MTV branches out into the realm of the MMO, with depressing results

3:06 AM on 02.23.2007   |   Nex

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Picture this: You're in a class room, surrounded by your peers, and your professor walks in. Even before sitting down, he announces that he has a project for all of you, and he begins to hand out papers. As you receive yours, you scan it quickly, and realize the only thing written on it is: 'MTV created an MMO based on their fictionalized version of The Laguna Beach. Please discuss.'

Before you're given the opportunity to embrace sweet, sweet death by jamming your pencil swiftly through your ocular cavity and into your frontal lobe, your professor replaces all your pencils, pens, compasses, sharp-cornered notebooks, and even the zippers on your clothes with styrofoam replicas, and you are forced to write with crayons all over the sides and top of your desk, since paper could have been used to slash your wrist.

Far from being some of my signature snark regarding all things popular, the above was a pretty reasonable approximation of what the developers of this Second Life clone must have felt. At least in Second Life, you have the ability to bang random men-posing-as-women-posing-as-squirrels, but here, you live by MTV's family friendly, teeny-bopper rules; which means no drugs, sex, or public masturbation, unless it's in front of the cameras, and Puck gets kicked out of the house.

Anyway, if you, or, more likely, the fourteen year old girl down the street who is just naive enough to think that you're just a "really nice guy" might actually enjoy this kind of thing, you aren't wearing enough black.