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Entrepreneur Aimee Weber never meant to be a professional journalist; when she first joined SL at the beginning of 2004, she was simply an English major looking to learn how to build and to have fun. It was through her opinionated postings, though, at the old official Linden Lab [LL] forums, that the writing bug first hit her; that led at first to a series of guest essays at Walker Spaight's Second Life Herald, and then to a semi-recurring gig for Hamlet Linden's New World Notes. Dissatisfied by the existing publishing community, Weber eventually co-founded the culture magazine SLOG with The Electric Sheep Company's Forseti Svarog; the success of it led to her current full-time gig, as a co-founder and editor of AOL/Weblogs Inc's Second Life Insider [SLI]. (DISCLOSURE: SLI happens to be an advertiser of "In The Grid" as well; rest assured, though, that this interview was first scheduled long before that happened.)

I recently had a chance to sit down with Aimee at her private cafe, La Farfalla Blu ("The Blue Butterfly" in Italian), which floats above her public shopping complex Midnight City, to talk about her time as a professional commenter on virtual worlds. The actual interview was scheduled at the last moment, so I appreciate Aimee being patient with all the basic questions I usually research ahead of time.

In The Grid: So first, let's just start with some background information, to get everyone up to speed. How long have you been a resident now?

Aimee Weber: I've been a resident since January of 2004. So I guess I will be pushing three years soon. I'm old! [laughter]

ITG: Almost as old as the grid itself, if I'm getting my numbers right. You've watched this place grow from almost nothing to where it is now.

AW: Well, funny how our perspective changes over time. The first year of being in Second Life, I felt like a noob compared to friends like BuhBuhCuh Fairchild or Catherine Omega. But I guess now that the scale of things has slowly shifted, I can now say I am kinda old. Yeah, things were different back then. Way smaller. I think we had maybe 20,000 users. [Ed.--This is compared to the 842,000 residents being reported today at the SL website.]

ITG: And how long have you been sharing your thoughts about SL with others, in whatever form that's ended up being over the years?

AW: You mean writing? I've been active in the forums since the very beginning. I started writing articles maybe a year and a half ago, when I wrote a parody story for the SL Herald. It was basically about determining if your online lover was faking their gender [laughter]. Then I started writing for SLOG. Forseti and I were actually the founders of [that]. Then I started writing for Hamlet, and now Second Life Insider. I really didn't expect to make writing about SL my 'thing;' it just evolved.

ITG: Well, let's start all the way at the beginning of that list; your guest post for the Herald. Was that the result of having fun at the forums, or were you pursuing writing in RL before coming into the grid?

AW: No, I had no interest in writing before SL. Which is funny because I'm an English major [laughter].

ITG: Why were you majoring in English? Was the plan to become a teacher or critic?

AW: I didn't have a plan!

ITG: I see! [laughter]

AW: I still barely have a plan. Though it seems SL is going to be part of it, whatever than plan is.

ITG: So you started writing in the forums, had fun, had a chance to do a guest post for the Herald, and did so. Is that right?

AW: Pretty much. I found that I would start to do drafts and revisions to my forum posts! Which is pretty silly, given the nature of the medium. So when the Herald approached me to write an article, it just felt like the proper place to put that writing effort into.

ITG: And that led you to Hamlet, you said?

AW: Actually no. Hamlet and I started to develop a friendship over time, as he discovered cool new things I was doing in SL and he came around to blog it. It started with a bar I created, then a giant-sized kitchen, then a fashion show, etc, etc. So we became casual friends. At one point I created a machinima movie about the solar system. And I jokingly said, "Hamlet, blog this," and he said "No! You blog it!" And the joke turned into a serious discussion about having me write for him.

ITG: Did you start writing regularly for NWN?

AW: Semi-regularly. It works like any freelance journalism gig. I pitch stories at Hamlet when they come to mind, and he either shoots them down or tells me to go for it. I've been very busy lately, so I haven't been able to write much for him, but when the UN project is over I will likely do up another article for him.

