I laughed out loud while reading Baudrillard. Of the tug-of-war over The Cloisters, he says, "their reimportation to the original site is even more artificial: it is a total simulacrum that links up with 'reality' through a complete circumvolution," (11). I thought SecondLife was as funny, metamorphosing the real to uphold the reality principle.

Mapping (here I am only partially channeling Jameson) real life forms and actions onto the land of Linden (appropriately called "The World") sometimes turns into a situation similar to the custody battle of the Cloisters. My favorite detail in SecondLife is that you are told to communicate vocally (with commands like "Shout"), but your avatar's animation is of typing, not speaking. The real action gets twisted, referred to as vocal action, but ultimately the simulacrum is truthful in its own right, where "talking" is essentially typing.