More desolation in Second Life: Warren Ellis returns to his earlier theme of exploring spaces without people, noting the creepy feeling one encounters:
[Y]ou’re in Second Life. There is no dust. Everything is preserved in chill digital vacuum, waiting for someone to find it.
As I write this, there are more than forty thousand people inworld. And yet, everywhere I go is empty. All the streets I walk down recall the opening act of 28 DAYS LATER. I find myself wondering where the zombies are.
Notice Ellis' sense of regret at beauty wasted into empty social space. Which leads to a neat summary of why the SL low numbers matter, reason #5:
The simple truth is that, at any given moment, there’s the population of a small village, at best, wandering around a place the size of eight Manhattans...
Lots of people have had lots to say about the recent hype surrounding Second Life, but very few have addressed the basic experience of the world — that you’re incredibly alone there. You can spend eighty percent of your time walking through immense, labyrinthine castles that no one lives in.
This is an important insight, underrated, but appreciated by those of us trying to show people SL.
In digital Gothic terms, this is another good example of the spooky empty space approach we noted in the gazeteer.
The growing number of people who experience this sense of SL loneliness and emptiness certainly helps keep the numbers of users down. And the awareness of that is likely a driver for other projects, and SL's internal transformation, into something new and better, towards Third Life.
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