Jean Baudrillard

I thought he was really pushing it. His writing is breathless and clunky, no doubt damaged in the translation. It's rare that I don't have to re-read entire pages until I get what he's saying. But the upshot was that I thought he was exaggerating. Also that he has a particularly nasty grudge against Disney.

Eventually circumstances placed me in Orlando, in Downtown Disney. If you haven't been there, imagine an open shopping plaza with restaurants drawn out across a single long, winding walkway, festooned with performers of all kinds and helpful uniform-shirted attendants.

I was walking from one end to another at a brisk pace, not wanting to slow down and really wanting to leave as soon as possible. Then it struck me: I'm in the middle of a real-life Second Life.

In case you're not aware, Second Life is a popular online world where you appear as an avatar and mingle with many other avatars in unusual worlds patterned on beaches, shopping malls, upscale residences, cities and so on.

For me the one defining aspect of Second Life, outside of the pervasive porn, was its handy accentuation of outsider status. As you navigate your avatar through all these worlds you find group after group of other avatars in conversation. If you walk your avatar up to them and try to join in, with rare exception you get the cold shoulder. So I found myself moving amid spaces bounded by regard and affection, perhaps even desire, I suppose.

Also sometimes I found individuals involved in some sort of task. Sometimes it was clear that they were building some sort of structure, because you could see roof and walls being assembled as the avatar stood before the worksite, arms outstretched. Sometimes an avatar would just be dancing, oblivious to everything. You could push your avatar against the dancer and bump it around, getting no response.

I eventually got bored, dropped away and uninstalled the Second Life application.

Fast-forward a few years to Downtown Disney: now I'm walking this long thoroughfare filled with people, all of whom are locked within spaces bounded by the mutual understanding of groups of all sizes, from teen-age couples to big family reunions. Everyone was engaged in something: a conversation, a snack, a task, the watching of a performance. I walked through them as though invisible. As though my body was merely an avatar among a group of avatars. No one was engaged in anything pressing; quite the contrary, everyone was involved in the focused avoidance of anything of import. This was a mere simulation of the real world.

And yet the real world it simulates doesn't really exist. There are no downtowns like this, unless they're other simulations. Hipster enclaves such as lower Chelsea and even other parts of Orlando lay open and unprotected, subject to influences from a wide variety of sources: graffiti artists, unlicensed performers, muggers, cops, drunks, anyone in a car or truck driving through at any time - the list goes on. Downtown Disney carefully seals off real life.

As another instance of simulation within the simulation, a chamber quartet played in one corner of the thoroughfare, up on a platform studded with perfect plants and flowers. The performers were costumed in 18th-century finery, weaving electronic wail into classical compositions with computerized state-of-the-art instruments.

The effect was of a simulation of something that might have taken place during the period of time their costumes referred to -- except it very likely did not. I'd bet that there were no shoppers and plazas filled with middle-class people, pockets bulging with discretionary income, during the 18th century. This was in fact a simulation of something that never existed.

More to come...

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