Saturday, June 16, 2007

Bunny-shaped Island

With all the brouhaha, I succumbed to curiosity, and headed for the new island set up in SL by Playboy.

From above you can see that it's in the shape of the well-known bunny head; I guess they had to do it.


Once there, what I initially saw was very nicely done, but felt kind of like a convention center. LOTS of ads for Playboy stuff for sale and Playboy services on their web site.


Further afield, out in the ears was a lot of sand, and palm and coconut trees. I had to stop and assume the kneeling position of what was labeled a "cybergirl photopose" and take a picture in the sand beside huge (mutant?) coconut halves. (cybergirl photopose? Are they serious?)


(Look at me! I'm a cybergirl!)

I looked again at the map, found the greatest concentration of people on the island, and teleported there. It turned out to be a gathering spot for residents applying for work with Playboy, a thatched bar (/cafe?) at the bunny's nose. I sat silently and unobtrusively (though I "overheard" a woman presiding over the interviews who typed "/me sprays her coffee"...) in a chair near the water's edge and watched the last bit of what I presume were preliminary interviews.

Oh, how I wish Hunter S. Thompson were still with us; only he could do justice to the twisted experience I had... even without any "heinous drugs."

OK, look: Playboy is a victim of its own success. The mainstream has moved past it, so that now Playboy bunnies are quaint. Not too far away in RL is the site, in a hotel in a western Des Moines suburb, where one of the last Playboy Clubs in the USA was until it closed in May 1988, two months before the very last one in Lansing, Michigan. A friend passed one of the bunnies one day as he headed through the hotel. Back in the 1950s, the encounter would have had a frisson of wickedness; in mid-1980s Iowa, the bunny was a pretty, wholesome girl next door in a cute costume, as if she were dressed up for trick or treat.

One can't argue with their taste in music; I saw a listing, and they've lined up some of the best folks performing in SL... but Playboy in SL is slick and sterile. I headed back this morning to make sure I had some details right. When I arrived, I was the only person in the whole sim. I checked Apollo on the map... 31 people there.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Now you can truly say they are bigger than coconuts. *grins*

Hmm. I actually liked the isle shape, but again, I heart the playboy logo. But indeed, they can not add much to the sim as it is. In RL their logo still stands (a bit) for what is naughty and actually not permitted, but in SL, there is already enough of that spread all over the grid.