No-longer-places in Virtual Worlds: The Precarity and Impermanence of Digital Religious Places through a Buddhist Lens

Abstract

This paper explores the ephemerality of digital spaces by paying special ethnographic attention to removed or deleted spaces—what I call no-longer-places—from the Buddhist corners of the virtual world of Second Life. While some Buddhist informants in Second Life tended to attribute the virtual disappearances to the Buddhist truth of impermanence, the Buddhist communities of Second Life were built to endure for some time. Therefore, the instances of failed no-longer-places continue to have cultural significance in their own meaningful and haunting ways.