2 On Chickens: Sion and Second Life.
It might be judged a bit ironic, given that my profession demands a familiarity with new technologies, but I have always been somewhat of a late adopter. For instance, I held out for years against owning and carrying a cell phone, even as all of those around me began to acquire them. It was finally an internship in New York, during my third year of college, where the lack of a land line at the apartment necessitated I break my telephonic abstinence. More recently, I was behind the times in adopting the use of Google Reader.
While in some ways, the ever-spreading, all-encompassing reach of Google can be cause for alarm (see: Google Buzz) I believe Google Reader to be a platform the benefits wildly from its automatic integration with my already extant social network. The networked nature of Google Reader results in an exponential curation. Many blogs act almost solely as sites of curation. For major news touting paper publication, there is a wing of individuals who labor in investigation and presentation, and another, smaller group who labor in editing and selection. When these roles are combined and doled out to the single blog-author-maintainer, then the act becomes a curation. A picking and choosing and framing of all possible content according to a central concept. However, by building my own Google Reader corral, from various RSS feeds, I am performing my own curation (curation squared) by selecting and grouping those blogs I am interested in. However, it is in the third moment of curation (curation cubed) the Google Reader really shines. Every time I elect to "share" a particular piece of content to those other Readers connected to me, I am adding in a conscious, socialized way to a larger information culture.
I bring all of this up to introduce two actions on my behalf. One, finally signing up for Google Reader in 2009. Two, feeling it immediately necessary to populate my Reader with sources that my networked friends would not themselves peruse, in the hopes of proving a unique asset to this Exponentially Curated Information Culture. As such, it was during this period that I reached a peak of activity in the category of Strange Blog Perusal. This was what led me to the Second Life themed tabloid: the Alphaville Herald.
Second Life
Second Life began in 2003. As a platform, it suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. From one perspective it is a huge, free-form MMORPG with no levels, monsters, dungeons, or goals. From another perspective, it is nothing more than a sophisticated chat client which gives its users the tools to associate 3D graphics with their communication. The truth is probably somewhere in between. It is hard to think of it as ONLY a pretty shell to an Instant Messenger, but it is also hard to think of it as a grand international game of Calvinball. Regardless of interpretation, though, one of SLs most notable features is its support of user-generated objects. Users (or "residents") are not only presented with 3D modeling tools to create new objects, but also a scripting language to give these objects behaviors and powers within the space of SL. I get the impression that many of SLs users are not themselves computer programmers. Therefore, those residents that do possess programming skills, and can therefore generate new, useful or entertaining objects wield a not insignificant amount of power and influence.
The Alphaville Herald would be among the first to confirm that there are numerous power struggles occurring among the residents of SL. The articles on The Alphaville Herald vary pretty wildly in terms of content. There are breaking-report style pieces that document actions taken by Linden Lab, the owners and operators of SL. There are gossipy pieces about parties and events for residents. There are even "Page 6" style photo-spreads of sexy residents posing in provocative if not totally absent outfits. It was none of these articles that I stumbled upon during my first visit to the Herald. It was, instead, the following:
Bio-Warfare Attacks on Second Life Chicken Farms
sionChicken Killer threatens virtual birds with death by starvation
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Second Life’s chicken farming community is facing a deadly new threat - a food decoy that distracts virtual chickens from their food trays, starving them to death over the course of several days. The threat of biological warfare marks the latest stage in an ongoing conflict between chicken farmers and anti-chicken residents. While a growing chicken farming community enjoys raising the birds, other residents feel chickens create lag and are willing to take matters into their own hands, despite an improved version of the sion chickens with reduced lag.
Image of "black market" listing for chicken-killer. From Alphaville Herald.
I had never set digital foot inside of Second Life. I had always assumed that is was a poorly rendered chat room for people with a specific kind of imagination...but reading this article forced me to reconsider this stance. There are pets? And farmers? and biological weapons that are sold to various factions via some sort of black market?
I nosed around the Herald and found a number of other chicken-related articles. There were some details here and there, but more than anything, the other articles simply deepened my curiosity. What was going on in Second Life? I decided to email Pixeleen Mistral - who had written the original article, and also held the position of Managing Editor at the Herald. She was able to relate the entire story to me, but before we get to that, here are some notable excerpts from her email.
I'm happy to talk - if you are in a hurry e-mail is probably the best way to start, because I'm not going to be able to spend any significant time in Second Life for an in-person interview until tuesday evening at the earliest.
This was my first exchange with Pixeleen and, at the time, it made me laugh. It was only later that I realized her approach to Second Life was more than an amusing detail. However, without digressing too far, Pixeleen and I never did meet up in Second Life, but we did exchange a few emails. Here's what I came to learn from her, rearranged a bit for a sense of narrative.
The Chickens
SionChickens are custom user-made prims (or 3D objects) available for purchase from a SL resident named: Sion Zaius. The purchased chickens come in a box with an egg carrier, some starting chicken feed, and (contraversally for some) a pop-up end-user license agreement. The chickens, once they hatch, move around on their own, bumping into things, eating chicken feed, and otherwise playing it cool. The chickens come in different colors...or...it seems that certain versions had either different colored tails or eggs, and that these colors could be combined by breeding two chickens of different colors. In fact, the articles I found indicated that it was this Tulip-like color blending which contributed to the chicken's popularity, and was partially responsible for a small second-hand economy developing. Some residents apparently purchased numerous chickens to act as a sort of breeder – providing new chickens in new colors to new chicken adopters.
