Snark Hunt

Editor’s Note: The YearlyKos convention in Chicago this past weekend was a significant milestone in the history of the liberal blogosphere. The event confirmed the ascendancy of bloggers as a serious political force. All seven of the Democratic Party candidates attended to woo progressive voters. As part of our ongoing effort to bring Medialoper readers the latest news about the increasing influence of new media on the American political process, we sent the head of our National Affairs Desk, Ronin Kurosawa, to report on the event. Unfortunately, due to certain budgetary constraints, we could not send Ronin to Chicago. Instead, he files this report from Second Life.

Network Neutrality

Friday Morning, 8:40 am
I’ve been to more conferences than I can remember, and this is the first time I’ve arrived at one without either jet lag or a hangover. The open bars at these virtual conferences don’t compare to real life. While technology is improving, I suspect this disparity will persist for decades to come.

Completely sober, I’m hovering two floors above ground level just outside of the Sears Tower. I’m not nearly caffeinated enough to attempt entering the faux building to ride the faux elevator to the faux conference room. Unfortunately, I’m already late to the Network Neutrality panel, so I decided to float in space and view the proceedings through the virtual plate glass window.

I’ve missed the introductions, but I can hear the panelists discussing all of the major issues related to network neutrality and beyond. Universal broadband – check. Personal data privacy – check. They’re discussing important issues that will shape the future of the net and, by extension, the future of our country.

[Read more…] about YearlyKos is Dead, Long Live Netroots Nation

As political scandals go, this one was odd, even by Second Life standards. Gaming blogs were buzzing last week with reports of a bizarre incident involving the staff member of a US Senator who (allegedly in a drunken rage) used a plot of Second Life land to stage a protest against a fluffy pink video game character.

Early accounts of the incident raised more questions than they answered. An SLNN story failed to reveal the identity of the Senator and offered only the slightest of reasons why someone would hate Kirby enough to portray him as a Sieg-Heiling Nazi who “hates our troops.” That story also raised the possibility that US national security might be at stake due to the Senate staffer leaving passwords posted on his computer monitor.

When mainstream political pundits grouse about the risks of swimming too far into the deep end of the new media pool, I’m pretty sure this is precisely the scenario they have in mind.

After re-reading the SLNN story a half dozen times, the mystery surrounding the identity of the Senator and his staffer became too much for me to bear. I’m sorry to report that I’ve spent most of the past week tracking down the participants in this absurd tale; and untangling a web of accusations, lies, and deceptions.

Now the whole story can be told.

A Lesson On Honorifics

My first task was to figure out the identity of the United States Senator. Also, how the hell does a US politician slip into Second Life without creating a storm of media coverage? I’ve been hearing rumblings that the media has finally finished with the hype phase of its Second Life coverage and is now moving onto the backlash phase. Still, it seems like a real live Senator in Second Life should generate some news coverage.

To my surprise, several sources revealed the Senator to be none other than Mike Gravel. While Gravel is an active presidential candidate, he hasn’t held a seat in the US Senate for over 20 years. It’s doubtful that his campaign volunteers have access to any sensitive information that would compromise national security. I would hope that everyone writing about the 2008 presidential campaign understands that, in Mr. Gravel’s case, the word Senator is used as an honorific.

The Gravel revelation was also surprising because the protest was alleged to have taken place on land where the candidate’s staff member was building a virtual campaign headquarters. But the Gravel campaign already has a well-established virtual campaign HQ. As I eventually discovered, the Kirby incident had nothing to do with Mike Gravel’s campaign.

A Lego And A Dream

Legoean Ferraris (aka Lego) volunteers for Gravel’s presidential campaign — both in real life and in Second Life. I’m still unclear on what Lego’s real-life responsibilities are, but in Second Life, he’s not exactly what you’d call a high-ranking campaign official. He doesn’t seem to have any duties in the day-to-day operations of the in-world campaign.

