7.14.2008

corporate colonization: on and offline.

In a recent post I mentioned the type of response that corporate invasions of a digital public space can expect. While pre-corporatized spaces (such as paid-subscription video games) are usually tolerant of colonization, free and anarchic spaces aren’t.

What’s interesting about this to me is the comparatively nonexistent backlash when a company invades a real-world public space, in blatant contravention of law. This is what illegalsigns.ca does, draw attention to how often, and how shamelessly the laws protecting public space are ignored for profit and marketing purposes.

This is only a good idea for companies as long as no one cares. Sadly, the kind of public outcry that makes such practices a bad idea is thousands of times more intense in Second Life than it would be in my home city of Toronto, where IllegalSigns operates.

It’s easy to understand why companies think injecting themselves into social networks, and virtual worlds, where they don’t offer anything useful, is a good idea. They’ve been conditioned by the real world to expect that such invasions will be met first by silence, and then by increased sales.

This happens in the real world because we’ve already accepted that marketing messages are unavoidable in public space, regardless of the law. This has already been accepted in the majority of online life, but not in free, immersive virtual worlds.

This is a battleground worth watching, because it’s the best indicator of how tolerant of marketing online identities are – these are the extremes of those who stand against it. If they surrender, we’ve all lost something. In real life, it’s easier to take a different route to avoid a sign, legal or no.

No comments: