humour

Man vs Second Life: the sequel

November 7, 2010 By Lowell Cremorne

Back in July 2009 we covered Man vs Second Life, one of the funnier pieces of Second Life machinima around. At the time it had reached more than 50-thousand views on Youtube.

At that time its creator, Sean Krueger (Hugity) posted a further piece to YouTube stating the original piece was a school final project, that he was going to seek real video work and in between some interesting insights on the making of the film, he made some fairly judgemental comments on furries in particular and Second Life more broadly. That video from Sean Krueger has since been removed from YouTube and he’s now released Man Vs Second Life 2.

You can view it here, but a warning it’s not safe for work or kids:

There’s also an interview with Sean over at New World Notes with some behind-the-scenes insights. This is one funny machinima from a team with an ambivalent relationship with Second Life – which is probably one of the key ingredients of their success.

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Filed Under: General News, Humour / Satire, User-generated Tagged With: humour, machinima

Second Lie: small business, good sex and humour in SL

June 15, 2010 By Lowell Cremorne

It’s been a while, but it’s time for the latest segment with our resident agony aunt, Second Lie. It’s all about sharing insights, finding common ground and a healthy dose of cynicism.

Remember, if you want to get your own slice of wisdom, you just need to contact us and we’ll forward your question on. Pretty much any issue is up for discussion, as long as it’s legal and potentially interesting.

It’s a win-win-win scenario: you get enlightened, Second Lie gets to spread his love and magic and we get to fork out money to Relay for Life. Does it get any better than that?

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Three questions for Second Lie:

Q1: Henrietta: I run a fairly successful small business in SL and I get approached by virtual world developer people and the odd ‘social media consultant’ via Twitter. How do I work out how knows what they are talking about?

Q2. NotStroker: “What do you see as the next natural evolution of good sex in Second Life?”

Q3. Anonymous: “Who do you find funny in SL? There seems to be a lot of try-hards but I’d love some help in finding those who are truly funny and who maybe perform in SL or have a group I can join. Any ideas?”

First off, it’s great to be writing again for the Metaverse Journal. Despite my log absence, they’ve been keeping their fingers squarely on the pulse of virtual worlds development.

(I’m not sure where on virtual worlds they’re getting such a strong pulse, but I’d insist on asking them to wash their hands before shaking hands with them, okay?)

I’ve got to ask Henrietta about this whole “successful business” thing in SL. I thought we got rid of all those years ago. There’s still some out there?

Man, do we need to change our policies again to make sure that everyone fails equally in SL. Can’t have winners and losers wrecking the curve.

The reason why you’re approached by odd social media types is because that’s the only type of social media consultant out there: odd. They never could quite fit in with the rest of their business school mates or selling-knives-door-to-door classes, so they ended up dorking around with Twitter and Facebook and MySpace on their mother’s phones to the point that they actually thought they were experts in this stuff.

None of them know what they’re talking about, or they’d be doing business in Real Life with social media, not cruising around the shallow end of the pool, bothering successful avatars like yourself.

My advice to you is to avoid them on Twitter and stick to your old pal SecondLie. I’ll shoot it to you straight, and at a price you can’t beat!

NotStroker, on the other hand, makes an assumption that many people do: that there’s good sex at all in Second Life.

When I last checked, the only thing Second Life brings to the table is a digital replacement for the nudie magazines under your dad’s mattress.

It doesn’t matter if it’s plain guy-on-chick animated poseballs or a wild dance-orgy with Linden alts at P-Squared after midnight: it’s still you, your hand down your pants, and the overwhelming clouds of loneliness and failure circling overhead.

Know what the next natural evolution is? Getting away from all this weird perverted stuff and trying for something that’s actually natural.

You know, an actual DATE. With SOMEONE REAL.

Feel free to rejoin the human race when you’re ready. We’ve got plenty of room available, and our standards are horribly, horribly low.

Heck, there isn’t even a dress code to get into this club.

Finally, I get asked who I find funny in SL.

Every. One. Of. You.

Especially those of you who take all this stuff so seriously. Or believe all the crazy mindjunk that M Linden pours out in the trough for you to slurp up every time he rings that bell.

Yeah, I know you’re roleplaying all those weird and twisted roles and such, but it’s just so damn funny and silly to watch you bumbling around thinking this all matters on some level.

It doesn’t. It’s just one big Renaissance festival with cheap plywood booths selling overpriced handcrafted trinkets by people with bad fake British accents.

Just hand me my turkey leg, pass me a beer, and keep this ballet of the brain-damaged going.

It’s showtime.

Well, that’s all the letters I have for now. I suspect that the mailman is keeping the rest of them for himself when he’s not banging my wife.

I wish he’d stop that. It’s a federal offense not to deliver the mail, you know.

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Filed Under: General News, Humour / Satire Tagged With: humour, Second Lie

GnomeAir: one of Second Life’s funniest (casual) observers

May 4, 2010 By Lowell Cremorne

Like a lot of people I love a machinima that provides laughs, and in recent months one of the highlights in that regard has been the work done by GnomeAir. His weekly updates on forays in Second Life pack a lot of experiences into each one, and there’s no shortage of cutting commentary on a range of Second Life aspects.

