Second Life press is all over the place at the moment, this time last year there was maybe an article or post or two each week. Now, there are dozens every day. Second Life is on the radio, occasionally on the television, in the newspapers, and all over the World-Wide Web.An inevitable journalistic reaction to ... well ... a lot of journalism about something is to produce yet more journalism suggesting that there's too much journalism going on about it. It's hard to tell how much the hype-cycle is driven by people, and how much by the media, since the two are linked together in ways that are impossible to assess in isolation.
Is Second Life overhyped? Is all this attention more than it deserves? Very few of the people saying yes, it's overhyped are Second Lifers themselves. So tell me, what do you think? Overhyped? Or not getting as much attention (or the right sort of attention) as it deserves?
1. Not sure if I've said it before, but I think the anti-SL hype will be pushed along by some of the outlandish behaviors that residents themselves displays--- from Anshe going after media outlets for using her likeness (Walt Disney, eh?), to banning photography (cleared up, sorta, but still), to the ban-first, ask questions later-'you all look a like' reactions we saw with the Copybot backlash.
SL already IS that kinda odd thing on the block that gamers hate and bloggers don't 'get' (and it's the same thing as blogging, heh), and when *those* stories surface, it doesn't really matter how much good is done. We all collectively look like nutjobs.
I hope I'm wrong, but, meh, I've heard too much unbelievable commentary coming out of the grid, including some of the things SLI's recent post on Hyperbole pointed out.
So we'll see. I predict summer, if not sooner. There's a lot of conferences between now and then.
Posted at 1:34AM on Jan 8th 2007 by Eric Rice