Lego has only been in Second Life a little over a month. In that short time, he’s already developed a concept for a consulting business designed to help Congressional candidates build and maintain virtual campaign headquarters. In some ways, Lego is like nearly everyone you meet in Second Life. He’s convinced that virtual worlds are the future, and he dreams of running a successful virtual business.

The first step in Lego’s business plan was to buy a plot of land to build an office for his new venture. Lego purchased a small parcel in a business district named Bastiat. Shortly after that, things began to go horribly wrong.

A Spinning Pink Puff Ball

Not long after arriving in Bastiat, a Kirby Emporium store opened across the street from Lego’s new office. Kirby is possibly the most innocent video game character ever created. He was initially developed by Nintendo as a learning tool for novice gamers and was designed to be as inoffensive as possible. Kirby’s superpower is the ability to inhale his opponents and spit them out as stars.

Lego began having problems with the Kirby Emporium when the store erected a giant spinning Kirby sign. Somehow Lego felt that Kirby’s goofy presence would damage his business prospects. Lego isn’t aware of just how bad the bad neighbors can be in Second Life.

Lego’s reaction to the Kirby Emporium seems to be part of an ongoing trend I’ve noticed among politically active residents in-world. Despite (or maybe because of) the naturally anarchistic nature of Second Life, political groups in SL are obsessed with being taken seriously. I can only imagine that Lego had nightmares about meetings with potential clients who wanted to know why there was an enormous spinning pink puffball across the street from his consulting office. Still, any consultant who attempts to portray Second Life as a mainstream experience isn’t doing his clients any favors.

Lego eventually took his complaints to IntLibber Brautigan, the owner of the region. Lego demanded that IntLibber repurchase the land. Not only did IntLibber refuse to buy the land, but he also took offense at Lego’s complaints, calling Lego “a racist.” IntLibber believed that Lego’s distaste for Kirby was racially motivated.

Does Kirby Hate Our Troops?

After IntLibber rejected Lego’s demands, Lego attempted to unload his virtual land at a substantial discount. A week later, the land hadn’t sold, and Lego saw spinning Kirbys in his sleep.

Then Lego got the bright idea to use his land to build a weird monument protesting Kirby. He constructed a house-like building with signs depicting Kirby as a little pink nazi, raising an arm saluting to Adolph Hitler. The pictures I’ve seen are a bit fuzzy, but Kirby appears to have a little red swastika on his chest. Over Kirby’s head, the signs read, “Kirby Hates our Troops.”

Some have suggested that Lego’s protest was merely absurd and was an attempt to make light of the ridiculous situation he found himself in. Maybe so, but I find it unfathomable how anyone involved in real-world politics could ever think that portraying a beloved video game character as a nazi is a good idea.

Lego briefly tried to cover up his involvement in the protest, claiming that a house guest had accessed his computer and created the signs using his account. As excuses go, it was one step removed from “the dog ate my homework.”

It was only a matter of time before Lego’s protest was discovered by IntLibber, who promptly contacted Linden Lab to report the display of “broadly offensive material.” As the owner of the region, IntLibber also confiscated Lego’s land in the process. If nothing else, Lego succeeded in ridding himself of his problem land — at a 100% loss.

When I talked with IntLibber this past week, he did not back down from playing the race card. During our interview, he told me, “I have to say that while some people in RL may think this is an oddball comedic story, replace “Kirby” with “African American,” and the story becomes far more clear.”

I’m not sure what to make of IntLibber’s comments. It’s uncommon to hear a self-described Libertarian and former Reagan Youth speak so passionately about the plight of an oppressed group. If I were the skeptical sort, I might think he was exploiting the situation for maximum media exposure. Also, he used the protest as an opportunity to repossess the land without paying a cent.

So, What Race Is Kirby?

If Lego’s hatred of Kirby was racially motivated, we might better understand his crime if we knew Kirby’s race. But unfortunately, according to Wikipedia, Kirby has no race:

Kirby’s species has been a common topic of debate in his fandom. Unlike many other video game mascots, such as Link being Hylian, Kirby’s kind has never been given an official name.

