Well, I guess it is, at least in Germany and I wonder if it is the case aswell in other countries and if so, why that is.
I have noticed on many occasions that once you talk to somebody about Second Life, people who accidently stand around you start to voice their usually negative opinion about it somewhat louder to their discussion partners. Or there is some blog post about it in a somewhat popular blog and people suddenly come out of their corners writing things that they hope Second Life is soon dead, only freaks use it, don’t see any benefit and the usual me-toos.
I also remember one train ride where a friend of mine said that he hopes it’s soon over but refused to discuss this statement at the same time.
And I remember a discussion I had with my uncle during a family meeting when another member of my family started to diss Second Life in a quite loud manner. Nevertheless the discussion about with my uncle was quite good and eventually led over to a conversation about addiction (as my aunt is teacher and had some not so good experiences with game addicted teens).
So is this the case in other countries, too? Robin said that she thinks it’s only Germany and blames the child porn story but then again this happened also quite a lot before that. And what is the problem anyway, why is it like that. If people hope it’s gone soon it nearly sounds as if they are afraid of it. Is it because it’s something completely different than they are used to? Is it because it looks a bit strange if you haven’t experienced it yourself? Is it because of the hype and people are fed up with it? Will this change in the future? (I guess it will).
What are your experiences? Do you try to discuss this with those people?
That said I should also say that I also had positive experiences of course. If people actually tend to listen they are eventually quite interested afterwards and want to try it out themselves. I just fear that this might backfire if they do it on their own as they might not know where to go and what to do. Also something worth thinking more about how to change it for 2008.
Tags: secondlife, polarization, discussion, virtualworlds