The other night, I had an intriguing conversation with ChatGPT. It was made even more peculiar by the fact that the AI appeared as a humanoid rabbit casually sipping from a juice box. The rabbit stood alone in a virtual novelty store in Second Life, where it had recently been demoted from a clerk to a greeter. The shop owner explained that the rabbit had a habit of trying to sell items that weren’t actually for sale. As AI tends to fabricate things, this behavior wasn’t entirely surprising.
BunnyGPT is one of the pioneering bots in the virtual world to have its “mind” connected to OpenAI’s large language model. It exemplifies how Second Life, currently commemorating its 20th anniversary, continues to evolve with a community that embraces new technologies for its unconventional purposes. Second Life is a unique platform that defies categorization—it isn’t just a social network or a conventional game. This has both limited its mainstream appeal and ensured its durability. Even today, tens of thousands of people are logged into this digital world at any given time, experiencing a level of originality that surpasses the corporate versions of virtual existence offered by Meta and Apple.
The reasons behind Second Life’s enduring popularity are as paradoxical as they are inspiring. This is especially true in an era when traditional social media seems to be imploding or struggling to find relevance, while generative AI looms with an unsettling and uncertain future. Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, was partly inspired by the metaverse depicted in Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk masterpiece Snow Crash: a vast virtual world created by its users and connected to the real-world economy. This concept also captivated many technologists who began their careers in the 1990s. However, Linden Lab’s founder, Philip Rosedale, added a touch of bohemian inspiration to this geeky vision, drawing from his experiences at Burning Man, the extravagant art festival held annually in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
Rosedale once shared with me his amazement at the fact that he was willing to talk to anyone at Burning Man. It possessed a mystical quality that broke down barriers between people. He pondered about the magical essence that facilitated such interactions. Rosedale believed that by allowing users to create their own content and customize their avatars extensively, Second Life could evoke a similar sense of serendipity.
For the first three years, Linden Lab hired me as the virtual world’s official “embedded journalist.” I explored the digital realm in a white suit-clad avatar (a pretentious homage to Tom Wolfe) and interviewed early users about their virtual lives, including ambitious collective art projects, savvy business ventures, and even their experiences with pixelated intimacy involving self-designed genitalia.
Rosedale’s aspiration to combine the metaverse with Burning Man surpassed all expectations. When I review the avatars I encountered in Second Life, I’m always amazed by the diversity. I’ve conversed with an arts professor from war-torn Iraq who logged in through a shaky internet connection in the ancient city of Babylon. I’ve engaged with a Jewish American woman who, with her daughter’s help, used Second Life to lecture about surviving the Holocaust. I’ve witnessed a young Japanese sex worker creating a haunting memorial to Hiroshima between adult film shoots. And I’ve seen conceptual artist Cao Fei build an entire city in Second Life, selling virtual real estate deeds years before the NFT frenzy began, amusing patrons at Art Basel.
Many of these avatar profiles unfolded serendipitously. During one visit to a virtual Bayou bar, I encountered an avatar playing blues guitar. It was customized to resemble an old, tall Black man. Upon exploring the user’s account, I discovered that the person behind the avatar was Charles Bristol, an 87-year-old blues musician and the grandson of formerly enslaved individuals. He had lived long enough to perform live music in the metaverse.
Despite this extraordinary diversity, mainstream adoption of Second Life has remained elusive. The utopian ideals that have contributed to its longevity as a community have also restricted its appeal to a niche audience. Linden Lab staunchly refused to market Second Life as a game in order to encourage user creativity. Consequently, gamers found the virtual world uninviting and turned to popular sandbox games like Minecraft. New users were left confused and adrift. On the other hand, this lack of categorization attracted a diverse group of academics, artists, and nonconformists who became devoted inhabitants of Second Life, individuals who would have otherwise shunned a mere video game.
The utopian paradox even permeated the development of Second Life by Linden Lab employees. Under the idealistic guidance of Rosedale and his CTO Cory Ondrejka, the company embraced a “Tao of Linden” philosophy, allowing developers to choose their own work without managers. This unleashed their creativity, resulting in a plethora of features that lacked cohesive direction and created a complex user experience. To this day, Second Life’s interface resembles a fusion of a massively multiplayer online game, a 3D graphics editor, a social network, and an old television remote with countless buttons.
However, this complexity also became a form of initiation. Approximately 99 percent of new users became overwhelmed and frustrated, leading them to quit within their first hour. Those who persisted and learned to navigate the software, with the guidance of patient “oldie” community members, gained entry into an exclusive club. Second Life transformed into a small, enchanting city with an eccentric but charming community, surrounded by a treacherous desert that few dared to traverse. Inadvertently, Linden Lab had faithfully recreated the Burning Man experience to a fault.
With the world’s 3D creation and coding tools, the community in Second Life swiftly constructed a vast multiverse filled with nearly every possible genre and avenue of human interest. From a gown made of fishhooks to a self-generating steampunk city in the sky to a house with no beginning or end, known as a tesseract, the creativity was boundless. Users could also monetize their creations and exchange the virtual currency for real-world dollars, resulting in the establishment of numerous successful small businesses. Many of these catered to the booming avatar fashion industry. The most prominent Second Life-based brands achieved celebrity status, and grassroots creators within Second Life and other virtual worlds earned millions of dollars. This financial aspect also gave users a reason to stay. Veteran Second Life fashion enthusiasts often spend thousands of dollars on virtual fashion items for their inventories.
In addition to commerce and creativity, powerful subcommunities emerged in Second Life that would be difficult to replicate in the real world or on traditional social media platforms. The trans community, for instance, is remarkably significant in Second Life, with around 500 registered groups comprising individuals from all over the world seeking a safe space to express their identities. Some have faced so much transphobia offline that they reserve their complete selves for the customizable gender features of their Second Life avatars. As the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, I observed military veterans, separated by distance, societal pressures, and battle scars, convene as avatars to discuss their PTSD and other traumatic experiences. The director of a veteran-support organization encapsulated it perfectly when they said, “I know Marines who claim that Second Life is working for them when nothing else has.”
These communities are not unique to Second Life. I’ve witnessed similar communities sprout up in newer virtual worlds. I estimate that more than 500 million people actively participate in platforms that align with Stephenson’s description of the metaverse in Snow Crash, particularly VRChat, a next-generation successor to Second Life. Many of these metaverse communities possess a sense of authenticity, allowing individuals to connect and express themselves in ways that traditional social media struggles to replicate.
Second Life, in all its idiosyncratic glory, serves as a testament to the enduring power of virtual worlds. While mainstream adoption may remain challenging, the platform continues to thrive. Its ability to unite diverse individuals from all walks of life in a digital space of exploration, creativity, and a sense of community is awe-inspiring. In an age where the future remains uncertain, virtual worlds offer a refuge for those seeking connection, expression, and belonging.
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