Still, IntLibber insists that Lego’s protest constituted a “hate crime.” During an interview, IntLibber told me:

I would call it a hate crime, as much as burning a cross on someone’s lawn … he didn’t regard the Kirbys as people of any equal importance. That’s the root of any bigotry.

I’m still not sold on the bigotry angle. While the use of Nazi imagery is certainly “broadly offensive,” I’m not convinced that anyone would equate Lego’s hatred of Kirby with hating humans. It’s more like hating a ball of lint.

Hating Copyright Violations

If Lego wanted to take down the Kirby Emporium, he might have had better luck by contacting the Nintendo legal department. There’s no indication that any of the Kirby merchandise in Second Life is authorized or licensed by Nintendo.

I raised this issue with IntLibber and suggested that, as a “silent partner,” he might want to take a closer look at copyright issues. In response, IntLibber asked if I was threatening him, then informed me that Disney is the only company that really cares about enforcing its copyrights.

While IntLibber might be a Second Life business mogul, he’s got a lot to learn about how real-life entertainment corporations protect their intellectual property rights.

This aspect of the story raises an interesting hypothetical question: Is it possible to commit a hate crime against a copyright violation? Only the RIAA knows for sure.

The Rest of the Story

One aspect of this story that’s been overlooked is IntLibber’s silent partnership with the Kirby Emporium. I’m not suggesting that this justifies what occurred, but it might explain his reaction to Lego’s complaints, and it certainly could explain IntLibber’s over-the-top claims in the media. Lego’s protest has turned into a huge promotional event for the Kirby Emporium.

IntLibber’s grandstanding could also be politically motivated. While he denies involvement with any of the Second Life campaign groups, he recently named one of his islands Ron Paul, and he will apparently be donating a portion of that island for use by the Ron Paul campaign group. It’s entirely possible there might be some Paul vs. Gravel rivalry fueling the battle between Lego and IntLibber.

There’s also the issue of Lego’s land that IntLibber confiscated. IntLibber got the land back at no cost, and he gets to sell it all over again at a 100% profit. Despite IntLibber’s outrage, this whole incident has worked out pretty well for him.

Meanwhile, Lego still has plans to launch his consulting business, only this time from a private island. It’s doubtful that this incident will impact his business if for no other reason because his target market is blissfully ignorant of events that occur in Second Life.

While Lego lost a few hundred dollars on his virtual land, he might have fared much worse if the story had reached a broader audience in the mainstream media. All things considered, Lego got off easy on this one.

A truism of American politics is that the cover-up is often worse than the crime. In the case of the Kirby scandal, it’s hard to tell which was worse, but one thing is sure, both were equally absurd.

I always think of Japan as a technological utopia — a world populated by super-cool robots and ultra-high-tech gadgets. Over 85 million Japanese citizens are on the net, and Japan’s mobile phones make the iPhone look like a cheap toy.

Given that Japan has one of the most wired populations in the world, you would expect that its politicians would be using the latest technology to connect with voters. But that isn’t the case. It’s against the law for Japanese politicians to use the Internet to campaign for office.

Japanese election laws prevent candidates from updating their websites during the election season. This year the moratorium went into effect on July 12th. Candidates are not allowed to update their websites again until after the July 29th election. And it’s not just the candidate’s websites that are regulated — politicians can’t use third-party social websites either.

What does this all mean? It means that Ichiro Ozawa won’t be responding to your MySpace friend request any time soon. And Yutaka Kobayashi won’t be tweeting. And Kan Suzuki won’t appear at his campaign headquarters in Second Life. As a result, Suzuki has temporarily closed his Second Life headquarters until after the election.

[Read more…] about A Land Where Politics and the Internet Don’t Mix

There was a time, not so long ago, when money was the only ingredient any candidate or political group needed to disseminate a political message to the masses.

