The reason, of course, that analogy is ineffective logically is because the connection is spurious. In fact, the one you deploy in this particular instance could be used perfectly in reverse. You certainly do have to drive a racecar down a track at 150 mph to understand the thrill of a driver. You do have forage into the jungles of Indonesia or ascend the Eiffel Tower to know and critique and reason with the joys of traveling. You do have to climb a steep, snow-capped mountain to understand, personally, why a tiny minority of the human population for some reason likes to risk their very lives thrills.

The reasons these counter-analogies are better than the ones you provided are because they are about experience, and Second Life is, as a social networking medium, about personal experience as well. And, as Au has eloquently pointed out, the value of experiential phenomenon can hardly be judged by pure numbers; after all, very few people race and climb mountains, and very few Americans travel internationally.

Moreover, the reason why one would have to take they unhealthy nature of McDonalds food and global warming -on faith- is because these are phenomenon that we DON’T directly experience (and hence are not comparable to Second Life). Eating McDonalds food has a slow effect on population groups; the whole point of “Supersize Me” was to eat a concentrated amount of McDonald’s food to make its effect visible to an audience that would otherwise have a hard time noticing it or making the correlation. The reason “An Inconvenient Truth” is shocking is because global warming is a subtle, nuanced phenomenon that cannot be experienced directly – thus, Al Gore’s movie is all about bringing it directly to our senses. As for Britney Spears – the hype IS real… for the 14 year old demographic Spears caters to. SL has a much broader clientele, again, another point that Au illustrates in his many articles.

As SL advocate Tateru Nino once said in reference to another inaccurate critique of SL, “comparing Buicks and Boysenberries.” SL is an experiential platform. It should be compared to travel or mountain climbing, not phenomenon inaccessible to immediate experience like global warming and unhealthy eating. If we have to compare anything at all.

Second Life may or may not be a good product and may or may not have a broad appeal. But the hype is pathetic and obnoxious and it is clear that certain folks with certain vested interests are playing extremely fast and loose with facts — and that can not be good for the broader web and tech community, as we learned when the last crash wasn’t just a crash, it was a *C*R*A*S*H*.

Again, I recommend going in with someone who’s already proficient who can walk you through the main interface stuff– ideally run Skype in the background.

At that time, after trying to convince him of the value of having a website for its company, he flatly replied that “we already have printed brochures…”

That along with a fax machine, a telephone and a computer were dimmed sufficient to pursue business back then… Today, he has a website and do searches like a pro. Case closed.

Then, during the holidays, i went inworld with him. Same story again :”Nobody is its right mind would conduct business in here… SL is just a game.”

History is repeating itself. Simply opening up the eyes and mind is hard. Understanding and catching on is even harder.

Keep writing, James.
I will keep reading.

tc

[...] Bear in mind I say this as someone (comes now the full disclosure) who’s got bias for SL up to my eyeballs, with a reservoir of personal and professional interest in Second Life. [...]

I mean – come on!