Independent of any bio-warfare, the chickens created a measure of conflict around their inventors business practices. Originally created by Zaius for his friends, the chickens proved to not always be the most reliable commercial product. This prompted a rash of chicken-versioning from Zaius, addressing numerous issues in the chickens. It makes sense that Zaius perhaps unintentional business person that he was, was willing to performs such customer services, as all chickens, of all versions and generations relied on his Sion-sold chicken feed to survive.
Once the chickens reached a certain level of popularity, though, is when the larger conflict began. As told to me, the wide phases of the conflict were:
1. Chicken-owners and chicken-owner-neighbors begin to notice that having large numbers of chickens creates a significant lag on whatever server they're stored on. There are simply two many calculations to make for each chicken, who, if stored in a small pen with other chickens, are asking the server to calculate the result of every chicken bumping into every other. Moreover, since the chickens are able to breed with one another - if one were to leave a number of chickens, with a large enough surplus of chicken feed, unattended for an adequate amount of time - upon your return you would find an explosion in your chicken population. What people figured out was that in the earlier versions, the chickens were actually like a malignant virus, multiplying, and bringing down the servers they occupied.
2. At some point, someone decides that enough is enough, and declare the solution to be the vigilante culling of out-of-control chicken plagues. Weapons and tools like the one described above are created, to try and weed out the rogue poultry population. Concerned citizens begin using said weapons, and it's only a matter of time before an innocent chicken-owner has their their flock massacred. This brings us to the article cited above. However, it only gets more complicated from this point on.
3. Realizing that a) there are a group of chicken owners who care about their pets, and b) their are chicken-killing weapons available for purchase, a group of griefers, allegedly younger residents allied with Woodbury College begin killing "innocent" chickens on purpose. By this point, Sion has begun releasing updated versions of the chickens, attempting to correct the lag problem, and make the chickens safe for all.
4. Seeing that a band of griefers was intentionally targeting sionChickens, SL resident Prokofy Neva sees an opportunity to gain a sort of pseudo-martyrdom. He begins purchasing and raising chickens - waiting for them to be attacked, only to report this destruction of digital property to the powers-that-be at Linden Labs.
5. In an almost providential move, the griefers change strategies, and, instead of killing the chickens of the righteous, instead purchase groups of lag-bearing chickens themselves, sneaking them in the "back doors" of their advesaries own sims and saddling them with either the burden of lag, or the burden of hypocritically killing that which they would defend.
At first, having heard all of this, I was shocked by the seemingly complex nature of the chicken-related conflict. Granted, it was filtered through the lens of a publication, framing the story to make it seem sensational, but still – a user-generated plague of chickens being weaponized in a digital space amid already clashing factions? This sounded like something out of Gibson's Neuromancer. I suppose when you spend your time thinking, "yep...one day the Internet will be just like Neuromancer," that when you realize that day is already here...well it's both a bit frightening and a bit exciting.
Though, to be fair, I can't say that this sort of online conflict is new. RAPE IN CYBERSPACE
Now...account of the sionChicken crisis is, I admit, incredibly anecdotal. It's knit together from articles written on the Herald, a few emails from Pixeleen, and some scattered blog posts by other residents – none of which I have fact-checked. However, in place of verified historical accuracy, the above account possesses an interesting message about various residents use of the platform that is Second Life. To illustrate this, I'm going to return to another quote from Pixeleen.
Mixed in with all this are the not-so happy chicken farmers who are less than pleased with how the Sion Chicken guys change the rules and make a bad product - so in many ways this is the essence of Second Life distilled down - factions fighting each other. The dead chickens are collateral damage, and Sion Zauis is coining spacebux selling "chicken food".
I have already admitted my surprise at discovering that conflicts as complicated as the sionChicken crisis could emerge in SL. Pixeleen's other point, though, was what really shocked me.
this is the essence of Second Life distilled down - factions fighting each other.
To hear that someone who seemingly spends a large amount of their time on SL, who is intimately familiar with its population and activities, who writes about it on a regular basis – to here her describe the very ESSENCE of SL to be conflict...this seemed a seriously non-trivial point. Why was this the case? My belief is that it has largely to do with Second Life's previously described identity crisis.
When examining the Web I typically divide everything there into four broad categories. Everything is either a) Platform or b) Content, and everything has both x) Form and y) Substance. Multiplied together, you get (ax), (ay), (bx), and (by).
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In this case, it's (ay) that I examine. Second Life is a Platform. It's Form is relatively unique, but is made up of elements familiar to other platforms as well: chat clients, role-playing games, avatar-based social networks. However, Second Life's SUBSTANCE (ay) or, perhaps better called, its purpose, is rather uniquely situated. Second Life's primary substance is projected by its controller, Linden Labs. But that substance is left intentionally all-encompassing. LL represent SL as capable of being whatever users want. As such, each user, or to use Pixeleen's language, each faction of users create their own substance for the platform - and this is where the trouble begins. The perceived substance of a platform (its perceived purpose) has a large hand in determining the social norms of that space. If considered a game, then the social norms that govern of Halo 3 matches and WoW raids also apply to outings in SL. If considered a chat client, then the social norms that govern public chat rooms should hold sway. If you see SL as a site for commerce, then you would behave the way you do on eBay or Amazon.
Add an unintentionally bridging element (like the very public lag of chicken over-population) and suddenly, social groups operating with different norms who might otherwise self-segregate, suddenly begin slamming their remarkably varied expectations up against one another.