Martin Luther Drives a…Flying Saucer?
This past Monday was a US holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights moment. At the same time French citizens gathered to demonstrate against a political party with the most un-King like sentiments, the French extremists Front National. What started out as a peaceful protest against bigotry turned into a pitched battle complete with push guns, rez cages, pig grenades, and flying saucers. All told, just another day in the bizzaro world of Second Life.
I have heard the future of war and it fires along to a European techno soundtrack. From James Au’s detailed account:
It’s unclear when the shooting started, or who fired the first shot (several witnesses claim FN security forces assaulted them with “push guns”, weapons capable of flinging a Resident across the island like a ragdoll), but in the final days of last week, at least, the assault raged from both sides. It’s also unclear if the anti-FN protest groups were involved in the escalating violence– Officers with both antiFn and SLLU haven’t replied to my Instant Message– though by personal observation, at least a few members seemed to be. Since Porcupine is not a damage-enabled area, weapons there have about as much stopping power as pointing one’s finger at the computer screen and saying Bang Bang. But get enough projectiles flying, and server lag is bound to ground anyone’s use of the area to a halt. (Or in my case, cause the Second Life viewer to crash.)
And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, “rez cages” (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids’ TV characters, and more. By California time, the battles often culminated at 2am, 3am, and even later into the small hours of the American clock, when Residents in Europe are most active. So amid the exchange of salvos, the chat log was choked over with pro and anti-Le Pen curses, most in French. And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno.
One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they’d explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel.
But like all things in Second Life, a normalcy eventually returns:
By today, the headquarters of Front National has entirely disappeared from Porcupine; in its place, a tiny casino has sprung up overnight, and is already receiving customers.
In honor of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a special sun is made to arc across the grid of Second Life today. If you look close enough, you’ll see it’s inset with the face of the man who was so untimely cut down, when far too much of his work remained. In his country, the world beyond, and, perhaps, in worlds he never could have imagined.
Yes, lets have a moment of silence for the digital pigs who so bravely sacrificed themselves in the name of… um… people who have nothing better to do.