ITG: And let's interrupt the timeline here for a moment, to talk about some of these early writing experiences, as compared to what you find yourself writing about now. For example, what were the bigger issues that people were talking about back when you started writing, esepcially in the forums?

AW: Oh God. Hmm. When I first arrived on the scene, I think version 1.2 was pretty new. And people ranted and raved about that for months, because it was a fairly drastic change in the way the whole economic system works. And as always, people in the forums fortold the doom of Second Life because of this update. The way it used to be before 1.2 is that rezzing prims taxed you L$10 [roughly three American cents--Ed.]; but if you deleted that prim, you got that ten dollars back. That's how they maintained control over prims. Parcels didn't have prim limits.

ITG: Oh, that's interesting. A L$10 deposit for each prim, but no limit on how many you could erect on a parcel?

AW: Exactly. So if you were rich you could rez a lot of prims! And since the sims were capped with a total prim limit, you could essentially rob the prims from other people. I mean, you couldn't take them away from them, but you could use up a sim's prim allocation for yourself. So what people started doing was creating prim banks [laughter]. If you saw [that] prims were available in a sim, [you] would rez a few hundred of them and just keep them around on [your] land. So if the limit was reached, they could always go grab prims from their own personal store [laughter]. Looking back, it's insane people were upset that they changed it to the current system.

ITG: I was just about to ask, are gripes about grid changes always destined to be short-term ones? Can you think of a change from when you started that people are still bitching about? Or have all the changes you've seen generally been for the better...or at least stuff that people got used to?

AW: Hmm. Well, some people bitch eternally, but I can't think of any widespread gripes that lasted very long. I know there is one guy named Magnum Serpentine, and his mantra is "roll back!" Every time there's an update, he declares it a failure and demands we roll back to some earlier version [laughter].

ITG: The same people still surfing the web with text browsers, I take it.

AW: [Laughter] I can only assume.

ITG: So let's talk about SLOG, which I confess I know nothing about. I'm a terrible journalist to admit this, but with our interview being scheduled on the fly, I didn't get to do the normal research I normally do before interviews.

AW: Sure. Basically SLOG was created by Forseti and I because we were irritated with the nature and tone of most of the other blogs at the time. Most were really, really bitter. Hamlet's blog was good, but at the time he was a Linden blog, and he tended to cover the "pop culture" of Second Life. SL Herald pretty much seems to hate SL, and never misses an opportunity to bash it; same with Prokofy's blog.

ITG: In the case of Hamlet, you mean that he was officially sponsored by Linden Lab [LL]? So had certain caps on what he was supposed to talk about?

AW: Nah, he didn't. He was permitted to criticize LL, though he didn't often.

ITG: Oh, so he was voluntarily sticking too much with SL pop culture, in your opinion?

AW: Well, he followed stories that he found interesting. An analysis of SL's economy wasn't his type of story, at least not at the time. He seems to be opening up to that kind of thing now. But economic analysis was [definitely] SLOG's thing. One of my more famous entries over at SLOG was my analysis of emerging de-facto political parties in Second Life. That was the kind of story we wanted at SLOG.

ITG: And then let's talk about the Herald and Prokofy for a moment as well. Now, they both admit themselves that they're a bit of rabble-rousers; the founder of the Herald, in fact, got his start by getting kicked out of The Sims for a similar publication.

AW: [Laughter] Yes, the Alphaville Herald, I think it was called.

ITG: So my question, I guess, is this: is it such rabble-rousers who naturally get attracted to a new medium at first? Why was there such a negative tone to the entire SL blogosphere at first, do you think?

AW: I think it's the nature of the press. "If it bleeds, it leads." The SL Herald feels they will get more readers, I assume, if they talk about some scandalous corruption by LL. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against negative blogs. But there didn't seem to be any positive ones! So we filled the void with SLOG.

ITG: And what kinds of subjects did you take on? More serious economic articles, you mentioned, as well as essays about the sociology and politics of the grid.

