The 'Double Life' of Peter Ludlow

I don't often say that things are a "must read" when it comes to Second Life but - this - is - a - must - read.

Peter Ludlow (left) as Urizenus Sklar (right)

For those that don't know, Peter Ludlow, aka Urizenus Sklar in SL, is the founder of the Alphaville Herald -- a blog on steroids mostly focused on the seamier and stranger sides of Second Life. Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, was known at NU for showing scenes of SL avatars having sex in his classroom and blurring the line between RL & SL in-class and outside of it. 

Now, Ludlow is being accused of sexual harassment by an underage student of his (full article). Oh wow. Irony is a harsh mistress or dominatrix or something. The Herald would know.

The Alphaville Herald itself has been no stranger to controversy with one of its regular features being to get female avatars to pose nude for open critiques by anyone reading and interviews that feature answers to questions from both a RL perspective and as an SL avatar. Famously, Ludlow also did an interview with an under-aged SL "madame" who was making insane amounts of $L (back in the old days).

While I personally often enjoyed the Herald getting scooping something interesting in SL or at Linden Lab, many of the articles went a bit too far for me and seemed more about pure prurient interest than any real journalistic effort. More recently, there's been a huge drop-off in the number of articles posted -- perhaps due to Ludlow's personal problems.

Anyway, to me this story shows the dangers involved when you start believing you really are a 20-something stud or big-boobed grrl toy. I'm sure there are other lessons here too.

I have no idea how to tag this story so I'm filing it under "sex" and "culture".