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WWF's Conservation Island

A virtual world

Posted by Sarah van Schagen at 3:59 PM on 17 Aug 2007

orangutan selling ice creamI scream, you scream, we all scream for an orangutan selling ice cream. On WWF's virtual island in online world Second Life.

From the press release:

On Conservation Island, if residents "buy" an ice-cream from Mr Tangee, the orangutan who runs the ice-cream van, they will have the chance to learn that plantations to provide the soy and palm oil found in an array of everyday products, from ice-cream to cosmetics and chocolate bars, already cover an area the size of France and are growing. This threatens not only some of the world's greatest forests and traditional lifestyles, but also endangered species such as orangutans and jaguars.

Visitors to another part of the island can befriend a panda who will tell them about environmental issues and go with them as they explore a town powered by a wind-powered pinwheel.

"Tangee" rhymes with "mangy"?

Not clear quite how this is supposed to work, but whatever.  I am certainly not part of the intended viewership, anyway, and I do not believe I have ever been moved to do anything by a digitalized online image, save to move on to a different website.

It is curious, is it not, the way "icon" and now "avatar," two terms-of-art in ancient religious traditions, have been co-opted by those energetic, highly paid but word-deficient screen-scribes and code-cultists.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

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