Co-creating Second Life

Abstract

In this article, we draw on our participant observation in the virtual-technology context of Second Life to explore cocreation's prepossessing claim of consumer empowerment and its connections to contemporary forms of social organization. We conclude that while consumers are genuinely empowered by co-creation practices, this empowerment that frees the consumer in a diversity of ways also offers significant avenues for entrapping the consumer into producing for the firm. In the end, co-creation is a veneer of consumer empowerment in a world where market power, in large measure, still resides in capital. On this basis, we suggest that the seeming demise of capitalism espoused by some scholars is premature to the extent that capitalism has the uncanny ability to meld into newer social formations such as those afforded by Second Life. Thus, a more realistic vision is an interloping of the ethical and capitalist economies.