Status and Class in Second Life

Do you feel that their is a hierarchy in Second Life society?


If there is do you think that this hierarchy is based on building skills or something else?

My friend and I were having this conversation today and I felt that me being a novice user not completely familar with all the capabilities of SL that there is a heirarchy present. He didn't agree with me but he is also a very experienced user of second life. Let me know what you think on this issue. It would be greatly appreciated in helping each of our arguments!!

I personally don't think there's much of a true hierarchy in SL, socially. I mean, every society has its groups and cliques and whatnot. You'll have your well-known and (generally) well-respected long-term players, your clueless n00bs, your unknown long-term players and n00bs with a clue. Respect is one of those things that's earned.

You'll have those who script, those who texture, those who build, those who socialize, those who grief, those who consume, those who accumulate wealth, those who complain. It's not so much a hierarchical structure as a big, cheerful, blobby kinda mess. After all, nobody can really tell others what to do or make anyone else do what they say.

Well... then there's the Lindens, who're are local pantheon of gods and demi-gods. Hey... that should be their new theme. We could have Linden Temples scattered around the grid, where players can make burnt offerings of rare prims, to call down favors from on high.

There are not really obvious signs of a hierarchy in SL, at least to me.

There are bits of signs of a meritocracy, but there are more than enough areas in which one can exell that we don't really have that, we just have successful and well known leaders in the field, be that party host, arcane scripting, building houses, building furniture, making jewelry, clothing etc. etc.

I can, and have, unlike what might be the case in a more normal hierarchical system chat quite happily to top flight clothes designers (my skills at clothing design being rudimentary at best), I have quite happily approached a major merchant with a lot of skill in Poser to ask his advice for my starting skills. I knew him through another route, but he was was to share his skills with a complete n00b in that field.

Other stratification systems - the oldbies, midbies and newbies, well I mix across them all quite cheerfully so age doesn't seem to work to me. Cash, well apart from owning your own sim, there are less obvious signs of wealth in SL than IRL so plutocracy isn't that obvious.

Within certain groups that might not be the same of course. I guess if you are part of a group in Jesse or similar military style hierarchies might exist, but it is entirely possible that outside of that situation the hierarchies disappear. Even if they persist, that is still within those groups, not a global phenomenon.

I've had similar experiences in SL. I approach someone who presumably would be leagues above me in any "class" system, and they are perfectly happy to chat, give advice, even invite me over for a tree-bombing session, lol.

I think we often create things like hierarchies where there aren't any, envisioning the thing we fear and then making it real just by acting as if it were. I was definitely slightly nervous about that kind of thing in my first few days in SL, and I let that fear dictate a kind of class structure having to do with who I was "qualified" to chat with and who I wasn't. But soon enough I realized how foolish that was and let it drop and I've been having a lot more fun since then.

Although if there were a class structure, you could do some great social climbing. Hehe, someone should start a group: SL Snobs. Refuse to chat to anyone below their own station unless you go to all the right parties, etc. I'm sure there are already cliques out there like that, but I just steer clear of them for the most part and it's fine. The great thing about SL Snobs is that they would do their social snobbery without griefing, they'd just freeze you out with a snub. Of course, they'd probably end up pretty lonely, but...

I'm relatively new, but it seems to me the vast majority of SL Residents are friendly, welcoming folks who are curious to know about the new people coming in and entirely willing to share their experience and expertise.

Thank you! You've all nailed exactly how I feel about it

are you planning on presenting your own arguements in the forum or are you just gathering material for your term paper?

I disagree. Indeed there are the "right parties" and all the rest. I had no presupposed notion of SL when I came to it -- when I tried it as a beta I realized it required a high-end graphics card and highspeed connection which already made it a richer more connected class of people than TSO, which is more democratic, or Yahoo Messenger, which is even more democratic and free to boot. The steep learning curve means that PSP jockeys and technogeeks will tend to rule, along with girls who like to play dress-up. But I didn't think it had quite the set it did of insular, smug types impervious to criticism and absolutely without self-reflection or even much of a sense of humour.