Billions of dollars have been spent producing and distributing political advertisements. To this day, pundits and analysts gauge a candidate’s prospects for competing in an election by the amount of money that candidates can raise to buy media time.

But all of this is changing rapidly, thanks to social media. The economics of campaigning are being turned upside down by services like YouTube. We’re entering a new era of grassroots politics where average citizens can produce and distribute political messages that reach a global audience instantaneously, at almost no cost. These new distribution channels are fundamentally altering the balance of media power.

At the same time, the widespread availability of these new tools raises some interesting questions about disclosure and transparency. For example, we know the Obama Girl loves Barack, but we don’t have a clue who she is or what her motives are. From one perspective, she’s helping the candidate gain exposure with a young demographic. From another perspective, she might be harming the candidate among voters who see the video as frivolous — depending on who produced the video, that may be the goal.

[Read more…] about How to Start a Political Revolution Without Breaking the Law

Anywhere but Second Life, the sight of a Japanese Zero zipping around the skies on Memorial Day weekend might start a riot. Not here, though. In this surreal world, a vintage fighter plane from the wrong side of the tracks doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.

I had just taken possession of my new aircraft and was jetting around Scaroth on a test flight. The plane is light, surprisingly agile, and a little too responsive. One moment I’m climbing into the sky with nothing but clouds in sight; the next, I’m zooming straight for the ocean.

Funny thing about Zeros: once they go into a nosedive, there’s no pulling back. It’s almost like they were engineered to crash — which is exactly what happened next.

I narrowly missed a nightclub called the TerrorDome and found myself submerged at the bottom of a lagoon.

Since then, I’ve crashed my Zero numerous times, and I’ve taken to telling bystanders that I’m one of those WWII re-enactors. So far, no one has asked any questions.

Second Life Is the Global Village

As I wander around the grid, I’m frequently surprised by how foreign Second Life really is — and I don’t mean foreign strange (although it usually is that too), I mean foreign international. I’m not just saying this from an American perspective because the mix of residents in Second Life is so diverse that it must feel foreign regardless of one’s nationality.

According to recent statistics, only 19% of active Second Life users are from North America. The largest national groups were Germans and Americans at 16% each. No nationality comes close to being a majority in the metaverse.

Second Life is probably as close as you can get to traveling abroad without holding a passport.

Because of this diversity, the things Americans care about don’t always mean much to the majority of residents leading their second lives. My Brazilian and Dutch neighbors in Scaroth couldn’t care less about Memorial Day, and I’m sure they’ll feel the same come July 4th.

It’s a different world here, and it reveals itself in many ways, not the least of which is how various nationalities conduct their virtual political activities.

To date, the US presidential campaigns have been incredibly sincere and surprisingly conservative. What little drama the campaign has witnessed has involved some relatively isolated griefing, disappearing campaign headquarters, and an almost obsessive need to be taken seriously by the mainstream media (and the mainstream party machinery, for that matter).

By contrast, other nationalities have pursued their Second Life political activities much more zealously:

• The French waged war against the fascist Front National. The battle lasted for days and ultimately led to the notorious “pig grenade” incident.
• Spanish conservatives are battling Spanish socialists using guns, grenades, and the ever-popular art of name-calling.
• The relatively tame Romanians hosted a day-long referendum to debate the impeachment of their already suspended president. While there were no weapons in sight, there was a full day of live media coverage broadcast from Second Life to real-life Romanian television networks. By all accounts, the mainstream news reporters considered debating national political issues in a virtual world entirely reasonable.

In Europe, They Call It “Humour”

We’re also starting to see the emergence of a couple of new weapons that might be more powerful than pig grenades — satire and parody.

