Earlier this week I received an email from Draxtor’s occasional update newsletter, which announced that his contract with Linden Lab comes to an end this month. I saw this as a very sad day.
Draxtor Depres (aka Bernard Drax in the real world), has been creating media of various types in our beloved virtual world for as long as I have been in Second Life and long before that.
Drax had a very unique arrangement with Linden Lab, a retainer with final cut approval. This gave him the freedom to create insightful, honest and entertaining content without corporate influence. He described his contract with the Lab in an interview with me in April 2021:
“I do Linden Lab contracting work where I produce weekly videos highlighting destinations, creations and creative individuals in personal profile style videos. In that sense you could see me as influencer, since I am on the payroll of Linden Lab AND showcasing the best of the platform. I don’t have a problem with that classification (influencer) however I would like to add that with my specific contract I have tremendous freedom to choose topics and the way I visually present them.
It is maybe a bit like working for the local tourism agency of country XYZ where you LOVE all the stuff the locals do and you tell stories how they do it!”
I believe Drax’s content, along with the likes of Strawberry Singh, has significantly influenced a change in the internet search results for “second life”. I remember when such a search would return merely griefer videos and negative stereotype tropes (to use Drax’s term), now it returns a much more positively relevant collection of results.
Here I had to stop myself for a moment because this was starting to sound like an obituary. While this is not a death, I’d say it’s definitely a loss to the Second Life community. Draxtor intends to continue making Second Life videos of various types, read his announcement linked below for more details on his plans for the future.
When the Second Life Book Club launched I started attending quite regularly. I had great fun creating avatar looks that were inspired by the book being discussed.
A Flickr Album of my photos taken at the Second Life Book Club: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmV7mL23
Second Life YouTube (largely populated with Draxtor content)
If you want to help support Draxtor to continue making his content, have a read of his announcement below. Where you will also see a selection of his videos, he picked one for each of his time with Linden Lab.
Draxtor’s announcement: https://draxtor.substack.com/p/thank-you-linden-lab-for-a-good-run
My blog post when I interviewed Draxtor: https://avadelaney.co.uk/musings/avatars-brands-and-personas/
Post header image taken at the Second Life Book Club 19th May 2021.