I watched how my friends from TSO, in entering this world, were timid about buying land or venturing out too much because it was so difficult. They stuck to themselves on their own land or had fun in the sandboxes where he who is the most creative rules without the need for clubs, land possession, etc.. People talked about just learning to fly for 30 days or just learning to build for 60 days. I watched some of them suck up to older players who then, flattered, took them under their wing and endlessly promoted them, sometimes without any visible merit. I, too, sucked up to some of them in the way I knew how, which was to express admiration, join them in commiserating about how "commercialized" the game was and filled with laggy malls and clubs, and I feted them with prizes and awards because it seemed some of them had gotten quite bitter about the game and their lack of recognition in it.

I then made the mistake of standing up to one old-timer who in fact I later figured out was a contestant in a contest that got overlooked by mistake and not put in the contest -- her name wasn't clearly marked on her submission. Don't know if that led her to develop a grudge, but came to find out that after my first post questioning her condescending attitude, I had a hail of bullets flying around my head from the entrenched uber-kewl class of lifers with free tier, the content barons, the feted inner elite -- whatever you want to call them. And to this day I see that old friends and new friends live in fear of what these powerful players will think of them, they are reluctant to cross them, and indeed, they consider them their best friends in a merit-based society in which tekkies or creative intelligentia rule and the rest are lumpen proletariat (except of course Ulrika, who rules with Bolshevik-like fervour but the rest ignore her). Most of them would deny they fear public disapproval or the opprobrium of the kewl elite, but they sublimate it in endlessly giddy flattery of these people to try to disarm them, or just simple sandbox cameraderie which they try to establish as a class-outside-class.

I, too, spent many weeks ignoring these hierarchies in terms of letting them scare me, shrugging my shoulders, accepting the snubs and the slights as merely par for the course on the Internet and in on line games. People hide behind their avatar personas, and they sometimes think they can get away with murder. And they do. More and more, I came to see how with the best will and efforts, you can't break through to certain groups, they just promise to cooperate, then ignore you. Worse, they clip your calling card on you. It's like any very snobbish elite in any small town in America, filled with insecure immigrants and second-generation immigrants highly conscious of status and fearful of failure.

So I challenged it, what can you do? What's a picnic without ants? I don't have any of the bitterness that old players have mourning their slag-heap old sims with crappy FPS or their lack of recognition or "how the game went commercial". I have fun every single day playing store, and meeting lots of new people. I have a blast, and if somebody griefs me or behaves like an asshole, I may negrate them at the extreme, but most of the time I find you can just play through, like some giant mini golf course. And I've been pleased to see people -- complete strangers -- posrating me in absentia when I'm offline. Or they express support for me even if they don't always agree with what I say. Or they simply don't read the forums, don't care about them, and never will care. Or they actually come up and confide to me their secret woes about how they, too, challenged the inner sanctums, be it Live Help or Mentors or content barons or club barons or what-have-you, and they, too, have found them a seeming impenetrable mass, often very vindictive in their willngness to belittle and slash to ribbon people on forums, mistaking and exaggerating and misrepresenting what they say.

But, really, it's all just interesting to observe. All this hail-fellow-well-met superficial crap about how everybody's just SO helpful and it's just SUCH a fun wiki is just the surface. There's a lot under and above the surface, as you've ever found out, if you press "return objects" on your land and discovered miles of griefer strips and squatter sky boxes. Most things are not what they appear. Much of the time, they are just the opposite. It's possible to have fun in this game even if you are kicked in the teeth and pummelled by the forums, or land barons, or griefers, because there's a lot of server space. And you can always just fly away

Neither did I... and then you showed up

i am reminded of a story my mom told me one time, like-to-hear-it-here-it-goes.

a man arrives in a new city and asks an old man what kind of people live there. the old man asks him back "what kind of people live where you came from?" the man says "oh they were decent and friendly, kind and generous and always had something good to say." the old man says "well, that's the kind of people you'll find here."

a little later another stranger comes along and asks the old man what kind of people live there. the old man asks him the same question he asked before. "what kind of people live where you came from?" this man says "those bastards only cared about themselves. i've never met a more selfish self centered scheming bunch of people in my life." the old man says "well, that's the kind of people you'll find here."

that's sl to me. you shape your own experience. nuff said.