A Frenchman, calling himself Christophe Hugo, has quietly launched an island called Caractavitars. The island features an evolving set of tableaus designed to skewer world political figures. As advertised, Hugo wanders the island in an avatar designed to look like a caricature of French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The island is now appearing in search results for all sorts of political-related keywords, including the names of prominent American politicians. When I arrived on Memorial day weekend, Hugo had set up a scene depicting a bald eagle upside down on a huge platter in what appeared to be a surreal picnic setting. A Weber grill stood nearby, waiting to cook up some all-American drumsticks.

Meanwhile, Hugo, in character as Sarkozy, waived a gun around while dancing on a platform built out of a huge book, numerous stacks of unmarked bills, and a television set tuned to TF1 (which I gather must be the French equivalent of Fox News). I’m positive that I’m not fully grasping the nuance of Hugo’s protest, and I’m sure our French readers will have a finer appreciation for the details.

I approached Hugo to ask about his bizarre display. He ignored me for a while before detonating an explosive device that sent me hurtling through space and into the ocean (I’ve spent a lot of time underwater these past few weeks).

In retrospect, I probably should have read his Second Life profile before asking any questions:

“What is caricature to you is reality to me.”
— CH

My avatar is in-world to display caricavatars. This is a full-time job that rarely gives him the time to chat. Enjoy your visit though.

A full-time job?! I am always surprised by the number of people I encounter who make their living in Second Life, but this is too much. I can only blame the weak US dollar and the excessive holiday time that most Europeans are given. If they were working 60-hour weeks like most Americans, they obviously wouldn’t be wasting time in Second Life mocking their newly elected president!

Hugo is developing an American Caricavatars set to launch on the Fourth of July. I can only imagine what he has in store for that project. I teleported in to look around and found myself on the southern side of the Mexican-US border. It’s open for now, but it’s only a matter of time before the minutemen move in. Better take your Linden passport just in case.

Gravel On The Move

Meanwhile, the US campaigns are moving forward in much the same manner as they have all year, without a hint of satire but with plenty of intrigue surrounding campaign headquarters.

That new Mike Gravel campaign HQ I wrote about two weeks ago? It was the first officially authorized campaign HQ in Second Life, but it’s now closed. Instead, the Gravel people have moved to a new location that’s bigger and better than ever. It’s part of the nomadic lifestyle in Second Life.

Just days after the grand opening of the original Gravel HQ in Second Life, political blogger LailaLei Mathilde raised concerns about possible FECA violations related to inappropriate corporate branding. It didn’t take long before someone else pointed out that Cezary Fish, the building’s creator, is a Polish national and that his involvement might violate the FECA laws governing the activities of foreign nationals.

I discussed these issues with Gravel’s Second Life group leader, Astrophysicist McCallister, shortly after the closing of the first campaign HQ. Astro claimed that the move had been in the works prior to the Second Choices blog post, adding that Gravel’s virtual campaign takes FECA matters very seriously.

Astro told me:

The Gravel Campaign is going to fully grasp this opportunity to discuss campaigning in-world, in regards to FECA, and other stated campaign laws. We’re breaking new ground, and we’re proud of it, but we do have to analyze every action from an RL point of view. Hopefully, we set the standard for campaigning in world.

It’s good to hear that the campaign is taking a proactive approach to FECA compliance. Lord knows what might happen if Mike Gravel were to be elected president amidst rumors that he’s in the pocket of the Polish Virtual Builders Association.

The fact that FECA issues were raised almost immediately after the first real-world campaign arrived in Second Life points to the challenge of conducting political business in a virtual world. Given the current state of the world, everyone on the planet has a vested interest in the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. There are plenty of non-US residents in Second Life ready to jump in and do whatever they can to help their candidate of choice. While the Gravel campaign is dealing with these issues today, it’s only a matter of time before the other campaigns face the same scrutiny. Gravel is taking the heat for being first.

Regardless, the change seems to have worked out well for Gravel. On my first visit to the new headquarters, it was like I’d landed in a theme park called Mike Gravel World. While the original HQ was nice, the new Pup Witherspoon-designed facility is much more elaborate and devotes even more space to issues such as Gravel’s NI4D proposal.

