The Voices in My Head

DJ Mythfit here, alias Warda Kitty. Just had a great New Year’s Eve music show. Almost 5 hours of non-stop music, and the theme was cats. By bizarre coincidence, almost everyone came witha c at avatar, and so I picked out songs with some kind of cat them (I’m too sexy…. Cat Stevens… What’s New Pussycat), along with my usual mix of music. For some reason the usual clubhouse was deserted, and we congregated around the sandbox instead. Tin roof for a dance floor, chimney for a dance ball, and sandbox for a sandbox for a tip jar. Or something like that anyway.

…and this is my blog. I live in Second Life, a virtual reality world made by Linden Labs. This, of course, tells you nothing.

I’ve been here a while, and finally the voices in my head have become loud enough that I have become my own person. This, of course, also tells you nothing.

By normal standards, I am, perhaps, not entirely sane. I did, after all, participate in the first ever Big Brother event within Second Life. I have, at various times, been an elf (of the desert… very rare), a pixie, a cat, a genie, and on rare occassions, even human.

Needless to say, by normal standards, I am not real. I live in a virtual world. Needless to say, this is nonsense. Normal standards are nonsense.

You can talk to me in this virtual world as easily as you can face to face in your so-called real world. And there, you can make me laugh. Is that laughter not real? You can (though I hope you won’t) make me cry. Are those not real tears?

I have a heart, a brain, eyes. And eyes do more than see; they cry. Brains do more than think; they hope. Hearts do more than beat; they break. Tread lightly, for though you may never touch me physically, you can’t help but to touch me in my mind, and wounds there can hurt far longer and deeper than any wound born of flesh and blood.

I spoke to King Venturas earlier this morning. For those not in the know, he is the prime mover of the Big Brother event in Second Life. Obviously I’m not going to reveal any details of what we said. But I no longer believe it is a rigged game. There are however, certainly enough coincidences to make it look questionable, and I still think they either made a poor choice of housemates, or didn’t properly control for pre-existing fame or notoriety within the Second Life community.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out. It has extra interest for me compared to most observers, as I actually got to know most of the other housemates over that first week, whereas most visitors to the island already know who they are voting for before they talk to anyone.

So, yeah, I’m out of Big Brother. It was fun while it lasted. I never expected to win, but I am kind of dissapointed that I didn’t even make the first cut from the 15.

Apparently the final total number of votes in the sim was around 1000 or so, which makes an average of 60 votes for each person. 60 votes for me would probably have guaranteed my place in the second week. Of the community groups I am in, one has 430 members, another 180 members. If even a tenth of these people had taken a few minutes to come and vote, I would still be in. It is a little dissapointing to see how little some people care.

• From something they said to me, I suspect one of the players may be a mole. This of course is standard practice by now in BB anyway, so its not too surprising. From other things I have seen, I suspect the final winner may already have been chosen by Endemol. You heard it here first; the winner has a connection with the Netherlands. That’s right; from the start I never expected to win the top prize.
• The whole event seems less organised than I had hoped. There is no real security in the sim, and it was griefed several times before they realised they can block visitors from running scripts.
• Endemol has apparently spent almost nothing promoting this event. Certainly not compared to the people still in the game. One player ran a full page advert in an online newspaper. Another was interviewed by one of the more popular podcasts on the net. A third appeared live on Dutch TV. That isn’t Big Brother except in name. It’s an Internet election campaign. Most of the players still in even have someone (or more than one person) acting as full-time campaign managers.
• A few of the people still in have used sex to persuade people to vote for them. Given the nature of SL, there wasn’t much to stop me rezzing a dancing pole, turning my avatar into a striper, and giving the punters a good show to persuade them to vote for me. But I have my pride at least, and I did not stoop to that.

I do of course have a few more things to say about this event, and I’d be happy to share them directly with BB, should they ask. But most of them wouldn’t be right to air on a blog until at least after the event is over.

