Whatever your politics or personal thoughts about virtual playground Second Life, after reading the following, it will be hard to avoid thinking of the service as little more than a romper room for retards. Wagner James Au chronicles a protest/battle at the virtual headquarters of rightist French political party Front National:

And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, "rez cages" (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids' TV characters, and more. ... And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno. ... One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they'd explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel. A few native English speakers joined the fray, though at least one missed the point in either direction, unhelpfully shouting "The French stink! Get out of Second Life!" and the like amid the conflict.

Fighting the Front [New World Notes via Boing Boing]

Earlier: Second Life: Rape for Sale

Contact information for this author is not available.