Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Social Structures, Social Upheaval
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Back when he was leading metaverse development at Meta last year, Linden Lab veteran Jim Purbrick kept telling Meta staffers to read My Tiny Life, Julian Dibbell's pioneering tale of a virtual world community and a trollish abuser within it. But the Meta team didn't prioritize his advice, and the inevitable happened: When Meta launched…
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Photo credit: Susietea Resident via Inspire's Flickr Group Twelve years ago, Bonny Greenwood was floating in outer space on an asteroid doing tai chi to trance music when she struck up a conversation with a friendly passerby. (As one does.) Then again this is a common thing to happen in Inspire Space Park, a suborbital galaxy…
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Barb photo by Catalina Staheli, edited by Kreao Kujisawa Click here to join the 12th year anniversary of Fifty Linden Fridays, one of Second Life’s largest in-world groups. Expect a massive crowd, however, because with 52,530 active members, roughly 1 in 10 of SL’s entire user base is a member of FLF. Founded and still…
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Second Life Not Only Has User-Created Railway Systems, Someone Made This Amazing Travel Map for Them
The Second Life train community (railway/train creators, engineers, regular passengers) is yet another awesomely geeky subculture I've been meaning to write about for years, and this recent /SecondLife post is a good place to start: Created by Rydia Lacombe, behold this beautiful traveler's map to the railway systems of Second Life. (Get a free copy…
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Click here to visit something fairly amazing in Second Life: A massive roleplay game world inspired by Mass Effect. It’s the creation of BluShock, a fan community that’s been creating entire worlds and experiences in Second Life based on the videogame franchise for over a decade. I recently made a small visit to the asteroid…
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If you enjoyed Science Friday's recent great story on the life and death and rebirth of the NPR show's SL fan listening community, the good news is that you, dear reader, can still join them too: Click here to join Science Friday: The Next Generation. After a decade plus of existence, the group still boasts…
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In keeping with previous US Presidential elections, selected neighborhoods in Second Life now resemble our collective unconscious, our anxieties and outrage taking on crude 3D form. 2020 being 2020, it isn't simply a matter of Trump supporters putting up small campaign signs outside their virtual homes — but instead, say, a fifty foot billboard cube…
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Photo by Alsatian Kidd — click for larger versions New World Notes' story on the banning of political ads was featured in New York Times (well, briefly mentioned at the bottom of this article, anyway), so this is important clarification from reader "irihapeti" is worth calling out: Reading the Terms of Service [it] is clear that…
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Photo credit: Animats Another US Presidential election year, another clash of ideas in Second Life. As has been the case since 2004, the virtual world has recently been festooned with political billboards, much or most of them pro-Trump or anti-Trump — though as with Facebook, it seems like the pro-Trump forces have had the upper…
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When I wondered aloud last week if new SL users remember the virtual world's Wild West years of creative anarchy over a decade ago, many old timers replied by more or less sighing, "Those were the days." For instance, reader "Mondy": I can remember a time when griefing by self-replicating objects was fairly common, and…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 