The new build is not without its quirks, however. Floating 700 meters in space and boxed in by transparent walls, the headquarters feels like a giant political terrarium.

Astro tells me the walls will keep visitors from falling off the edge. It’s nice to see the Gravel campaign takes safety seriously. Unfortunately, I get the feeling some of the other campaigns aren’t so concerned. I’ve heard more than a few rumors of supporters impaled on the unicorn that greets visitors at the entry of the Clinton campaign HQ.

I plan on flying my Zero out to Clinton Island to investigate. With any luck, I’ll have the full story in a couple of weeks. If you don’t hear from me by then, assume I’m lost at sea.

It’s no secret that social media will significantly impact the 2008 US presidential race. The leading candidates are already using every social network to reach as many voters as possible. You can be Hillary Clinton’s friend on MySpace, follow John Edwards’s personal goals on 43Things, and have Barack Obama’s tweets delivered directly to your mobile phone.

Collectively the candidates are leaving almost no new media stone unturned. But until last week, none of the campaigns had an authorized presence in a virtual world. That all changed on Friday when Mike Gravel’s campaign unveiled its new headquarters in Second Life.

Following a spirited performance in the Democratic debates and a whirlwind media tour afterward, Gravel is shaping to be the ultimate maverick candidate. By comparison, former maverick John McCain looks like an absolute impostor.

[Read more…] about Mike Gravel Meets The Metaverse

I was flying 600 meters above Janni when my submarine burst into flames.

I’d taken to the sky after the area around my (previously) remote compound was invaded by an army of Brazilian tourists and a small band of nudist Wiccans. Somehow they managed to block all water routes leading out of the area.

Fortunately, my submarine can fly. At least, it used to.

By now, you know that Second Life is a place where anything can happen. What you may not know is that it’s also a place where nothing ever really works the way it’s supposed to.

Ask any long-time resident, and they’ll tell you that Second Life is always broken. For the last couple of weeks, group chat — the primary tool that political campaigns use to organize in-world — has been busted. While Second Life has tremendous potential for political mobilization, it looks like a fragile toy right now.

Given that backdrop, it should come as no surprise that there hasn’t been any substantial campaign activity here since my last post. In the past couple of weeks, Mike Gravel supporters created a new group, and Ron Paul supporters opened a new HQ. The latter is significant because Paul is the first Republican candidate to have a presence in Second Life, and the former is surprising because Gravel claims to have been hiding under a rock for the last ten years.

[Read more…] about Politics In Second Life: Camping On a Nude Beach Waiting For Something Interesting To Happen

My first Medialoper assignment, and I’ve already missed a deadline.

Lopy e-mailed me last night to remind me that my story must be filed no later than 5 a.m. By 8 a.m., my voice mailbox was full, and I was ignoring Lopy’s frantic IMs. The general election is over 18 months away. So why the hell do I have a 5 a.m. deadline in April of 2007?

For the record, Linden Lab performed a major upgrade yesterday, and the grid was down much longer than anticipated. On top of that, I’m in the process of setting up a compound deep in one of the most remote regions of Second Life. My hut is located on the Eastern edge of the universe (literally) and is surrounded by water as far as the eye can see (at least until a casino or strip club moves in next door). It’s the perfect place for me to focus on covering a campaign as strange as the 2008 presidential race is shaping up to be. Of course, Lopy’s ludicrous 5 a.m. deadlines are no help at all.

All leading Democratic presidential candidates have headquarters in Second Life. The media coverage of these campaigns has been muddled, skeptical, and occasionally mocking. For reporters who can’t tell the difference between a virtual world and a video game, there’s no apparent reason for the campaigns to be here. Those same reporters overlook that presidential campaigns are already a game, and moving that game into a virtual world full of sex-crazed furries and flying penises is a logical progression in the already weird history of American politics.

[Read more…] about Furries and Griefers on the Campaign Trail: Presidential Politics In Second Life