Dutch Politicians Meet in Second Life

This noon, I went to the Amsterdam island in Second Life for a while to check out how the Dutch politicians from CDA would try to convince people to vote for them in real life. About 30 people showed up (at first glance) and there was a lot of talking. Too much in fact because you couldn't quite follow any conversation. I spotted 5 CDA prominents walking around and tried to ask questions a few times, but no one answered. Then all of the sudden the sim crashed so I had to reload. Only a few politicians returned and I received 3 flyers, all of them with the same content. It's scripted to be a book, but it only has two pages, both of which contain the images of the CDA number 1, without name. Kind of hard to vote on a number I think, but that'll be just me. A certain 'Boy' was running around like a madman, poking everyone with his strap-on (maybe he forgot to take it off after his last cyber-moment?) and Boy started discussing with some people about senseless things whilst pointing his 'tool' in all directions and saying how nice it was from CDA to try to use this channel.

The conversations were pretty weird, not many questions were asked. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen, but nothing happened. So they just stood there, talking to each other about the fact that they were waiting for something to happen. A funny sight. Then the topic shifted on how it could be that the sim crashed and how stupid it was.

Then all the CDA people disappeared and funny enough some other odd things happened. Someone created a D66 cube and put it over his avatar, walking around in circles. Others sported protest signs with the logo of VVD. One by one people started logging off again.

I think what we could learn from this is that 'just showing up' is far from enough to create awareness. Sure, people talk about it, but the conversations aren't constructive in any way. Setting up a meeting or event, turning up to flyer a bit and leaving again is kind of ridiculous. It's like having a tv and using it as a table instead of watching programs on it. The politicians appear popular for mastering the customization of their avatar, but in fact I learned nothing about what they stand for, how they want to change things or why they would use Second Life as a channel to reach out to their audience. There's a big difference between 'showing up' and 'arriving'. What I've seen here is just a bunch of people with great expectations waiting for a bunch of politicians that can't handle the medium they threw themselves in and in the end an empty gap that could've been filled with conversation.

Missed opportunity, anyone?