Second Life: John Edwards assaulted by poo-slinging communists
Second Life: John Edwards assaulted by poo-slinging communists:
Xeni Jardin:
John Brownlee of the Wired blog Table of Malcontents says,
John Edwards’ Blog has a wonderful account up about how their Second Life headquarters was defaced with “Marxist/Leninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obsenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in blackface.” John Edwards’ is apparently working with Linden Labs now to figure out the perps. I love it, especially the shrill, self-righteous tone of the post: they just can’t believe it, which is a riot. You see countless news stories about this, over and over again: the sorry gray drones of political parties or corporations rushing to establish a presence in Second Life because it’s the thing to do, only to find themselves staring in horror directly into the collective Goatse.cx of the Internet’s soul.
Link. (thanks, Howard Rheingold!)
This story isn’t about second life. It’s about politicians not controlling their branding and marketing.
Let’s list the Edwards ’08 campaign’s errors here:
- allowed a non-official entity to create a presence in-world. Ok, that’s fine. Fair use, tribute, blah blah blah.
- allowed an unofficial presence to continue to represent you and persist in-world, at all
- Allowed an unofficial presence to persist on a shared piece of land
- Failed to limit visitor privileges at your unofficial presence
- Did not get a private island to host an official presence
Of course feces slinging marxists are going to show up… duh. This isn’t an issue of Second Life being a bad platform for politicians, to the contrary, it’s probably one of the best places a politician could set up shop to get the word out. It’s a great place to let disconnected people find connections to other people who share their interests. However, if you plan to come to second life for a popularity contest, don’t do it unless you know what you’re doing. Second life isn’t “Utopian life”.
Technorati Tags: politics, second life
