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 The Red Pixel District
Sex, Work and Money in a Virtual WorldChris PerryQualitative Field MethodsIntroduction
At first glance, Nicole is a fairly typical woman in her early thirties. She teaches
 
science at a middle school a small town in Mississippi, where she lives happily with her husband and two children. She’s never gotten into trouble, and has never broken the law.From all appearances, she’s living a normal, admirable life. Nicole has a secret, however. Unbeknownst to her family, she works at a sex clubcalled Club Erotica on a nearly nightly basis. Unlike the modest, professional attire shewears in the classroom, here she dons a skimpy, revealing outfit that often has a hard timestaying on. She dances on a poll on the crowded dance floor, flirting with patrons for tips,and stripping off articles one by one. You’d never guess for a moment what her day jobmight be; she couldn’t be a more different person from the one her students see in theafternoon.Most teachers in a conservative Southern community would tremble at thethought of being caught in the act of such a socially proscribed profession, risking their  job, their marriage, and their reputation. Nicole doesn’t worry about a thing, however.Moreover, while most practitioners like Nicole would have to construct elaborate excusesto their spouses to explain their nightly absences, she doesn’t have to say a word. Nicoleand her many patrons don’t have to do much at all, in fact, to live their secret lives, because unlike a real sex club, Club Erotica is no farther away than their computers.Every night, approximately 23,000 people from across the globe meet and interactin a virtual world called Second Life. Second Life is home to countless places of illrepute, Club Erotica included. While nothing forces players to participate in the sexscene, and indeed, many have nothing to do with it, it’s the
raison d’être
for thousands of in-world residents, and an extremely compelling perk for thousands more. Romantics andlovers play a part in this world, certainly, but so do escorts, strippers, and avid fetishistsof myriad dispositions. Content here is often explicit enough that it would shock one’sfriends and family, and ironically, it’s right under these people’s noses that most playersare doing it.
 
Part One: A Walk in the District
Second Life is a world made possible because of the Internet, but it’s differentfrom the Internet most people know. It’s not part of World Wide Web, where two-dimensional web pages sit before us inertly. It’s also unlike chat rooms or instantmessages, where users enter lines of text that appear in a window. Second Life instead isa dynamic, immersive three-dimensional environment commonly referred to as aMassively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), run by a small San Francisco-basedcompany called Linden Lab. It’s populated by players from across the globe who enter the world as “avatars,” customizable human-like figures that can be changed andmodified at will. And in Second Life, you not only can you look however you like, butyou can do whatever you want, with little to stand in your way. This is one of the major reasons why the game has given rise to what may possibly be the most realistic andadvancely developed virtual sex industry that the world has ever seen.I decided to title my paper “The Red Pixel District” to evoke a particular industryand a sense of place, but the place is only a “district” in the loosest of terms. Sex, bothsolicited and voluntary, goes on all throughout the world, or, to be more specific, “thegrid,” a sprawling array of approximately 500 identically sized 16-acre areas known as“sims”. A lot of the sex occurs between two players in the comfort and privacy of their virtual home or apartment. These players tend to be in relationships, or at the least, onequal terms with each other. Some of the sex, meanwhile, occurs in small gentlemen’sclubs or brothels, between paid escorts and paying customers. These establishments aresmall, obscure, and few and far between, though, and don’t attract more than a sidefollowing. Instead, the hotbed of sexuality lies in one of Second Life’s most popular institutions, the club.I knew about clubs from my previous knowledge and experience with the game.Out of curiosity for what seemed like a fascinating world, I entered Second Life once or twice a week for about five weeks in spring of 2004, each time playing for a couple of hours. The world was smaller then than it is now, with fewer clubs, and less of a sexscene. That, and virtual sex was never the reason for my interest in the game to beginwith, so I tended not to explore the options too deeply. My experiences in-world didn’t
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12 / 12 / 2010This doucment made it onto the Rising List!

Interesting indeed. I wish people paid as much attention to the creative possibilities and the artists and programmers doing amazing things in Second Life.

Interesting read.

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