Choose Freedom?

A few posts ago, I decided not to attempt to write about slavery in SL, as a friend of mine had done a better job on the subject than I could hope to. Well, whilst I still hold this belief, I have decided that I do want to say something about the matter. 

I apologise for lacking screenshots in this post - I did not want to implicate any sims or sim owners in this subject, as it is not meant to be an attack on such, but the start of a discussion of. 

It would appear that the terms "sci-fi" and "human slavery" are synonymous in SL, and I suppose that the notion arises out of the anxiety over controlling something as unfathomable as space. There are plenty of areas on our own planet that we have difficulty in policing, and it is easy to imagine how such a problem might multiply as humans stretch out onto other planets.    Many of the most popular sci fi sims appear to be through-points - space hotels, markets or truck-stops, designed to cater to the (temporary) needs of those passing through. As such, they can be read as liminal spaces, the nature of which is defined by whatever community happens to be gathered there at a time - soldiers, slavers, salvagers, clones, exiles, whatever. Taking into account the size of such sims, it is possible that the nature of the sim will be constantly in flux as new avatars teleport in, and resident avatars hop out. Given how easy it is for an SL user to change their avatar's clothes, it is possible that I could be the captain of a ship one minute, and a space hitch-hiker the next (I always have a towel ready in my inventory for such a purpose). 

That these sims locate themselves on "the outer rim" - on the edge of the known, mappable universe, as it were,  suggests a desire to be liberated from police-able systems. In terms of role-play, that is understandable, as it destabilises previously accepted social norms and makes possible a wider range of simulated activities. If the fear of punishment - albeit a questionable fear - is removed, how do humans behave? What governs them - and how strong is that governance? I think it is fair (if a little general) to say that, as a race, we are fascinated with the breakdown of society. We want to see what happens if we take on board the philosophies of, say, those in "Trainspotting", or "Fight Club", and SL offers a space in which we can do this without fear of permanent death.

Slavery works to challenge notions of equality, and represents for us, I think, the ultimate image of a person devoid of agency. Perhaps it is the closest we can come to the idea of "Hell on Earth", and I don't think it would be beyond reason to suggest that we (as society) view slaves as the lowest of the low. Are there any rungs left on the ladder to slide any further down at this point?

To return to "Trainspotting" and "Fight Club": it seems to me that many of the rules these films present to be done away with by their characters are rules concerning social responsibility. In becoming a slave, your actions become devoid of responsibility because you are no longer the one controlling them. When you place that situation into a world such as SL, it opens up a space of freedom that might begin to look attractive to inhabitants of a real world in which we are encouraged to constantly be aware of the consequences of every action we take.  

Slavery is a fact of life in most parts of the Rim and Deep black, and arguably in most parts of the ‘verse.  Slaves in the Rim and Deep black are acquired by many means. Slaves have a legal status, as property but with limited rights to care for their health and welfare. - "Slavery in the Outer Rim and Deep Black ver b-02" (a notecard available in SL)

However, when human trafficking and slavery is a fact of the real world, and we hear on the news stories of hundreds of victims the world over being forcibly removed from their home country and forced to work in another as labourers or prostitutes, where does that leave us? Suddenly, the social responsibility denied to a real slave becomes doubly encoded upon the virtual - and I am talking here, of course, of those who consent to allow their avatars to work as slaves, however temporarily, in SL. Bringing the word "freedom" into the discussion, on the side of the slavers, seems morally repugnant. Does the virtual world or, indeed, any world, have the right to take such an atrocity and turn it into a form of entertainment?

I am not suggesting, by any stretch of the imagination, that slavery as recreated in SL is anything akin to the kinds of slavery that go on in the real world, and nor am I saying that SL must become a site of protest for every ill that transpires in the realms of the palpable. But do we have an ethical responsibility, if we are to engage with slavery in SL, to stage some kind of political statement? Do we have a moral duty to denounce such practices and those that get direct enjoyment out of them - to de-eroticise what has arguably become a fetish? 

The subject becomes difficult when you take into considerable the consensual nature of SL. Nothing can be done to your avatar without your consent, and so the "plight" taken on by those in the virtual world is one that, for whatever reason, they have chosen to take on. It is not slavery, and not even a representation of slavery. It is the aesthetic, perhaps, of slavery - it looks like slavery but, actually, most of the agency lies with the slave. Ultimately, even if you feel as if you have been forced into slavery in SL, you can press the "escape" tab and the whole virtual world will vanish from your view. Your avatar will be wrenched out of that life instantly. 

Now, I do not engage in slavery, in SL or anywhere else. I have never dressed or cast Kitti as a slave, nor a slaver, and I do not frequent slave markets. I did try to free a slave character in a role-play scenario once, the subject of which became interesting when the slave had been conditioned such that she didn't quite want to be free, and Kitti had to begin imposing her own will upon the poor woman. It was an interesting situation, and one that, true to my maxims of role-play, was very difficult to write; but in agreeing to participate in this story, was I condoning slavery? 

In visiting sims, sci-fi or not, that contain slave markets and holding cells and which encourage human traffickers to pass through, are we condoning the mimicry, the attitude, and, in a wider sense, the cause?  I am not even talking, here, about sims designed purely for that purpose, and in several of the sci-fi sims I have in mind, the slave markets and quarters are hidden beneath the floor or down lengthy tunnels that is difficult to get to. It is not, necessarily, out and open, on display. But is that, in hiding the truth, as it were, making the situation worse?

