26th February 2007

SL as the wild west?

posted in games, history |

I had an interesting conversation with someone at METC today regarding Second Life. She observed that SL right now is a lot like the wild west. If you do a search for casino, brothel, or similarly themed synonyms in SL you get a LOT of results. That seems to parallel what we read happened in the cow towns on the western frontier in the 1800s. Lots of saloons, lots of gambling, and lots of entertainment for lonely cowboys with money and time to burn.

cow and cowboy statue

Those “elements” seem to have preceded more “civilized” society as the central plains of the United States were eventually “settled.” That process involved lots of things, but included the killing or forced relocation of Native Americans to Oklahoma or other reservations. It also involved demographic changes, notably the presence of more women. I remember reading somewhere that the frontier could be demographically defined by the very low percentage of women living there. Anyone know what the demographic stats are for SL, male vs female? Maybe we’re going to see a similar evolution of inhabitants and activities in SL?

SL tech help

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 11:11 pm and is filed under games, history. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 3 responses to “SL as the wild west?”

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  1. 1 On February 27th, 2007, Alja Sulčič said:

    Interesting post! If you’re interested in SL demographics you should check out this post: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/02/09/state-of-the-virtual-world-–-key-metrics-january-2007/ on the official SL blog. You can download an Excel file with very detailed information about SL demographics. Hope it helps :)

  2. 2 On February 27th, 2007, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach said:

    As always your posts are such thought provokers.

    On another note…Need to get in touch with you today. Check your email.

  3. 3 On February 27th, 2007, Wesley Fryer said:

    Thanks, I got the email and replied! :-)