Results tagged “secondlife”

Don't assume that people who prefer simulated reality to the vulgar, gravity-bound "real" thing forgot all about 9/11. There happened to be a soulful gathering at Ground Zero on Second Life this morning, and Rikomatic was "at" the, um, "scene" to report: "There were 70-80 other avatars present, beaming in from who knows where... Most folks sat on the grass in respectful silence, restricting communication to instant messages. A couple of avatars in soldier's uniforms stood at attention. Believe it or not, it means a lot for a bunch of avatars to sit in silence. It just never happens, unless they are camping." Stop snickering! Oh, actually, that was us. To be fair, there was an affecting audio stream of real voices reading the names of the victims, while a haunting replica of the towers rose in the "sky." We're just jealous because we've never gone on any of these silent camping trips; virtual smores are the best!

It's been quite some time since we hopped the virtual F train to the virtual Lower East Side (that's VLES, for those in the know), but it seems one NY Times scribe has been making some frequent visits to the online world. In fact, he may even prefer it to its real life counterpart.

There were no imperious bouncers or foul odors to contend with, and no fluids of any kind expectorated on my shoes. Except for a slightly choppy video feed, it was by my standards a pretty successful evening on the town. Despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side (vles.com), a three-dimensional, Internet-based social network fastidiously modeled on a small but influential swath of Manhattan real estate.

Aptly described as "a mash-up of Facebook and Grand Theft Auto, with a dash of the indie-rock Web site Pitchfork thrown in for good measure," one can attend a show at Bowery Ballroom (pictured), make pixelated friends, and "get into as much after-hours miscreancy as the Web site’s programmers will allow." Creepy!

. Along the way she’s had a divorce and a daughter (Ruby, now 13), married the man who proposed to her back in her pre-Luka days, and been dubbed "The Mother of the Mp3" when her song Tom’s Diner was used as the model for the algorithm that compresses the Mp3!

Towards the end of the year, it becomes sport to wonder who Time's Person of the Year will be. It's sort of like wondering who will be on the cover of Sports Illustrated or who People's Sexiest Man Alive is (both are also Time Inc. publications, as it were). Time tried to get its readers excited, asking them to vote online for who they thought should be the Person of the Year, with choices being George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Kim Jong Il, Al Gore, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Nancy Pelosi, and The YouTube Guys. Well, if you bothered to vote, you never had a chance - Time decided to make "You" the Person of the Year.

Jesus of the Twin Towers, Dyker Heights by gkjarvis.

-- Those crazy Van Dorens pop up in the oddest places.