I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a couple of factors contribute to the content of SL more than any other. All of this applies at the recreational level, of course. Serious business and/or academic use has both a different user base and a different economic model.
The first is wish fulfillment. I'd say at first glance that 90% of SL avatars come in as the user's definition of physically perfect. That's probably the precise inverse of real life. Sims with strong sexual content will, likewise, cater most visibly to those things you can't get in real life. Even the bike designers featured elsewhere on Alphaville Herald are providing a wish fullfillment fantasy with their virtual replicas of massively expensive motorcycles. SL is seen as a safe, anonymous place to do things you couldn't do in real life. You can be a slave, hooker etc. without any of the real world fears of abuse, STD's etc.
The second is the monetary incentive. Every sim, RP or otherwise has to generate its $300 a month just to stay open. That can come from sales in stores, rental of land, user donations or (and this is a big one) paid out of pocket by a person or group. So sims that focus on fantasy fulfillment have to cater to those fantasies that are worth actual money to people in order to generate their teir. Basic supply and demand dictates that the harder to find a given niche product is, the more a sim owner can charge for it. Similarly, more users support more sims of the same type of content at the same price. Also, the more hardcore a given interest, ie the more of one's life and identity definition it encompasses, the more willing a player will be to spend money on it.
So taken as an average, Second Life looks a lot like people would imagine Hollywood to be. Everyone looks beautiful, has neat stuff, can have casual sex with two or three partners a day and generally live a simulated high life. Go to a big club any day of the week and you can see people trying to live up to their media defined idea of cool. Again at a first glance, places and items catering to that breed of cool probably occupy about as much in the way of SL resources as shows and movies selling the image do of mass media resources.
Individually, sims tend to rise and fall with the fantasy they fulfill. There are fewer Femdom type places than male dominant/femals slave type places because the latter fantasy is more popular with people who log on. When it comes to Gor, don't discount the fact that this is a huge, largely underground niche community that has made SL its home. In the same way porn made the VHS work, Gor (and Steampunk) is probably responsible for keeping SL alive in its early days. It gave people an experience they couldn't get elsewhere and they were willing to invest their energy (money) to have it. I can see where, after years of being told women are supposed to be treated as both equal AND objects of sexual desire, a segment of the male population would be willing to pay for the ego boost of being the "stronger sex" again. Let's make no mistake here, at 300+ sims, Gor, not 70's fantasy artwork, does a lot to define the sexual mores of the SL RP community at large.
Sl in some ways functions as a visible Collective Unconscious of Americans who can afford a computer and high speed Internet (75%+ of the user base at an eyeball). There is no nature, everything built was designed by a human hand to fill a percieved need in SL. Every avatar is a series of deliberate choices by the user about the image they wish to convey to the SL world.
Caledon has been larger than the entire original SL grid for years now and spawned several other Steampunk communities. In some ways, this rise could be said to prefigure the growth of the Steampunk movement in the public consciousness. At the same time, most of the original cyberpunk sims have fallen by the wayside as that style has fallen from grace. Those are easier to notice because they're the kind of things people are willing to discuss in public. How many people at your office wish they were a character from the James Spader movie "Secretary"? Well, they're not as likely to discuss that for the asking. Do Gor, the prevalance of collars, the continued existence of brothels etc say something aobut our culture at large that people aren't willing to admit? I don't have the research to back it up, but the possibility is intriguing.
I'll save the discussion on what my deliberate choices are trying to convey for a later time. Instead, have an outtake shot from the White House Ballroom:Live from the grid, I'm Professor Outlandish.
This is one of several shots where I was trying to overcome deficiencies in the White House build. You can't see it here but the ceiling is entirely plywood. I was hoping I could get the rotation column in the back to lookk vaguely like Barrack and Michelle but no luck on that count either. The piano was gorgeous, but astoundingly hard to shoot and still get a good angle of myself in it.
Updates on my mayoral campaign will have to wait. I have an En Garde tournament to compete in coming up in less than eight hours and sleep yet to be had.
Live from my nice warm bed, this is Professor Outlandish, thinking of you.