*applause* You rock Zuzi

Vacate the area immediately, inferior caste person. :>

Kidding. But that just reminded me of the Third Wave in "Independance War 2" so much.... :>

Yes, there are Radiks students "working" on their papers and everyone else.

Those who ask questions of the forums as their source material rather than experiencing SL themselves are going to come up with dreadfully wrong conclusions and will have done themselves the disservice of failing to take the opportunity to learn about their subject matter first hand. I didn't think I'd ever see the day when a college student would try to weasel out of an assignment that involved playing a video game for credit.

I suggest you check the course guide for next term and find classes that only ask that you regurgitate what the instructor spoon feeds you. You'll likely find it more rewarding.

OMG Zuzi... you are awesome.


Surreal

Hah! Now that was a great game.

I don't agree with the notion of "class divisions" in general because they tend to be arbitrary whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist or just someone talking about oldbies/newbies, etc. I do think that there are different levels of status among the player base though, and I think it is largely based on merit. The most respected people are the people who have made a name for themselves creting content and to a different degree (to the dismay of people who don't like commercialism in the game), those who run sucessfull businesses and social events in the game. They have been called content barons and land barons respectfully, I dislike the term because it is derived (not accidentaly) from the derogetory "robber barron" and generally used in the same way (although I believe "contant barron" was created as a joke by people who fit the description and used to mock people expressing this derisive attitude) . I don't believe these people deserve the labels unless I find that the individual really is acting like a privilage snob or is cheating at business (and yes, I believe that being rich and having ethics are not exclusive of each other). But no mater where you go, in RL or SL, there will be people who will rain derision on those who are sucessfull.

On the other hand, anyone can potentialy rise in status very quickly if they're good enough. But it's hard: there's a lot of compitition and only so many ways to get noticed. You have to be a good marketer as well as a good creator, or be good enough to get word of mouth advertising, or you'll remain an unknown.

There are some other, non-merit levels of status as well...people who were in the game during it's alpha and beta testing stages, people who are mentors/instructors/live helpers...

Greifers and people suspected of being greifers occupy the lowest of the low status.

I suppose if you had to come up with a hierarchy, it might look something like this, but I won't vouch for it's accuracy:

(from the top down)
People who are well known and almost universaly respected for their work.
People who are well known and sometimes respected except by a certian kinds of people.
People who are respected, but not very well known
People who are virtualy unknown to the community at large but keep to their circle of close friends. May be liked or disliked.
People who are disliked by a lot of people but respected by others. May or may not be well known.
People who are widely known and widely disliked but isn't a true greifer or toll.
Greifers and trolls.

Being a Linden automaticly grants you the status of being known, but not always being respected. Being a Mentor suggests that you're trusted by LL to a certian degree which lends some respect but not nesicarily being known. Land resellers and content creators occupy several different levels of notoriety and fame.

As an asside, I disagree with Prok's asssment that people in the game lean toward the wealthier side of RL because of the broadband and graphics requirements. I know a private island owner who's a single mother/teacher with a physical handicap, a city builder who owns a lot of land but recently mentioned being unemployed, upon which several others comiserated because they were also, people of whom I know nothing about their finincial status but have autism, aspbergers syndrome and other handicaps, etc, etc. While it's possible to buy wealth and status symbols in Second Life (in land and by buying L$ on GOM), wealth doesn't automaticly earn you respect contrary to the beliefs of some.


Edit: Oh yeah, I'm a newer player (I'd probably fit in the respected but not well known catigory), joined in October. I think being newer does have an effect on your perspective on this issue...because you're new, you're an unknown looking up upon the ranks of people who are known and have been here before you, and thus more concious of things like status. Sorting out and competeing for place in a social group is instinctive behavior for most humans.

can there be biopower in sl? if not, does that mean there must be sovreign power?

Usually "classes", by definition are based on income.

In SL, I've seen "classes" of behavior.

Those who have strong sense of politeness, grace, and formality, do not tend to hang out with those who fly on a flaming fart shooting eagles.

There are not exactly social 'Norms' in SL but those who who hang out together tend to be people who don't "offend those" in their group.

Example. Some are perfectly happy if someone wanders into their home, others may feel it equivalent to a break in!

-Blueman