Daily Telegraph: Second Life ‘could replace real relationships‘.
Baroness Greenfield wondered whether people who inhabited virtual worlds would come to regard real-life sexual relationships with some queasiness.
“Could it be that in the future they will say, ‘A real relationship! Urgh, how horrible,’ ” she said. “The messiness and squalor of the real world, and the real-time element, might be offset by the more sanitised, two-dimensional reality of Second Life.
Clearly, all of you need to get out more.
#1 by J. on June 24th, 2007
This is the key disconnect that I’ve read in the writings of many key MMO developers.
The thought that people in real life won’t bring their “messiness and squalor” to a virtual world, purely on the opportunity to make things better for themselves and their peers.
So it’s OK to design a world based on how you want people to behave, even if you have no real reason to believe that they will behave that way. Just let them make their own fun! It’ll be great!
Methinks the Baroness needs to read more Warren Ellis reports from Reuters about how Second Life cybersex isn’t messy.
#2 by John Arras on June 24th, 2007
Maybe it depends on the accessories you have? =D
#3 by Aufero on June 24th, 2007
It always amuses me to see a social scientist assume that billions of years of evolutionary pressure to reproduce are going to be undone by some random recent development.
#4 by brent on June 24th, 2007
In the future, all restaurants will be Taco Bell.
#5 by Staryx on June 24th, 2007
You know, it’s funny. Whenever I see screen caps of Second Life attached to a news story or video of the “game”, it always looks like a pile of dog vomit.
#6 by Hermes on June 24th, 2007
Finally, someone who understands! I don’t know about *you* guys, but the thing I always hated about sex is the fact that it’s in real-time.
#7 by Azaroth on June 24th, 2007
Yeah, but it’s so hard to get a woman to wear a fur suit IRL.
#8 by Aufero on June 24th, 2007
Date hairy guys.
#9 by Engels on June 24th, 2007
sex is real time? I coulda sworn it was turn based
#10 by Ironwood on June 25th, 2007
Clearly someone read way too much Asimov in their youth.
#11 by Trife on June 25th, 2007
That’s the purpose of the Internet, for furries to meet up and fall in love.
… surely a digital suit is cheaper than one IRL, unless you steal one from some school mascot.
#12 by Rich Bryant on June 25th, 2007
The real issue with RL sex is that foreplay is repetitive but not scriptable.
#13 by Alex Weekes on June 25th, 2007
This aired on Australian TV last night:
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=274428
Shoulda seen the gameplay clips they used. They must have been trying to run the games (Second Life and Entropia) on pretty poor machines given how much video stuttering there was.
#14 by Jason on June 25th, 2007
Yeah, because after a long day of looking at Hobbits, the LAST thing I want to see is a naked woman…
Or whatever the OPPOSITE of that might be.
#15 by Rasputin on June 25th, 2007
Hey, as a hairy hobbit-looking guy I resemble that remark.
AND I’m near to having spawned.
On topic though, it reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where Spartan and Lenina “have sex” with those neural-helmet-things. “What do you mean, without helmets? You mean fleshsex? Ew, the fluids!”
Sleeping in the wet spot totally sucks, though.
#16 by yunk on June 25th, 2007
That’s the second Demolition Man reference I’ve seen in the past week.
#17 by Orrey on June 25th, 2007
“That’s the second Demolition Man reference I’ve seen in the past week.”
Third – see Brent’s post above
#18 by Wanderer on June 25th, 2007
No Sleeper references yet?
#19 by Rasputin on June 25th, 2007
““That’s the second Demolition Man reference I’ve seen in the past week.”
Third – see Brent’s post above ”
Damn, I thought I scanned the comments and made the first reference.
Oh well.
#20 by nerd gone bad on June 25th, 2007
While it’s easy to scoff at such a comment now, and I think SL is a pile of doggy-doodoo, I do think from a futurist perspective that the integration of man/machine/internet is definitely going to get far more elaborate and weirder than we can possibly envision today.
RL Ugly transforming into VR Beauty will be pretty powerful stuff. And no STD’s!
#21 by bullet on June 25th, 2007
“And no STD’s!”
Yeah but could you have a worm or a trojan horse come through the virtual sex machine helmet thing and turn you into a zombie?
Cause that would be cool.
#22 by J. on June 25th, 2007
Yeah, but it’s so hard to get a woman to wear a fur suit IRL.
Not really.
#23 by chabuhi on June 25th, 2007
Seems like every day I am asking myself the question: “Self, how much more could you hate Second Life?”
And every day the answer (to paraphrase Spinal Tap) is: “None. None more hate.”
#24 by Boanerges on June 26th, 2007
Actually, I wonder where in the world they get caps of “normal” looking SL people not engaged in furry or sexual activities.