[vineyardmike]

Its just dismissive and rude sounding.

Why is it sad? Surely the people who built it and use it think its cool. As others said "late stage capitalism" is a very opinionated and loaded phrase.

Your comment is very negative, without inviting room for critique or feedback. It does not open a discussion, just judgement and derision.

[Niglodonicus]

I can see how it's a bit short and simply makes a claim without going into more detail, but clearly there is enough there for people to be able to reply and disagree and why (as the few of you replying to this have). I just don't see the point of flagging such a comment so that it can no longer be replied to. I think it's unfortunate that downvoting and reporting seem to be merged together on this site, since those are separate functions (downvote- this is a shitty take or I strongly disagree, report- this is a garbage rule-breaking post that needs to be removed).

As for why SL is sad, is because it offers a shallow alternative to RL for people for whom RL is either unaccessible due to economic conditions (hence the late-stage capitalism thing) or for those who just want to escape it altogether (but replace it with a frankly shittier version, as opposed to some completely different fantasy world where you can do stuff you couldn't do in RL such as the aforementioned WoW). Not to mention that vast swathes of the userbase are creepy perverts, but perhaps it is for the best that they've chosen to confine themselves there. Hence, the sum total of this is quite sad imo. In the early stages when it was a fun and novel type of thing and alternatives for similar things were much less widespread, my points don't apply as much, but in 2021, they absolutely do.

[Apocryphon]

SL was a milestone in what it's trying to do but I'm not all that sure if its intentions are any more crazy or sad than AOL-era chat rooms and online communities- some of which were also graphical. VRML was developed for chat rooms in the late '90s. The only difference with SL is that it was developed later on in history and further along late capitalism, I guess.

[Niglodonicus]

I'm not referring to the intentions or what it was/is trying to do, but to the reality of its userbase and how they play the game and live their life. I mean, as a whole gaming tends to be similarly 'sad', but not to as large an extent as SL (in my opinion, of course).