Monday, May 21, 2007

Transantiago torched in SL

Since February residents of Santiago Chile have had a new urban transport network called Transantiago , which sounds a bit like Guatemala City's new Bus Rapid Transport system known as the Transmetro....except that it's even less popular with its intended passengers.

Chilean activists decided to organise a protest in Second Life. They began by constructing the appropriate environment, a model of the national palace (famously bombed in 1973 with Salvador Allende inside it) and then gathered en masse to make their feelings felt.

As with all such protests, some just waved placards and 'shouted' a lot, whilst others converted themselves into flames and torched the virtual bus that was parked in front of the virtual seat of government. A minority just took off their clothes. Nobody had thought to organise the the virtual riot squad with tear gas and watercannon.

Many complained of getting "stucked": the idea had been to protest in such a way as to avoid paralysing the streets of Chile's capital, but the sheer quantity of avatar-activists meant that they instead rapidly paralysed the SL grid, with the inevitable loss of user experience.

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