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Out-of-body politic

HONORING THE FALLEN: A virtual soldier cemetery.

The peace rally was organized by Roots Camp, a Second Life counterpart to the “first life” (real-world) groupthat sponsors activist meet-ups around the country. Roots Camp in SL has 19 members . Roots Camp activists know demonstrations in a sprawling world without a central downtown won’t get much attention unless members of the Second Life or real-world media cover them. So social activists in-world have tried instead to figure out other ways to draw noobs to their causes.  Activist Evonne Heyning (a/k/a the green pixie “In Kenzo”) created an interactive “Camp Darfur” with tents, burning huts, and video footage of refugee camps in Sudan .  The UK nonprofit Save the Children sells virtual yaks to raise money for its global efforts .And politicians like former Virginia governor Mark Warner and California representative George Miller have hosted public meetings to bring real-world politics to the sim streets. None of the major US political parties have set up headquarters in Second Life, though the right-wing Front National Party from France has already ruffled some pixelated feathers with its presence there .

As a testament to the eternal power of politics to piss people off, Second Life played host to its first nasty political conflict in early January , when protestors outside the Front National headquarters clashed with FN supporters in a multi-day battle royale with grenades shaped like pink pigs, blasts of European techno music, thousands of words of heated arguing (most of it in French), and “push guns” that sent avatars careening into the air.

Though most areas in Second Life protect avatars from harm, the FN headquarters were not so lucky. According to SL journalist Wagner James Au (a/k/a “Hamlet Au”), the headquarters was ruined in the fight, maybe due to virtual saboteurs ripping chunks of it off. The FN has since relocated to another part of SL and a new group, the Second Life Left Unity, has called for Linden Lab to ban or censure the FN because of what it considers “hateful” and “intolerant” speech. (Linden Lab has resisted banning the FN unless members break the company’s code of conduct. In an e-mail, the company told the Phoenix it supports “a rich tapestry of beliefs, lifestyles and politics” just “like in the real world.”)

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