Dealing Dope in Second Life
I admit it... I like to partake in the pleasures of marijuana smoke, and all its variants on a fairly regular basis. My kids know I smoke (15yo and 12yo), but I don't do it in front of them, and I've always told them that if they have any questions about weed, they know where to come.
In Second Life, there is a bit of a cannabis counter-culture. Oneironaut Escher's Cannabis Carnival was the first weed-themed build I ran across in SL, and it was soon thereafter that I found the Cannabis Cathedral, which is now defunct.
For the record, in first life, I'm a ardent advocate of the notion that the war on drugs is a total failure, and that all drugs should be legalized. Prohibition and interdiction simply don't work, cost billions of dollars, and only result in some very vicious people getting very rich. I find it hard to believe that if crack cocaine were to suddenly be legal and freely available, that the whole world would find their way to the pipe. The resources we spend trying to outlaw the stuff would be better spent on education, research, and treatment.
But this Blog entry is not to discuss the merits of drug legalization, but to discuss my contribution to the Second Life marijuana counter-culture.
As I explored Second Life, I came across a number of weed-related "objects". The first that really impressed me was a hookah built by Jopsy Pendragon that I saw when he gave me a tour of his Hobbit hole at his old Ethereal Lands. Jopsy, being the master of particles, had build a hookah that had smoke running from hookah base to the AV's mouth in a stream that ended up looking like a flexible hookah hose.
Other people had built weed-mimicing objects, such as an attachment that had been prim-crafted to look like a big ol' joint and that generated some smoke particles, and I've seen other hookahs and even a coke tray (with full sniffing animations and sounds)
But none of these things featured one of the greatest aspects of marijuana smoking, and that is the shared "communal" nature of passing a joint around the room. There is something ceremonial and nourishing when a joint gets passed from person to person, with each pass a gentle exercise in mutual hand-eye coordination.
So I set out to build a joint that could be passed. When I started this, I was still a bit of a newbie with LSL (the scripting language for Second Life that gives so many things "life"), and followed a few dead-ends trying to accomplish this. This was mostly due to a lack of understanding of the mechanics of objects, and AV's, and how things interact.
Eventually, I was able to create my "Tokin' Joint" object, and it had exactly what I was looking for. The joint hovers above the head of whoever is currently toking on it, and streams a line of particles to a mouthpiece that the toker must wear, just like I had seen Jopsy do with his hookah. But anyone can say, "pass that joint,", and the joint will move to the next person. It creates a nice SL effect, as different people ask for the joint, and it goes scooting over to the next person, and streams green particles to his/her face.
Once I had this complete and working the way I wanted, I decided I wanted to sell them, and try to make a few L$ for my troubles. But I couldn't decide on a price. I wanted to make them cheap enough so that a lot of people could use them, but I didn't like the idea of a selling the joints just once, giving the buyer a perputual object that they could use whenever they wanted.
To address this, I made the concious decision to make these joints "consumable". That is to say, you light one up, you have a little bit of fun, but then, just like first life joints, they disappear after a little while. I added a 15 minute timer that caused the joint to disappear when it was done.
Now I could sell my joints for dirt cheap, but people would have to come back to their friendly Second Life Dope Dealer for more when their weed was gone. I decided to sell them in boxes of 5, for L$25 a box. At today's GOM exhange rates, this works out to about US$0.12 per box, or a little over two pennies per joint.
I wanted one more piece of pizzazz to the joints, and added some code to the scripts that I called "Spectacular Death". Basically, when a joint is about to die, it sputters around the room to all the locations where it has been toked, fires off explosive green particles, and generally looks kewl for about 30 seconds. And then the joint calls llDie(), which destroys it forever.
I love being Second Life's first official Dope Dealer. While others have created dope-related content, I do believe that I am the first that requires his customers to keep coming back for more, just like a good dope dealer should.
- Ace
In Second Life, there is a bit of a cannabis counter-culture. Oneironaut Escher's Cannabis Carnival was the first weed-themed build I ran across in SL, and it was soon thereafter that I found the Cannabis Cathedral, which is now defunct.
