SECOND LIFE DJs across Britain and much of Europe have been plunged into their annual state of temporal collapse after somebody mentioned that the clocks are going back, leaving hundreds unsure whether their Saturday night set is happening at 8pm, 9pm, yesterday, or possibly next Thursday.
The crisis began when one club owner innocently posted, “Just a reminder about the clocks changing on Sunday,” causing 47 DJs to immediately open Google, stare at it for several minutes and then ask in group chat what time 2pm SLT is. Within half an hour, the entire European grid had descended into chaos, with Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands all attempting to establish what time it was in California, a place where most of them have never been and increasingly suspect doesn't exist. “I normally DJ at 1pm SLT, which is 9pm for me,” explained DJ Raven Darkstar, who lives somewhere near Wolverhampton but has listed her location as “between worlds” since 2011. “But if the clocks go back here and they don’t go back there, or they go back there next week, then I think my set is at 8pm. Unless SLT goes forward. Does SLT have clocks?” Raven then went quiet for several minutes before adding, “Wait. Is SLT actually a place?”
Club managers have attempted to help by producing increasingly complicated notices containing several clocks, arrows, UTC offsets and phrases such as PDT, PST, GMT, BST, CET, CEST and SLT, which have only made matters significantly worse. One particularly ambitious venue published a conversion chart explaining that 7pm SLT will be 2am UK time, prompting somebody in Belgium to ask, “What about Europe?” Nobody has replied. The situation has been made considerably worse by the discovery that while Britain and most of Europe change their clocks on 25 October, the United States has decided to wait until 1 November, apparently because the Atlantic Ocean requires an additional week to process the information. This means that for seven days, the time difference between Britain and Second Life will be one hour less than usual, before returning to normal the following Sunday.
The news has devastated DJs who had only just managed to understand the first change and are now being told they will have to understand it again. “WHY WOULD THEY DO IT TWICE?” demanded one British DJ, who was subsequently informed that technically everybody was only doing it once, just on different dates. She has since resigned from two clubs and bought a calculator. Meanwhile, an American DJ has made the situation considerably worse by announcing, “Our clocks don’t change until later,” without specifying what later means. He has now been banned from three groups.
Experts say the most dangerous stage of the crisis occurs when somebody confidently announces that “SLT never changes.” This is traditionally followed by six people saying it does, four saying it doesn’t, somebody mentioning daylight saving time in Arizona, and a Canadian appearing from nowhere to explain Newfoundland. At this point all useful discussion becomes impossible.
Second Life resident Chantelle Moonwhisper, who has been hosting events for fourteen years, said she has developed a reliable system. “I just log in around teatime and stay online until somebody sends me a message saying WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU.” She added: “Hasn’t failed yet.”
Several clubs have now introduced emergency measures, including asking DJs to arrive an hour early, an hour late, and at the normal time simultaneously. One venue has simply scheduled the same DJ for three consecutive hours in the hope that at least one of them is correct. The performer concerned has agreed, although she is now unsure whether this means she is being paid three times.
Club hosts, meanwhile, have been declared exempt from the entire crisis after venue owners concluded that their arrival time has no measurable effect on the quality of an event. “We initially considered issuing them with revised schedules,” explained one manager, “but then realised that whether they turn up an hour early, an hour late or not at all, the only difference is the number of times somebody types WELCOME INNNNN into local chat.” The decision has been welcomed by hosts across the grid, several of whom have already announced that they will continue doing absolutely nothing, but now with the added reassurance that they are doing it at the correct time.
A separate emergency meeting involving eleven European club owners was abandoned after nobody could agree when it was supposed to start. The meeting has been rescheduled for 1 November, a decision described by one participant as “an act of deliberate psychological violence”. Perhaps the greatest confusion has been caused by DJs who insist on advertising events exclusively in their own local time. “TONIGHT 10PM,” announced one poster. Asked which time zone, its creator replied: “Mine.”
With the American clock change still to come, experts are warning that the entire crisis will repeat itself on 1 November, when thousands of European DJs will discover that the time they spent the previous week carefully correcting is now wrong again. Second Life authorities have advised residents to remain calm, consult a reliable time zone converter and remember that SLT follows Pacific Time. Unfortunately, this advice has already caused a fresh argument about whether Pacific Time is the same as SLT, whether California is eight or seven hours behind Britain, and why the Americans can't just change their clocks when everybody else does.
One DJ has attempted to solve the problem by putting every clock in her house back an hour, including her computer, mobile phone and microwave. She is now three hours late for a set that doesn't start until tomorrow.