Would someone please be kind enough to enlighten me.I just saw the thread related to second life and combatting Autism Speaks within it.

What is the importance of Second Life to Real Life?

Unless it somehow translates to REAL dollars for Autism Speaks I can not see them overly  bothering with it. Would it not be better to invest your efforts in real world with them instead?


I can understand the value of adding it as another venue wherein you might alter people's thinking toward autism, but other than that I don't get it.I am not especially computer literate and there may be far more to Second Life than what I am imagining....so I'm thinking I must be missing something here. Can you guys explain.  

And while I am in thread, I thought I'd throw this out as well. The actual truth of something is often less important than  perception of truth. This is true of Hrick's autism. Equally true i think in AFF's battle against a "cure". It has often struck me that while Autism Speaks and AFF use the same words they are actually speak to entirely different things. Being portrayed as Anti-Cure ends up presenting as a negative and misperceived message. I am wondering if an alteration in word sets might equally serve to positively alter reception to the AFF message. I especially liked the "Autism Speaks but not for Us" logo.  Whoever came up with that one is sheer PR genius to my mind.

A small group of people have Second Life as there primary source of income and are able to live quite comfortably off it.

Think it is easy for people to motivate people to react to things happening in Second Life.

When you say this do you mean the people running it as an internet site or people within the site?  How are they making money off it?

There are some major players in Second Life, One of them, Anshe Chung owns about $250,000 worth of virtual land and runs other business ventures such as escorting and her not so high quality 10 Linden$ stores. I suppose she makes a confortable living for herself and some kid she supposedly sponsors overseas.
The monthly costs associated with owning land in Second Life are pretty high, Monthly costs for a private full simulator island is $295US per month with an initial purchase price of $1700US. When your outlaying money like that, you're bound to take it seriously.

Me myself, I have a small size parcel of virtual land which costs me $25US/month and on top of that a large inventory full of items that I am unable to give away. I don't take it that seriously, but I would be very pissed if Second Life closed its doors without notice (so much money down the drain though some may argue that I've already tossed my money away )

Yes, it would be, but I'm guessing by how easy it is for your name in SL to become well known ("SLelebrities" they call 'em ) Many do support charities in SL because more people will see how much of a "good samaritan" they appear to be. If they pick up a phone in real life and pledge a few hundred dollars to Autism speaks, no-one would notice they did.

There is a monthly fee?

No-one's said this straight out yet - Money earned in Second Life can be converted into real money.

Both usages mean the same thing - the cure Autism Speaks is working towards is the same cure we're opposing. Not many people use "cure" to mean "treatment" any more, unless they're quite new to the autism debate.

An alteration in words would just mean no-one would know what we were talking about.

Actually, Zakkie is correct. Dollars can be converted into the currency of Secondlife - Lindens - and Lindens can be converted into dollars. it is strue that large amounts of money travel both directions. I have been on Secondlife since it was in beta testing - about 4 years ago - and have managed to keep my Secondlife pockets well-lined by buying and selling the occasional piece of virtual land, but some people generate huge amounts of Lindens by opening clothing stores, toy stores, auto lots, weapons stores, brothels, and real estate companies. Most people just play for free - no fees, if you don't want to own your own land - and get spending money by tossing a few dollars at a time into the game.

The problem with Autism Speaks isn't so much about the money as the viral nature of Secondlife. Ideas tend to catch pretty quickly in a world where you have built-in IMs, email, chat, teleportation and gathering sites mixed with the ability to create huge buildings, billboards, fireworks, radio stations, movies, etc, and almost anything else you might think of practically for free. Some of the kiosks advertising Autism Speaks are at malls with 20 - 50 stores. Since most of the land is privately owned, we can't really put up something to counter them, so we have only a few choices: either get them taken down, or put some of our own at other similar places.

Now that I say that, is there any reason we aren't looking into that, Gareth?

Problems with autism speaks in second life:
Money
Memetics (as glitchel says)
And a traditional autistic sancturary such as SL not becoming a place filled with curebie propaganda

I view systems such as SL as the future of the internet, and so heavily promote them. What I don't want to see is the first virtual world that ordinary people use in mass numbers being filled with hate speech. There is always the risk of autism speaks approaching Linden Lab (the company that owns SL) to arrange sponsorship and that would be quite horrendous.

I appreciated this explanation. Therre is an emotive element to it I previously did not see or understand.

Second Life is just like any other online thing.  It's no more nor less "real" than this website.

*necrobump*

I'm being urged by a recent acquaintance on an online dating forum to sign up for Second Life, which he describes thus:

My initial reaction was concern that downloading all this software would interfere with all the other applications on my computer. Am I being Luddite?

The Software shouldn't affect any of your other applications. It is pretty hefty, though. So things may be slow when it's running. Especially at first, since it has to dowload all the pretty textures from everything you look at. So, at first, patience is advised. Later, when you're comfortable, there are things you can adjust to speed things up a bit.

At first, it will be a lot like someone took you to another planet, plopped you down to explore, and drove off leaving you there alone. Well, a bit better than that, since you can teleport around the world map and fly and stuff. Don't be afraid to jump around - it's a very big world. It won't be as civilized or zoned as the Real World, and the citizens usually spend more time offline than inworld. So it may often appear empty and ramshackle. But you will eventually see many many incredible sights, people, inventions and incongruities. I like to shop in the Japanese sections, though I can often be baffled by the labels and signs. There are futuristic cities, ancient castles, modern universities, countries built for tiny animals, beach resorts, sky cities, live music venues, Irish bars, battlefields, art galleries, sky scrapers, hovels, puppies, flammable cows, robots, nuclear weapons, hobo camps, designer dresses, designer eyes, designer bodies, and flying cars. And more.

Of course, they aren't all right near the entrance ;-)

There are many groups you can join to help you out, enrich your experience, or completely waste your time. The citizenry breaks down that way too.

When I first went there, over 6 years ago, you could see everything in a day. Now, it's  completely impossible to see it all in a lifetime. So don't try. Instead, think about the things you like the most, and expect to find someone somewhere who feels the same way. You'll probably find them trying to take it several steps further, capitalizing on the freedom a virtual world affords. If not, there's no reason you can't.

Don't be afraid to ask for advice. Everyone in SL is eager to tell you about the last fantastic thing they saw. If you like, send me email and I'll give you a guided tour or a helping hand.

See? You might get hitched after all.

Getting acquainted is one thing, meeting up is another and establishing a connection that doesn't fizzle out after the initial encounter is yet another.