As Warren Ellis has asserted, Second Life more often than not means that you are immersed in a virtual world where people have to ability to swarm you with flying vibrating implements, run around clothed in whatever unsociable attire, or pose as a man who loves having slow-motion copulation with polygonal felines.

The Laguna Beach - the MTV show - on the other hand, means teeny-bopper joy mixed in with, well, we'll let the folks from the Daily Show explain:

Well, what happens when televised virtual reality attempts to approximate current attempts at creating virtual worlds? You get Virtual Laguna Beach, The Hills. Virtual Laguna Beach, The Hills is a world created using the There.com platform. Show celebrities can interact with hopeful fourteen year-olds, and folks can go enjoy the never ending teen drama that they crave for in pocketbooks and TV series. Think Second Life without the nasty bits, the economy, the education, the government positioning or the mature content.

We do not wish to go into more detail about this game. We fear for our sanity, and we fear the rain that will wash it away. ~~Let the rain wash down...~~~

 

Among a certain sphere of geeks, Warren Ellis is most famous for his work on the graphic novel "Transmetropolitan". "Transmet" is a story featuring the insane crusade of journalist Spider Jerusalem to reveal to the world the truth. Spider Jerusalem evokes Hunter S. Thompson (the guy who gave gonzo journalism its LSD-induced birth) or at least the character that Thompson became later in life. Spider kicks old ladies in the groin, takes drugs on a regular basis, fires rocket-propelled grenades at taxis to get their attention, and has contemplated installing disc players into his phallus.

Given that the insanity in the futuristic world of "Transmetropolitan" is eerily prognosticated in the virtual metaverse of Linden Lab's Second Life, Mr. Ellis is perfect for giving us a look into the weirdness that is brewing.

The focus of his latest coverage of the virtual world? Sex. To be specific, walking into your virtual plot of land and finding out that a few odd visitors have found it appropriate to play out their leather  involved fantasies on the spot you thought you could construct a building on.

In his column, "Second Life Sketches," Ellis contemplates the indivisibility of sex with Second Life. He gives a good overview of how sex is downplayed in SL, and why anyone who says that Sex is a tiny, tiny part of the Second Life experience is "either stupid or knowingly lying."

Here's a short snippet of his feature:

Eventually, something of a sex playground accreted around my land, catering for every fetish you can conceivably imagine. And the traffic was amazing. There was dozens of people in there at any one time, getting sexual relief from cats and what have you. I ended up selling that land, simply because the region ground to a crawl — that many people in a region at any one time puts a horrendous load on the server and everything happens very, very slowly. And no one needs to see a man getting sexual relief from a cat in slow motion. Trust me.

To read the rest of Ellis' feature feel free to click on our "read" link below.

Writer Warren Ellis, author of comic books, graphic novels, and amazing drug-induced glimpses of the future is set to bring his "Second Life Sketches" to the Reuters Second Life News Center as a weekly column beginning January 9 next year.

Ellis has this to say about the virtual world that is Second Life:

Second Life is not only the biggest digital art installation in the world, but potentially the most radical shift yet in the way communities are formed online, and possibly also the germ of the next great operating system. It’s not only a place where people get as strange as they can, but an incubator for the future. As a writer who deals with both the strangeness of people and the state of the future, Second Life is like a lab for me

If you aren't familiar with Ellis' works and you want to get an idea of how he writes, keep in mind that he's mostly famous for his work "Transmetropolitan," a futuristic tale focusing on protagonist/antagonist Spider Jerusalem, and his quest to tell the world the TRUTH through gonzo journalism. Transmetropolitan is a future that is infested with nicotine-addicted three-headed cats, and multi-media-playing penile implants - pretty much an environment that is similar to SL.

Ellis' home in Second Life can be found at Integral bay. Do with that bit of information as you wish.