AW: Pretty much. I threw some humor articles in there too, for fun. Also, I would write about perspectives. One article was [called] "Stairway to the Nest," where I describe how important RL contextual cues are for SLers. For example, we can fly; so why is SL full of stairs? And the answer is, we need those visual cues so that we can bring our own core of experiences to SL with us. Only then can we enjoy the fantastic without it seeming simply random and nonsensical.

ITG: And this actually brings us to another of the 'then and now' questions I wanted to ask you. It seems that there's a lot of people now in the grid thinking about these larger issues of perspective. Have you always found it this way, or were the first wave of residents from when you came in more of the gamer variety? "Stop with your sociology -- I just want to dance and shop and have sex?"

AW: Oh, I've thought about this too, the different waves of users.

ITG: Well, this gets into a core question that's being asked these days, so maybe let's just skip right to the central question. Some people are looking at SL these days as an alternative reality; while others, mostly the newest wave of residents, are seeing it as a new communications platform, like the coolest cellphone network ever invented. Is there room in SL for both opinions to co-exist? And have you seen the general mood change from one school of thought to the other? What has time done with this question?

AW: Yeah, I do see a shift, actually. When I started SL it was all about escapism, creativity, a [separate] world. I think that still lives on, and always will. But we're seeing the addition of people who see SL as a communications platform. Mostly the two groups of people can get along fine; but many escapists don't care for a capitalist intrusion onto their fantasy world. I think the best example would be small business in SL. Many people may start a clothing line in SL because they want to "play" the part of a successful designer. It's more of a game to them, and they have no desire to really make money. So that works for awhile. But what about when the GAP comes into SL, and they pay thousands of dollars for a professional staff to create high-quality clothing? Essentially real-world competition intrudes on the "game" of fashion designer, and that upsets some people. They really resent the capitalization of SL.

ITG: Almost a philosophical argument, then? Not so much that they're threatened financially by the GAP, but resent them coming here and selling their corporate clothing in the first place?

Oh yes, exactly. [And] that's the problem with their argument. Their demands are, "Stop competing with me -- you're making SL less fun for me." It's based on stopping what their neighbors are doing. I understand that they're upset that the arrival of RL commercial ventures is changing the nature of their gameplay. But short of branching off to a utopian grid, there's not much they can do. And if they could branch off, I doubt it would make them happy, since there would then be competition between the utopian grid versus the commercial grid. It sounds cool -- "Our grid will be all free, no corporations in our face, maaaan" -- but at the end of the day, the commercial grid is going to have cooler stuff.

ITG: So what happens to the first group, as the second group becomes more and more prevalent? Is the first wave of fans simply pushed out, like what happens with a lot of creative projectcs when they get popular? Or specifically, I mean, the people who refuse to change their opinion about RL companies coming in?

AW: I think at the core of all this is a fundamental need for SLers to complain. It's the SL national pastime [laughter]. There'll always be a vocal dissatisfied minority; overall people like it here, though nothing's for everyone.

ITG: Do you think these people will eventually resolve their feelings? Or will they go start playing another game? Will they all migrate to Multiverse and actually start their utopian society?

AW: I think they'll just keep complaining...and keep playing [laughter]. [Although], if SL ever provides the means to branch off into utopian societies, I think you'll see some try it. We have the teen grid, the mature grid; maybe someday we can pitch in to buy our own sims on our own separate grid, and we get to call the shots there.

ITG: Well, but with the Libertarian slant of the grid, isn't that possible now? Couldn't a group just start a chain of private islands in the middle of nowhere?

AW: Yes, but remember that the issue isn't that corporations are coming in and kicking them off their land. These people just don't want the corporations to be anywhere in SL. Most of the big companies buy their own islands anyways, so it's not a matter of proximity. The bottom line is: if you make clothing, and a corporation provides your customers an alternative created by well-funded professionals, you don't want that! Going to a private island won't help.

ITG: So to get back to our main conversation -- how long did SLOG last, and why isn't it being published anymore?

AW: It's still going.

ITG: Ah, so why aren't you with it anymore?

AW: I'm officially still with them. But I was hired by Weblogs Inc. to [open Second Life Insider], and they pay me. So when I can muster the motivation and energy to write, I write for them [laughter].

