The idea that someone is willing to pay to temporarily occupy virtual land is curious in itself, but what it says about the trajectory of these blockchain-powered virtual worlds and the social dynamics forming there is even more so. interesting.
According to Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, this arrangement implicitly involves the formation of a new “winner-takes-all” class system. The landed gentry sit at the top of the social pyramid and below them are the professionals and tenants – the latter prevented by price from climbing the property ladder themselves.
The development of sophisticated industries could be interpreted as a sign of the growing maturity of virtual communities. But it could also be a sign of illness, says Rosedale, whose own 3D online world pioneered the concept of virtual real estate in the early 2000s.
“The accumulation of wealth in virtual economies is of great concern,” says Rosedale. Because there is no permanent cost of ownership for virtual landowners, he says, there will be an “inexorable” and “destructive” consolidation of wealth in the hands of a minority.
Similar theories are put forward by Roger Burrows, a sociologist and professor specializing in digital culture and social inequality at the University of Bristol, and Vassilis Galanos, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh.
The evolution of virtual real estate is “deeply political,” says Burrows. He sees virtual worlds as places where people go to take refuge among others who share their political beliefs. In this case, so-called cryptonatives have built a world that they, as landowners, preside over, built around the same distrust of government and public institutions that the crypto movement was founded on. Theoretically, everyone is welcome, but only as a tenant.
Burrows says that metaverse worlds simply reflect what’s happening in the physical world, where ultra-rich people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are separating themselves from the “dirty, difficult, messy big guys.” The result will be a series of virtual enclaves populated by people with a “misunderstanding of the world” and a “fear of otherness,” he says, eliminating any remaining hope that the metaverse will deliver on its promise of uniting people of different backgrounds. horizons. .
Another interpretation is that virtual worlds provide the ideal setting for a theatrical simulation of class struggle – a new form of vilification. Having never experienced class struggle before, Galanos theorizes, those with excess wealth enter a game that requires them to compete for social status in a virtual community. “It’s like playing Monopoly,” he says.
