Surreal campaigns as French politics go virtual

By Sudip Kar-Gupta

PARIS (Reuters) - French political debate is shifting from Left Bank cafes and being teleported into cyberspace.

Instead of agreeing to disagree over a glass of kir, many French youths are sending their ideas flying through the computer-animated world of Second Life.

"In here, you can see French people expressing themselves as they ought to, instead of being the hypocrites they often are in real life," said an avatar, or computer image, of what appeared to be a woman using the Second Life moniker of Hayahaya Milo.

Unconventional names and uncertain gender are just one of many surreal aspects of Second Life, the three-dimensional virtual world set up by U.S. company Linden Labs that has attracted more than 2 million registered users since opening in 2003.

Users adopt a persona and computer simulation of a human to navigate the new world. They can choose at registration whether to appear as a man or a woman. Sometimes they fly or teleport to a venue, and some avatars' bodies have wings or horns.

Second Life's appeal to many young people has seen political heavyweights around the world join businesses in the scramble to set up shop in the online world and attract the youth vote.

Supporters of presidential frontrunners Nicolas Sarkozy, Socialist Segolene Royal and centrist Francois Bayrou, along with fans of National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen, have all staked out territory in cyberspace to drum up votes.

Recently at Bayrou's unofficial Second Life venue, a shaven-headed and tattooed male avatar sported an orange T-shirt with the legend "Sexy Centriste".