ITG: So how did you first get involved with them?

AW: They asked me. Yay.

ITG: How did you come to their attention?

AW: I can't even remember. It may have been in-world, or via email. But they liked my writing and asked me to join up. It's a pretty casual arrangement.

ITG: Would you say there's a difference between SLOG and SLI, as far as maybe tone or subject matter?

AW: Oh yeah, totally. SLI has a real push to create volume; so you'll find a lot of posts over there will feature anything happening in SL. No matter what [laughter]. It's like, "Ice Brodie Rezzes Cube!" While with SLOG, we post much less frequently, and the posts are more like articles than blog entries.

ITG: Does the AOL connection open certain doors for you that SLOG can't? You get some pretty good scoops at SLI pretty regularly.

AW: I assume working for AOL is good for my career in the long run. As far as scoops go, they have much less inside info than us bloggers [smiling]. We really don't get any info from them about anything.

ITG: But have you found people more willing to talk with you when you're an "AOL publication?" People willing to answer emails, for example, who wouldn't when you contacted them as a SLOG reporter?

AW: Hmm. Haven't noticed a difference [laughter].

ITG: Okay, so maybe two more subjects, since this interview's getting pretty long. First, what's your stance about you and your RL info? Do you share it in the grid?

AW: No I don't. It's all need-to-know. But that sort of changed this month when the Wall Street Journal published my RL name.

ITG: Did you know they were going to?

AW: Yeah. They basically said they needed my RL name or they couldn't include me in the story. So I told them I felt very uncomfortable with it. I said Aimee Weber should be thought of as a "stage name," and the precedent in the press is for folks to use that name. Like, I don't think you call Sting by the name Gordon Sumner in a [mainstream journalism] story. It's more confusing than helpful. Anyways, at the end of my plea, I said that the WSJ story was important to me, and if they wanted to use my name despite my brilliant argument against it, then they had my permission. And so they used it [laughter]. Oh well.

ITG: Okay, and finally, can we play fortune-teller for a moment? Based on what you're seeing as a blogger/journalist these days, where do you see SL heading?

AW: Well, I think you'll find that many of the 3D elements you see in SL will become integrated into our everyday internet experience. I am not 100-percent sure how; but interactive, social 3D representations of things will become as common and essential as the [2D] web now is.

ITG: There's a growing amount of people who seem to be saying that, in fact; that in many more ways that most people realized at first, SL is becoming a model for how the entire web is eventually going to work.

AW: Well, I hope it works more reliably [laughter]. There are a lot of kinks to work out. The overhead required in learning the platform is one.

ITG: Speaking of which, when do you think LL is finally going to catch up logistically with the insane rising interest with SL? Or as a cutting-edge company, are regular denials of service just to be expected?

AW: Well, it's really hard to say. I have my opinions on this, but it's easier to have opinions than it is to run a company [laughter]. I think they need to put more emphasis on reliability and security. Right now [grid] development is very market-driven; getting cool-looking features is a high priority, while fixing what we got isn't as good.

ITG: Is it LL having its cake and eating it too? Accepting the money of all these RL companies, but then developing with the hardcore gamer in mind, who doesn't mind security breaches and blackouts?

AW: LL is certainly promoting their platform [these days] as a place where business can be done; but having it crash a lot is making it a tough sell sometimes. My clients have been very understanding about this, actually, but you're right; the reliability of SL is much lower than most businesses accept in [other commercial] software. So LL is going to have to make reliability a higher priority, before we can get RL businesses in SL for anything more than the novelty factor.

ITG: As long as LL keeps pushing new features very hard, will we always have an unstable environment? To get stable, does LL have to put a cap on new features for a year?

AW: I would say yes, but I'm not a developer. I'm sure they're under all kinds of pressures that I wouldn't understand. But if the grid keeps crashing, and then LL rolls out some crazy new gizmo, I think you're going to see a lot of angry users.

ITG: And last but not least: SLI is having a contest right now, to guess when the millionth resident of the grid will sign up. When do you personally think it'll be?

AW: Late November. But I'm not allowed to enter that contest [laughter].