Big Brother has begun its first series in Second Life. We tried to persuade Maya, who is working with us, to join it but she refused when she realised that she would have to spend a minimum of eight hours a day in the Big Brother houses for three weeks - and that the three weeks included both Christmas and New Year.

We agreed with her completely.

Nonetheless 15 willing contestants have been found and the show is on its way. A number of people have speculated that (like many other recent ‘real world’ publicity stunts) the creators were not much concerned with what happened to the 15 contestants. Their main concern appeared to be with the amount of newspaper and television coverage they were getting for the international Big Brother brand.

This was the case with Tony Walsh at Clickable Culture whose post ‘Second Life’ Griefers set ‘Big Brother’ Ablaze discussed the sabotage that took place at the start of the event, and how little appeared to have been done to predict or prevent it.

Gary Hayes, on the other hand, ignored the fireworks and decided to write about the underlying developments that he saw the event harbinging.