Everybody is so busy trying to make money off new media (especially the 2.0 kind) that we've forgotten how difficult it is to change the social contracts that people have with their media. In the starkest terms: if you're not charging now, it's hard to charge later.
There's been a lot made of how the whole Second Life gold rush has been hype. Yes, I know that a few avatars actually drive a GM vehicle inside of Second Life, and Wired has written about detachable genitalia and how popular the whole virtual sex thing is.
But recently, the impossibly brainy Clay Shirky has written about how the numbers of Second Life users - the numbers that the media have dutifully reported and marketers are going wild over - are wildly overstated because they count merely curious one-time visitors.
The people who are actually using Second Life regularly are a sub-culture, as common sense might dictate. (In my opinion, they spend a lot of time in a world with limited interactions and use an interface that approximates the boringness of everyday life. Even with the ability to fly and teleport, there doesn't seem to be a lot to do. But it seems to work for them.)
Now that core audience is rebelling against encroachment from us marketing folks, who made an assumption, and were proved completely wrong: we thought that the people on Second Life really were everyday people representative of normal life out here in the concrete world.
A faction called the Second Life Liberation Army is demanding democracy. They're threatening destruction of Second Life infrastructure from within the game if they don't get a say about how things are run. And they wrecked an American Apparel store to prove it (from the Second Life Herald and via Popbitch):
After the SLLA's deadline passed, the group took action against the American Apparel store in Lerappa sim, as documented by Aimee Weber, who built the store. One has to wonder if this was all some sort of edgy PR move, since the AA store is generally completely deserted. If the SLLA claims it will target critical Linden infrastructure, certain residents may feel the need for an attack simply to validate their place in the world. My SLLA sources claim that Aimee was gracious and supportive, and this may be the preferred method of handling rebel groups in SL these days. In any case, I understand that the SLLA is considering selling T-shirts to raise money for weapons.
Weapons? Armies? The populace of Second Life is getting a bit worked up (and have wrecked a Reebok store, above) because they signed up for a particular media experience under an imagined contract. It's a different social contract from the one that makes television commercials acceptable. Familiarity breeds contempt; we get used to the way things are and new fees and new interruptions piss us off.
We are coming to point in the media landscape where access fees (in the form of broadband and television subscription fees) are creating a political legitimacy for consumers to demand complete control over content. In other words, people are paying for the pipes, so how can they be expected to sit through ads?
In the US you can easily spend $200 a month on access fees if you add up all the telecommunications devices you use. The question then becomes how much you are willing to put up with sponsorships on top of that. In short (with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron) pass the ammo: the revolution will be YouTubed.
