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Just to prove that the virtual world of Second Life doesn’t already come with a big enough ‘NSFW’ disclaimer now comes Playboy. With its familiar brand of air brushed idealized beauty the first life media empire’s dominance of the second is anything but assured. As Wagner James Au points out on his New World Notes blog when everybody looks like Barbie and consummates like Anne Nichole Smith its hard to stand out:

Just a couple months ago, MySpace superstar and former Playboy Cybergirl Tila Tequila opened a mansion hangout in Second Life. And though she counts over a million MySpace friends, attendance at her SL crib has been scant; it’s consistently empty during peak periods, with Traffic registering in the low hundreds (i.e., a handful of daily visitors, at best.) Last year, the Suicide Girls launched an SL space of their own, and though the goth-punk babes are extraordinarily (and deservedly) popular on their own site (and again, were featured on Playboy’s homepage in 2004), visitors to their Second Life locale quickly dwindled, and within weeks, most of the dozens of Girls who had created an avatar lost interest with being in-world.

Debates on Tila’s crowd drawing ability aside, Wagner’s story further illustrates just what the priorities in Second Life are:

Ironically, the commerce of sexuality in Second Life was also a barrier, according to Lavonne. “If SL jobs were better and paid more, I’m sure many would be thrilled to play. The sexual aspect was a problem. Some girls mentioned how working at clubs they were expected to pretty much have cyber sex with ‘customers’ for tips, and that it wasn’t worth it.” (Virtual tips are rarely competitive to what a performer makes offline.)

So apparently not only are Second Life’s denizens after the byte-sized bump-n-grind: they’re also cheap. Will Playboy succeed with the Second Life crowd? Only a artificially enhanced silicon 8-ball can tell.