Wagner James Au / New World Notes

"What can the Metaverse learn from Second Life?" is a good new story for UK publication Engineering & Technology from freelancer Hilary Lamb, delving into the lessons that new metaverse platforms could learn from Second Life. For instance, technical debt: 

‘Second Life’ is notoriously clumsy, with lag and lumpy framerates that put something of a damper on the virtual orgies. Some of this is on account of technical debt accrued early at Linden Labs – which cannot be righted without sacrificing vast quantities of user-generated content – but it also points to the challenge of generating high-poly content in the metaverse.

I chatted with Hilary for the piece, talking about that and other topics — including, of course, those virtual orgies:

In the public imagination, ‘Second Life’ is all about virtual sex. This is somewhat justified; around a quarter to a third of activity on the platform is sex and it has large communities based around sexual subcultures, such as its furry community. It can be hard to escape. One professor recalls: “We would try to have very serious lectures [in ‘Second Life’] and people would bomb all attendees with flying penises.” Virtual worlds populated by user-generated content are faced with a dilemma known as TTP, or ‘time to penis’, which refers to the tendency of users to create a virtual penis the moment they have the tools to do so. Facebook appears to have taken notes and is pre-empting anything that may be judged remotely sordid; ‘Horizon Worlds’’ avatars are neutered, legless blobs.

“It’s just a disembodied hand puppet, just a torso and arms,” says Au. “Partly that’s for technical reasons. I think one of the motivations, though, is almost a Neo-Victorian approach to forbid people from having genitals, making it impossible for people to have virtual sex.”

Read it all here. By the way, while 25% of Second Life's land mass is rated Adult for porn/graphic violence, that doesn't mean 25% of all activity on that land mass is Adult rated, as Linden Lab will insist. (But then again, the confusing rating system is the company's fault.)

And here's some fun background on TTP/Time to Penis.