Fell down in the first round of voting. More to say later, but seeing as how I had to get up at 2:30 am for the eviction ceremony, I’m going back to bed now.

When a boy talks to his mother, he wears a mask. He doesn’t always reveal everything about himself if he is smart. Certainly, he doesn’t talk in the same way as when he talks to his friends in the playground. And his mother certainly doesn’t talk to him in the same way she does when she talks to her husband. She wears yet a third mask when she talks as a member of the PTA group. In our daily life, we wear a mask. Sometimes several masks in the same day. But always, we wear a mask. No one reveals everything about themselves without a mask to filter it.

Well, a few do, but they are generally regarded as weird, crazy, dangerous, subversive, or some combination of those.

So, I’m writing this here to be frank about something. I wear a mask. And unlike most people, I am not only aware that I wear a mask, but I revel in it (Send in the court jesters!). I am me. The character I play in SL is me. The character I play in RL is me. They are two very different people; they are, in a sense, masks I wear. But even though they are different people, they are both me.

Big Brother was pleased with our Christmas tree, but it wasn’t enough. Necessary, but not sufficient, as the saying goes. Today’s twist was we had to add a full range of Christmassy things…. Santa, reindeer, sleigh, snow, the Grinch, nativity scene, and so on and so forth. I think Big Brother was expecting these to be a little harder, as all that got done within hours of the challenge being issued. Once again I went mad with the particle fountains, and the rat made custom baubles with our pictures in them.

I’m currently in a campaign to rock the elf vote. If we can get all the elven communities voting, we can win this easily. Yep, unlike the TV version, BBSL is more like a game of poker mixed with popularity contest and well-oiled election campaign, even down to the so-called “negative campaigning”. It’s also become an advertising platform for those housemates who run their own businesses in Second Life. Vastly different from the RL version, but interesting in its own way.

Last night I had a chat with another housemate, and it seemed to be that the knives had been put away, at least temporarily. That’s one thing to be glad about anyway. Then I woke up to find she has accused me of stealing her lunch money.

Yet another day in the Big Brother house. As I expected, I woke up to find the task we’d been promised arrived about 10 minutes after I went to bed. Our mission, should we choose to accept it (and we do, right? Right?) is to build a giant Christmas tree. This tree will later be auctioned off and the proceeds given to a charity of our choosing as a group decision.

Seeing as we have all the co-operative skills of the League of Nations, this is a bit of a high hope. It rapidly degenerated into pick something to build before all the showy stuff gets picked, and hope your contribution gets noted.

I built the falling snow effects, some baubles, and the particle effects on the star. Shame the star is so large you can’t see it’s particles.

So today marks my first day back at work after the weekend launch of BB in SL. Fortunately this week, or at least today, is a quiet day for me.

Also in BB, one contestant had their first official warning, for having a particle fountain that put stuff everywhere outside our boxes. Just because we are encouraged to think outside the box, it doesn’t mean we are allowed to build outside those boxes. I can’t help wondering what her plan was with that. I wonder about everyone though - this is in many ways a giant and elaborate poker game, as well as being a blatant popularity contest.

This morning I got word that today we will receive our first real task. Unfortunately I had to leave before I could find out what it is. I hope it isn’t too hard or embarrassing or anything.

More random musings in no particular order, again, no names.

• One housemate had to go to hospital for something, and I suspect they may have to drop out of the running over that. I hope not.
• This being SL, it was inevitable I guess that a group of housemates would decide that sex sells, and act accordingly in an attempt to buy votes.
• Elf circle has come through and sent the message out to elves throughout the (virtual) world. That’s a lot of extra votes coming my way.
• My action overrider, a little piece of software that stops you from walking like a jerky robot and into something more natural, got lost in my inventory, and I spent most of today walking like a jerky robot.
• Still no word on what tasks we’ll be expected to do. I think our first task is survive the boredom, or maybe it’s a get-to-know-each-other shakedown. Hard to say for sure. That stage will take longer though, given that we aren’t all ‘in’ at the same time, unlike the RL Big Brother.