Will you give up control, and your social net?
Yesterday, on a space station, I met a young girl who engaged there as a “full protocol latex bondage doll.” While the latex doll theme is common among fetishists, the level of control and restriction that this young lady imposed on herself is new. She was using a special version of the Second Life client known as RR Viewer, and with the implant that she was given not only certain actions were forced upon her. What amazed me that that both IM was blocked for her as well as public chat was clipped to 20 characters. Other actions such as teleporting could be added. Admitting that this kind of role play has a fascination to it also for me, also other scenarios come to my mind as well…
One consequence of her restrictions for me was that soon I ended the communication with her. It was impossible as everything I said was clipped to 20 characters. Intelligent communication was only possible by passing notecards back and forth.
Consider this: Technically, Second Life is a chat system with an integrated 3D graphics environment. Everything we do is only — communication. What will happen to her social life in the next weeks if these restrictions are not removed? Will her friends adapt to an SMS-style communication, or simply quit talking to her? What will happen if she is contacted by IM and she does not reply because she cannot? What if she is asked out to dance and she cannot teleport? Sure, she can re-log-in at any time using the regular viewer, but that would render the whole effort useless. Hmm.
Smilla's Snow House 