless you’re not so lucky to meet someone who joined… But I agree, social interaction is too slow, and now that I have a nice “base” of friends is gettin even slower ’cause I usally tend to hang around with them lately, rather than explore and meet.
Time. Time is an issue! I was thinking about takin some day off from work to live in SL. Then I kicked myself! Hey I’d better go to sunbathe and swim, it’s summer! SL is sucking so much time, no i could never “waste” it on politics now, sorry. And this goes together with the lack of motivation. How could I even think to get into politics when I can meet such fantastic and interesting people and I barely have the time to write them a notecard (ermmm…)
I like the idea of spending the day in second life (not that I haven’t been close to that). But yes, it is summer. I spent a lot of winter hours on second life’s beaches. But now, I think I should get some melatonine for real.
About your last question, I care more about SL politics than at RL… but sadly that doesn’t mean too much.
We live in an oligarchy, so the only difference I see between a political party and a pression group is the last ones are more motivated and have a clearer goal.
You mentioned United Protest crash, too, and that gives us a very interesting idea, a big difference between SL population and RL population… Do you support, really support an RL political party? Or easier, are you a football fan? Maybe you are (and of course I am not saying that is bad… up, up, wichever!), but I think most people on SL aren’t, or they whouldn’t spend so much time here.
Combine that individualism with the impossibilty of having mass-media leadership, since personality proyection is limited, and I doubt that a party whould be able to get the support of enough SL population to make Linden Labs worry.
*Since it is summer, puts her sunglasses and goes skiing*
[...] gullible! Not only I took seriously all the SL elections thingie, as I proved on my comment at dandellion blog (omg, I still have doubts, are we going to have a set of political parties or is it all a [...]
We have already a more ‘combative’ wing for a political party with the Second Life Liberation Army… *grins*