For the record, in first life, I'm a ardent advocate of the notion that the war on drugs is a total failure, and that all drugs should be legalized. Prohibition and interdiction simply don't work, cost billions of dollars, and only result in some very vicious people getting very rich. I find it hard to believe that if crack cocaine were to suddenly be legal and freely available, that the whole world would find their way to the pipe. The resources we spend trying to outlaw the stuff would be better spent on education, research, and treatment.
But this Blog entry is not to discuss the merits of drug legalization, but to discuss my contribution to the Second Life marijuana counter-culture.
As I explored Second Life, I came across a number of weed-related "objects". The first that really impressed me was a hookah built by Jopsy Pendragon that I saw when he gave me a tour of his Hobbit hole at his old Ethereal Lands. Jopsy, being the master of particles, had build a hookah that had smoke running from hookah base to the AV's mouth in a stream that ended up looking like a flexible hookah hose.
Other people had built weed-mimicing objects, such as an attachment that had been prim-crafted to look like a big ol' joint and that generated some smoke particles, and I've seen other hookahs and even a coke tray (with full sniffing animations and sounds)
But none of these things featured one of the greatest aspects of marijuana smoking, and that is the shared "communal" nature of passing a joint around the room. There is something ceremonial and nourishing when a joint gets passed from person to person, with each pass a gentle exercise in mutual hand-eye coordination.
So I set out to build a joint that could be passed. When I started this, I was still a bit of a newbie with LSL (the scripting language for Second Life that gives so many things "life"), and followed a few dead-ends trying to accomplish this. This was mostly due to a lack of understanding of the mechanics of objects, and AV's, and how things interact.
Eventually, I was able to create my "Tokin' Joint" object, and it had exactly what I was looking for. The joint hovers above the head of whoever is currently toking on it, and streams a line of particles to a mouthpiece that the toker must wear, just like I had seen Jopsy do with his hookah. But anyone can say, "pass that joint,
Once I had this complete and working the way I wanted, I decided I wanted to sell them, and try to make a few L$ for my troubles. But I couldn't decide on a price. I wanted to make them cheap enough so that a lot of people could use them, but I didn't like the idea of a selling the joints just once, giving the buyer a perputual object that they could use whenever they wanted.
To address this, I made the concious decision to make these joints "consumable". That is to say, you light one up, you have a little bit of fun, but then, just like first life joints, they disappear after a little while. I added a 15 minute timer that caused the joint to disappear when it was done.
Now I could sell my joints for dirt cheap, but people would have to come back to their friendly Second Life Dope Dealer for more when their weed was gone. I decided to sell them in boxes of 5, for L$25 a box. At today's GOM exhange rates, this works out to about US$0.12 per box, or a little over two pennies per joint.
I wanted one more piece of pizzazz to the joints, and added some code to the scripts that I called "Spectacular Death". Basically, when a joint is about to die, it sputters around the room to all the locations where it has been toked, fires off explosive green particles, and generally looks kewl for about 30 seconds. And then the joint calls llDie(), which destroys it forever.
I love being Second Life's first official Dope Dealer. While others have created dope-related content, I do believe that I am the first that requires his customers to keep coming back for more, just like a good dope dealer should.
- Ace
posted by Robb Swanson at 11:53 AM
2 Comments:
I could think of much better ways to commune than inhaling toxins. But, I don't care what mature and educated adults choose to do to themselves. Since SL is virtual and 18+ I see little harm done (except for maybe a few immature kids trying it IRL to be cool like in SL). Besides, the only drugs I can do in my line of work are virtual ones!
I could do without any sex or drugs in SL. Sure its an adult game but to say that its ok to take drugs sends a strong message. I don't feel that is a positive message. I smoked weed for years all it did was take away my ambition to do anything. I think your kidding yourself if you think your not affecting your kids. You are. Mine too were affected and I have to live what I didn't do for them, just as you will someday.
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