A Second Life Leads to a First Divorce

Turns out chatting is cheating, especially when that chatting leads to pixels in vectors in the game Second Life. A British couple recently divorced after the wife found out that the husband was cheating on her with an avatar lady of the night in the online game Second Life. My favorite part? The "virtual" private eye who was hired to track the comings and goings of the cheater.

It really should come as no surprise to the jilted lover, who met the lothario in the same game online.

"The couple met in an internet chat room in May 2003 and within six months Ms Taylor had moved from London to Mr Pollard's flat in Newquay, Cornwall. They married at a register office in St Austell in July 2005 and held a virtual wedding for their avatars in Second Life. While their online characters are young, and slim, in real life there is a lot more to Ms Taylor and the balding Mr Pollard."

What a beautiful sleight in the above paragraph. As only a Brit could pull off.

But it does bring up the question, "What is cheating?"

As we move into an era of more and more digital interaction, do the things we do online constitute genuine interaction? Even on To Catch a Predator they have to arrest the dirty pedophiles when they show up at the homes as it shows intent to follow through with written action.

But in a game that mimics real life, does fidelity count? If the man had been playing Grand Theft Auto IV and gotten a lap dance, would that have been cheating? I can see how two people who met on Second Life feel that a Second Life faux-romance is in fact a real romance. After all, it's the medium that brought them together. Surely, for the man to find another lover in the same medium is cheating, is it not?

These are the questions of our times. But fret not, the misses is ok. It seems she has started a new romance with someone else...whom she met online in World of Warcraft.

My attempt at product review

Video games. Or are they?

Go here.

Download for whatever OS you use.

Play the game.

Then try this game.

And his latest game.

Then go to the site of the guy who made them.

Cool.

Transparency of Politic

By now, hopefully all my loyal readers (yes that was tongue-in-cheek) are aware that Barack Obama is President-elect of the United States of America.

As I was pondering this momentous occasion and all of its facets: his youth, his inexperience in the Washington scene, his race and other issues, one stood out to me that I think deserves a closer look.

Transparency. Obama manged to raise millions upon millions of dollars over the Internet Seth Godin has a nice blog post on the marketing of the election and how it relates to marketing in general. But one thing he doesn't touch on is what I see as a sea-change in the power structure of the United States.

For years, Gen Y has been talked about as the next big thing economically. We had our successful Boomer parents' money and influenced many a purchase. And then we started making our own money and still using our parents' resources. But in the last election, we didn't really impact a change at the polls. This time around, however, we might have been the deciding factor with record registration and record voting numbers seen throughout the nation. Which begs the question of why?

In my mind, it's because we felt involved every step of the way. Obama (and I might add Republican candidate Ron Paul) was masterful in his use of the internet to bring an air of transparency and openness to his campaign. Not only did this allow internet savvy youngsters to empower themselves and their friends, but it allowed for instantaneous reaction from Obama supporters financially and conversationally.

We've seen examples of this in other companies as well. Starbucks started their idea blog which allows fanatic customers to post their ideas on new products, operations improvements and everything else under the Starbucks sun.

But I digress. What I wanted to focus on was the fact that transparency has worked for Obama. It is my hope that he continues to keep the lines of communication open with America. In my opinion that access is something that has been missing for far to long and has helped to create the culture of fear we reside in as a lack of knowledge led to ignorance which led to fear.

If this flickr post from Obama of his family on Election Night is any indication, I think we can keep hope alive.

O-Bam-a!