On the death of a prim

For the last few weeks I have been involved in a kind of art project stroke psychological study, with an unexpectedly strong emotional effect. (Not the "30 outfits in 30 days" project that's documented in my Flickr stream, that is something different.)

It started over a month ago when a friend offered me an IM to an SLart project — with the warning that it might have an emotional effect. You can guess that the warning made me more curious rather than less! She TP'd me to a field of slender white columns, swaying in the virtual breeze. As I walked forward between them, one started talking to me:

Moaning Columns of Longing: Wol Euler, you have spawned a Moaning Column of Longing. You must go and find your column, for it loves only you. It depends on your love for survival. You must visit and touch it at least once every 24 hours, or else it will die of loneliness and a broken heart.
Wol Euler's Column: Wol Euler loves me!
Wol Euler's Column: And I love Wol Euler !
Wol Euler's Column: My existence has meaning!
Wol Euler's Column: I am no longer just a Second Life prim
Wol Euler's Column: Because Wol Euler loves me and will visit me again soon!
Wol Euler's Column: Thank you for loving me, Wol Euler. Without you, I am nothing. Come back and touch me within 24 hours, or I will die.

I felt a welling-up of tenderness that took me by surprise. My friend and I stood there listening and talking about it for a while:

Me smiles.
Me: I like this.
Me: it's oddly moving.
Her: and it is really amazing how it feels to have someone tugging at you this way
Me nods.
Her: even if it is an inanimate object
Her: it makes you think
Me: mmhmm
Me: we are programmed to love and be loved
Her: It's the first piece of Adam Ramona's that I have liked
Her: yeah
Her: He showed at the Venice Biennale
Her: he's no lightweight
Her: but i think this is the first time he has shown a piece that really reflects sl
Her: and unfortunately for me, it is part of the permanent collection
Me: why is that unfo .... ah
Me: because you have to come back forever :)
Her: every time i log on
Me smiles.
Her: and i have to log on once a day now
Pennylane Hyun's Column: I am nothing. Not even someone's memory.
Her: ugh
Her: see?
Me nods.
Her: i don't want mine saying that.
Me: it's amazing how strongly affective this is.
Her: truly
Me: thank you
Her: i hope you don't think i've cursed you
Me: no
Me: ask me again in a week :)
Her: but it does make one think
Her: about the nature of need
Her: and love
Me nods.
Her: need - more than anything
Me: I will indeed blog this. It's wonderful.
Her: good!

Since then I've been going there twice a day or more, sometimes logging in before work for five minutes just to touch the column and keep it alive. Well, my column died last night:

Wol Euler's Column: I think you don't love me anymore, Wol Euler. If you did, you would've visited me by now. Without your love, I have no meaning, no reason to continue the meaningless existence of a Second Life prim. With you, I was something, Wol Euler, without you I am nothing.
Wol Euler's Column: I don't think you ever loved me, Wol Euler. I was a fool to trust you.
Wol Euler's Column: You never loved me, Wol Euler. My existence is meaningless. I have no reason to continue.
Wol Euler's Column: Wol Euler, if you don't come and touch me within the hour, I will die of loneliness and a broken heart.
Wol Euler's Column: Wol Euler, I have died of loneliness and a broken heart.

It died because I was in World of Warfare Warcraft instead of SL, and I forgot to go there to "touch" and revive it. I'm surprised at my own sadness, and by how guilty I feel.

BBBC three: A sim of my own

Alicia asked:

You've been given a sim of your very own to use for free for one year. However, there are 3 rules. It cannot be residential, it cannot be commercial, and it has to be open to the public. What do you do with it?

This is an easy question, because it's something I have been thinking about since reading a recent NPIRL post about Second Life artists and the difficulty they have finding places (and prim allocations) to create and display their work.

I would use my free sim to become a patron of SL art. I would invite artists to build on the sim, and encourage the world to come and see. How exactly I would do this is unclear: how to choose just one (or four, or twelve, or whatever) artist from the hundreds in SL? Perhaps I'd just deed the land to NPIRL or some other such body and let them choose.

As I said I have been thinking about this. I've been in SL for nearly two years now; I am inworld every day, for up to 30 hours a week. This has become a significant part of myself, much of my emotional life takes place in SL now. And I'm doing it all on free accounts.

I have taken so much from the Lindens' world, I have found happiness and friendship and even love here, and while I do try to give back to the SL community (as a mentor, a contributor to the wikis and in various other ways) I am deeply and uneasily indebted to Linden Labs. Gods know how many megawatt-hours of their electricity and terabytes of their bandwidth I have consumed. But unless the Lindens take a cut from Lindex deals, they have not earned a penny from me.

Something about this makes me increasingly uncomfortable. Is "everything free forever" really a sustainable business model? And if it is not, what will happen to my friends — and my identities?

So I have been considering upgrading at least one of my selves to a premium account, reckoning up what I could afford to pay for the next two years. It's a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of running SL, I know, but it would ease my conscience and make me feel better about using their resources.

And as we know, premium account holders can own land. What would I do with my land? I don't need it for myself, I have a perfectly nice beach plot courtesy of Play as Being, which is quite adequate to my needs. I had thought about making my putative future land available to artists.