Second Life and the Fourth Estate, Part Two: A Stupid Kind of Benevolence
Adam Reuters née Pasick may be buried deep within the unlinked subdomains of the venerable, unclawable Reuters (sure to be alone with the cockroaches after Medialoper has faded to virtual dust), but closer to the surface of visibility is Wagner James Au. His New World Notes blog is linked slightly below the fold of secondlife.com, with a heroic avatar headshot and the questionably hyphenated blurb “Wagner James Au reports first-hand from Second Life.”
Au writes less about business profits climbing and more about the actual culture of Second Life. Oddly enough, “Au” is not representative of the Au Corporation, but, rather, the man’s actual last name. So the reporter primarily covering meatspace (Adam Reuters) gets his identity subsumed, while the self-described embedded journalist (Wagner James Au) gets to use his real name. There’s some comfort in knowing that irony is the primary motivating factor in both universes.
But in terms of the more entertaining job, and thus the more entertaining read, I gotta hand it to Au. Reuters treats his beat like most any other, using what strikes me as a more classic journalistic approach. Working with inherently goofy source material, meanwhile, Au gives a deliciously purple hue to his prose. From January 15, 2007:
Like last January 15th, today’s sun emanates with a special kind of benevolence. (But as with most memorials, you have to take the time to look closer, to make it worthwhile.)
I love it so damn much. Seriously, I want to establish that I’m not dissing him. For starters, we probably work within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco, and judging from his muscular meatspace photo, he could easily kick my ass. So, we’re all good, Mr. Au! Sir! Feelin’ the blogger-to-blogger love, yo!
The “special kind of benevolence” to which he refers is the face of Martin Luther King. In the sun. Because, you see, it’s Martin Luther King day, which is why you aren’t even reading this until you return to work on Tuesday. Evidently, Second Life’s tribute to Dr. King is to put his visage in the one place where we’ve been told our entire lives not to look. That’d be a great blurb: Second Life: Now You Can Stare at the Sun! Not to mention that to the 13th-Genners who statistically comprise much of Second Life’s population, “face in the sun” means it’s time for Teletubbies! Points for effort, if not much else.
Anyway—keep up the good work, Mr. Au.
- New World Notes
- December business profits climb
- Open Forum: King’s Day in Second Life
- 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?
- Teletubbies
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1. The Weekly ‘Loper - January 21, 2007 | Medialoper wrote on January 21st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
[...] Second Life and the Fourth Estate, Part Two: A Stupid Kind of Benevolence - “Second Life: Now You Can Stare At The Sun!” In the name of love, of course. [...]