A few years ago stories emerged about gamers and online life developers being able to make a real living in part by selling their characters to others who wanted to gain experience points or status in these virtual worlds but lacked the time or ability to do it the conventional way. It all seemed practical but not really interesting.
Today the idea of selling identity is getting more interesting and crossing between real and virtual worlds (just as our RealVR theme suggests.)
Yesterday, June 29th, a man sold his entire life on eBay for just under $400,000. Life in this case means all material goods including house and contents, motorcycle, jet ski, gear for hobbies like skydiving and kite surfing, and so forth and also non-material aspects like a set of friends and even a full-time job at a local rug store. The full details can be found at www.alife4sale.com.
Already on the surface many people find this idea intriguing. It’s been a frequent feature in movies and stories when a character needs a “new life” for whatever reason. However most of our ideas around it involve things like the witness protection program and changing our identity rather than assuming a complete new one from someone else in simple cash exchange.
According to a survey of visitors to the web site the vast majority thought a life sale was a good idea and there were even over 18,000 people who felt they could sell their own lives.
It appears that one thing not included are electronic elements like email, IM, iTunes account and other online aspects of living. This raises a question about what can and will change hands but it’s easy to imagine that as more relationship content is built in the virtual world it may also end up being put into the package. (There are some mischief makers like Ze Frank out there now experimenting with swapping online identities.)
We’ll need to come up with some new rules and notions around what virtual elements of our lives can be sold or transferred. Most of us would probably say that our email or IM is personal and linked to our real identity so that is shouldn’t be sold. But what about a blog? They are sold today without causing much uproar. What about if I sold a well-developed identity on Second Life? If I wanted to sell my Facebook account would they get to keep memberships in groups that were approved for me based on my background?
The implications from a RealVR world will expand our notions around what is possible and create new products and services to support activities that just aren’t part of mainstream thinking today.
I know there have been other interesting real world sales of online identities. If you have some to add please let us know in a comment.