I fired off some question to the somewhat elusive GnomeAir to find out a little more about his approach:

Lowell: How long have you been involved in Second Life?

GnomeAir: Just started a month ago. I had watched friends play some, so I did know a few things before I started.

Lowell: What about SL inspired you to make machinima?

GnomeAir: I’ve been fooling around making YouTube movies for awhile. I’ve deleted a bunch because they came out scary. It seems to be a current thing. A fun way to express yourself. Something like 15 hours of YouTubes are uploaded every minute? Something like that. I just had an idea one day to make a Second Life account and film it. No idea what would come out of that idea or what I would film or say.

Lowell: Has the reaction to your work surprised you, and if so, why?

GnomeAir: I’ll just delete the comments that tell me I suck!

Lowell: Can you shed some light on how you go about making one of your episodes?

GnomeAir: The first ones I just entered game and played and filmed what I did. Nothing much really happens in those! Then later after I had played a few weeks a bunch of stuff would have happened to me so I just condensed it all down to highlights or lowlights or however you want to see it. Some videos I went on opinionated rants like the one about guys playing girls. So they were all different. Some came out better than others.

As far as the technical stuff, well theres two basic ways I can do them. Record the audio in advance and then film it, or film it first and then record audio. I use Pro Tools to do the audio. Its amazing program for making music or doing anything you want with sound on your computer.

I think for these Second Life episodes, filming it first works best. Put together a basic film sequence and story in Windows Movie Maker, after capturing the video with some other program. Then, turn on voice recorder (Pro Tools for me) and ad lib into mic as you watch the movie film playing back. Then you edit the audio taking out boring bits and pauses etc and load the sound into Movie Maker and tweak the film a little bit to match the audio. Ive done it other way around, make audio first based on what I did in game and then make the film part and it’s not as spontaneous, the comments etc, reactions to what is happening in video.

For example in video #6, there is a long sequence where I’m just talking about SL girlfriend and nothing is happening in video. That is a result of making the audio first and so I think the movie suffers. You are looking at dead screen and just having the sound tell the story. One thing about making machinima is you do learn movie making. You see what works and what doesn’t. For example, I’ve learned to go instantly from far away shots to close up and not to use zoom! But then, I’ve only started to think about these things recently. Most of the video is pretty messed up in these, but dont really matter with what I did.

Lowell: Do you have a longer term plan with your work or is it just a bit of fun.?

GnomeAir: Nothing long term planned just winging it. I have some other projects coming up soon like Comic Con, so I will be busy with those. I will say using Second Life to make machinima is unlimited. You can make the sets and the characters – no limits there.

UPDATE (25th July 2010) – GnomeAir has pulled all his videos from YouTube. An incredible shame – GnomeAIr if you’d like to contact us, we’d love to host them or somehow archive what was some great satire.

You can view all GnomeAir’s work here, or see the Second Life pieces below:

Episode 1:

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

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Filed Under: General News, Humour / Satire, User-generated Tagged With: GnomeAir, humour, machinima

Introducing: Second Lie

February 14, 2010 By Lowell Cremorne

Second Lie is arguably one of Second Life’s most interesting people. I’ve run across him a few times over the past three years and every time found him to be mightily amusing, as well as having some great insights on everything Second Life. I can’t tell you a lot more except that he’s based in the United States and makes some pretty impressive content in Second Life.

In recent weeks I asked him if he’d be interested in writing for The Metaverse Journal and he’s kindly agreed.

On a regular basis, Second Lie will answer any question you may have on Second Life. Whether it’s negotiating the etiquette of personal relationships in-world or the potential pitfalls of becoming a Second Life entrepreneur, Second Lie will do his best to simultaneously enlighten and entertain.

Here’s how to get started: just use our contact form, which contains an option to select ‘Submit a question for the Second Lie column’. We’ll forward every question on and we’ll publish responses in groups each week or fortnight depending on volume.

Even better, you’ll be helping to fund Relay for Life. Each time a group of responses is published, Second Lie has requested his payment go to that rather than his pocket. A funny, intelligent columnist with a philanthropic streak: does it get any better?

If you want a taste of Second Lie’s approach,check him out on Twitter. Start submitting those questions so the fun can begin!

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Filed Under: General News, Second Lie, TMJ Site News Tagged With: humour, secondlie

The reverse argument for virtual worlds in the enterprise

January 11, 2010 By Lowell Cremorne

With thanks to Tateru Nino for the heads up, this machinima just about perfectly encapsulates the tug-of-war within the enterprise in regards to adoption of virtual worlds as a collaborative tool. It’s an incisive piece that strips bare some of the stereotypes and barriers put forward by business as ‘arguments’ against utilising virtual worlds in their operations.

It’s the sort of piece that may be useful after some initial discussions have been had within an enterprise. It would probably make some people defensive if used up front, but its power is likely to be found after the stereotypical arguments have been made by those less convinced of the opportunities virtual worlds provide.

Watch and enjoy: