Streaker Disrupts Second Life City Hall
Ah, here I thought the virtual bordello was righting its ways by having companies like Coldwell Banker overprice imaginary property. Then the Dutch go and launch a city hall in game and the fine residents of Second Life don’t disappoint:
During a news conference in Second Life, two punk-like characters disrupted the presentation of a Zoetermeer city official, Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported Wednesday. One of the avatars stripped naked, according to the report.
“A city employee hurriedly removed the virtual rioter from city hall with a click on his mouse,” the paper reported.
Overall the news conference was very chaotic. Various avatars talked at the same time, making it impossible for the city official to respond to questions. After a few minutes, the event was ended, to be continued in the real world, the Algemeen Dagblad said.
Despite the disturbances, Zoetermeer officials are pleased because of all the publicity around the city’s Second Life presence. Zoetermeer invested about $33,000 in the virtual building, but got publicity worth multiple times that, it said.
So, a town pays $33,000 for pixels, has streakers cut their event short, and their community looks ridiculous. Sounds like a publicity win to me.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:50 am
[...] Oh, poor Second Life. First the media sees through your artificial scandal meant to ‘legitimize’ your virtual economy. Then you offer people the chance to keep their own last names - for the low, low price of $50 a year. The best Second Life news of the week, however, had to be that famed teledildonics expert Fo3 qDot Bunnyhug is leaving Second Life. For all the single-mother brothel owners and naked streakers that Second Life provides some problems can’t be overcome. For Bunnyhug, these issues are technical - not moral. He’s moving on to Open Croquet which, unlike Second Life, is open source and completely distributed. [...]