Should we boycott them, all?

It is food for thought, and I'm not one hundred percent sure how I feel about this one.

AWOL and Abused

To keep my mind off life in general, I decided this morning to do a little reading from the book I bought for my course last year, "Coming of Age in Second Life" by Tom Boellstorff. In particular, I've been reading a chapter about lag and afk ("away from keyboard"), and how both complicate issues of time and space. 

To put it simply: time, and unity of time, is a major factor in the creation of a world. If I arranged to meet my friend in a bar in Second Life, we would both have to log in and teleport to that bar at the same time for us to be able to see each other and converse. It seems like a fairly obvious point to make, but I could not go to the bar alone, host my side of the conversation and then leave, and expect my friend to be able to turn up later on and fill in the gaps. If that were the case, we'd have been better off emailing each other - and one does not seriously talk of entering a virtual world when loading their email inbox. You might feel like you're entering another world if you've been away on holiday for a month and don't have a system in place to filter spam, I suppose, but that's beside the point.

When considering time on a very basic level in relation to SL, the gaps begin to appear. Your time in SL is marked by logging in and logging out. When you log out, you cease to exist in the virtual world and are thus not connected to its time. It's not like in "The Matrix" where your body drops to the floor dead when you get disconnected. You just vanish from the virtual plain - which is a relief, really, because SL would be a much more morbid place if everywhere was littered with lifeless bodies!

Time does continue, however. If I log onto my account and look at my profile, it might well tell me that my avatar is nine months old, but I have not spent nine month's worth of time actually logged in to SL. Other SL users may see that and thus adjust their expectations of my competance that then do not match up to how much time I have actually practiced not walking into things, mastering flight controls or trying to adjust my clothing.

Most of the friends I have made in SL actually hail from real world America, and so I often have difficulty catching them online. The virtual world cannot bridge the time zone gap. I can stand in the Necronom VI bar, say, at five pm my time, and Laertes can stand in the same spot at five pm his time, and we would not see each other. There would be no trace that I had been standing there previously, nor, when I returned to the spot, would I know that he had been there. There is no unity of time there, despite the fact that there is a unity of space. 

Now, that is also true of the real world. Unless Laertes and I were standing in the same space at the same time, we would not see each other. As Laertes lives in the United States, and I in England, the possibly of such a thing occuring is only made possible by Second Life - but Second Life only guarantees a unity of space, and not a unity of time. Do you follow?

In the top right-hand corner of the SL interface is a clock that, by default, runs on Pacific Standard Time. It would appear - and Boellstorff backs this up - that many SL users are from North America. If the screenshots I have uploaded previously seem empty, that is because I am logging on at three or four pm GMT, which is far too early in PST for anybody to be around. They're all either at work or lazing in bed.

 AWOL & Abused

What makes this more interesting is the issue of afk - people being logged into SL, but away from the keyboard or the computer. They are not present at that time in SL - but they are present in that space. Their avatar is present and unresponsive. It is a relatively acceptable occurrence, which is almost odd because if someone was standing and staring at you irl, you'd probably think they were drunk or ill, or very rude.

However! In my last post, I introduced the "/me" function that SL offers for verbal-turned-physical interaction. Just because someone is afk does not mean that other avatars cannot interact with them via the /me function. To use Boellstorff's example:

Joe: Tom, are you here?
Joe gets out a pen and draws all over Tom
Joe: hehe
Tom: yes sorry was afk

Now, in that kind of situation, there was absolutely nothing Tom could do to stop Joe from drawing all over him. Like when the woman put the grenade in my mouth, by the rules of fair play you cannot refute someone's /me claim. Their words count as actions. Joe could have done absolutely anything he wanted to Tom. If Tom hadn't been afk, however, he might have been able to say he dodged the pen, or that he, in return, snatched the pen from Joe and used it to scribble all over him. It becomes a text battle, and in text battles...there are rarely any winners. Whoever first said "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" was an optimistic idiot.

The other day, I was taken to a sim by Laertes that is used primarily for role-play (which, as I'm sure you have realised, works pretty much the same way as Joe drawing all over Tom, just usually on a slightly more descriptive scale). When we got there, he advised that I pick up a HUD that I could put on and which would make other role-players aware that I was only there to watch. HUDs work by displaying text over your head, like a kind of label - so I could set mine to say "Just watching" if I wanted to, and other people would leave me alone. I could avoid getting into a dreaded text battle with some kind of bigshot in god-mode who wouldn't appreciate that it was getting on to ten pm UK time and that I really wanted to log off. 

The red text above my head is the HUD.

But outside of role-playing, there is no "don't-hit-me" badge. We could, effectively, do anything we wanted to each other using the /me function, and nobody could do anything about it but request that we be ejected from the sim. By logging on to SL, you are agreeing to be subjected to that possibility - without the kind of burly bouncers and law enforcement that protect you in real life.

But if I type "/me punches you", nothing actually happens...right?

I think I have successfully confused my readership for one blog post. I shall return later to write about time and lag.