It’s been two weeks now since transferring, and I’m starting to feel normal. This doesn’t mean that I understand what’s going on half the time, or get why so many girls are giganto-Amazons, or what the appeal of sionChickens is. It does mean that I’m finally starting to normalize and not be as overwhelmed by the choices and sheer volume of virtually everything. Normalization has brought about a few things that I’m totally in love with, and a few things I think are bizzare, unwarranted, or totally dumb.
What I Love:
1. Variety. If you want something, it can be found, even if it’s prim armpit hair or a deformed baby. It might not be the best quality, it might be really, really fugly, or make you go WTF? But it’s there, and that’s awesome. Being able to find things, no matter how bizzare, useless, or annoying, is awesome.
2. DJs. It seems like most parties have a DJ of some kind, be it a guy who stutters constantly and plays lame mixes, or Nexeus Fatale. On the Teen Grid, a DJ’ed party usually meant some guy blasting crap through his mic, or an internet radio stream, or worse yet, someone attempting to rap. I love the live DJs at parties, going into clubs and not feeling like they’re totally dead from lack of sick tunes. DJs are totally awesome!
3. Not knowing all the stores. Once upon a time, I knew pretty much every store and their locations by heart. I could tell people where to find an exact outfit or accessory. This totally eliminates the thrill of finding something new, as there is nothing new. I love not knowing all of the stores and their products by heart, needing to search for whatever it is I want, and always knowing there’s something I haven’t’ seen out there. Over here, there’s really no way to know and see it all.
4. Real Estate. I was randomly TP’ing around, and landed on a weird little tropical island. Like most places, it drops me a notecard, explaining that they had skybox rentals. Totally normal, right? Thing is, I’ve never seen that before. Ever. We didn’t have rental communities back on the TG where the homes were already set up. Hell, we barely had homes – pretty much all land was commercial, and the few houses disappeared quickly. I’m charmed by little rental island properties and communities.
5. Role playing. Shocker – there are role players in SL suddenly! I’m a huge fan of roleplaying, having done it since I was about 11 (Yes, I do Star Wars and D&D tabletop, dice and all – I r total geek), but role playing in Second Life is awesomesauce because it’s far more immersive than IRC or Habbo can be. Be it Star Wars, Firefly, Medieval, Urban, Gorean, or Ancient, you can find a group of roleplayers for every taste.
What I Hate:
1. Feeling overwhelmed. Ever been in a big city without much of an idea of what to do there? It’s pretty overwhelming. I feel like there’s way too much to do and not enough time to do it in, and like I don’t have a clue what’s going on. There’s a ton of places to go, but no idea on where to be.
2. Rule overload. Rules are what makes things stay organized, right? I can jive with some rules, they’re generally a good idea, but being suddenly overloaded with rules as soon as I land, under penalty of death/banning if I even accidentally breach a single sacred commandment, is overkill. Easing up on the rules might make people feel more welcome and less “OMG, I better behave or they’ll destroy me!”
3. No Fly Zone. It feels like just about every sim I go to disallows or discourages flying. Flying is huge for me – I love it, it’s my main mode of transportation. Why walk in Second Life when you can do that in First Life? It’s so boring, while flying is interesting and much faster! Maybe it’s the atmosphere they’re trying to promote, but it still annoys me a bit, and I often feel tempted to turn on my Admin Options and just soar about without a care.
4. Over-sexualization. I like sexuality – I’m comfortable in being a sexual creature, and enjoy that. However, just because I’m in a sim that has a sex theme doesn’t mean I’m asking to be hit on, or want your opinion on what you think I look sexy doing. Girls generally don’t comment on guys being somewhere, but guys seem to think it’s just fine to make obscene comments about girls in sex-themed spaces, like they’re objects to be oogled. Hint for ya, creep: I’m not.
What I’m Not Sure About:
Voice. I was teased quite a few times on the Teen Grid for refusing to use voice most of the time. I was never interested in it, even though I have a mic, and thought it caused a lot of drama. Here, a lot of sims are voice-disabled, and most people don’t even talk in voice-enabled land. When I asked about this, someone said that it’s thought to be rude to talk in public voice. While it’s nice to not have arguing over voice, I do miss the chatter.
I never understood the no-fly in some places. I understand if it’s for RP purposes, but in an area with loads of stores?
Another reason why I love the Emerald viewer – you can easily choose to ignore the no-fly with the click of a button. I think you can do it with the regular SL viewer, as well – there’s an option in the Advanced menu, if I remember correctly.
Good post!
You made it to Paisley’s taping with Philip?
The things you love about the MG are the same things I still love about the main grid 2yrs in, there’s really some great things out there. As for flying, if you don’t wanna use the emerald viewer just click ctrl alt v and you can fly to your hearts content, just remember if you’re in an RP zone some will kick you out for flying since many are based around RL characters
SL is the loneliest place I have ever been. Green dots everywhere yet none of the “people” I encountered on the grid today (as I traveled through about 50 sims), with the exception of 5 in a welcome area, spoke or moved.
SL is pretty much nothing but bots. Thanks for the no bots policy LL. You are teh king of enforcement rofl.
At least when I was exploring the Alaskan Tundra there were birds and other living creatures around in the desolation of pure deafening silence. Can’t say the same for SL.
Hey there, please allow me to apologize again for standing on your head while I was getting my bearings yesterday!
Glad to see you’re adjusting… If you like Djs and clubbing, you should pop over to my club at some point… Hit me up inworld and I’ll show you around and stuff…
Great post. Doesn’t a good DJ / hosting team just make a place great? There are some great welcoming places here.
The overwhelm and the sense that there are great things to do that you aren’t have stayed with me so far. It is a double edged sword, of course, because when you do find cool stuff, there’s a sort of aha!
I share that sense of being alone in a crowd when wandering the grid. It seems when I was a noob everyone talked and you made contact with strangers more easily. Will have to think on that one, because there are so many great folks here, if you can find them.
I so hear ya on the creepy guy front. Sigh. I apologize on behalf of my gender.
It’s fun reading about your adventures. Say hi in world and I’d be happy to show you a couple of my fave spots.
Keep’em comin
Ann, did you speak to any of them or just did a fly-by? Because I see people talk and interact wherever I go, and I’m wondering how come we see things so differently.
And everything I read from you in comments is very disparaging – be it about Linden Labs, SL, the people in SL, etc. If you hate it in SL so much, why are you still around? I’m genuinely curious to know, not being a smart ass. You seem to be very bitter and unhappy.
yah i noticed that about voice too. i don’t know what it is. i used it a bit at first but it kinda ruined the mystery for me. maybe us adults have more to hide.
I think teens tend to be open with each other more than adults. As we get older, more and more of us kind of crawl into our shells and don’t disclose everything about ourselves. We also grew up in a different generation. Teens these days have instant, constant communication with each other, and it’s “in” to share every private detail about yourself with the general public. People past their mid-20s or so didn’t grow up with this attitude so much. These may all be reasons for the disparity in the popularity of voice between the grids.
voicing in public is rude?
Oops.
If you want voice, you should come to dead town late at night when we all get going >.>
On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t.
A number of your peeves go back to number 1- there are places where people talk in Voice a lot (a lot of that depends on the crowd- I don’t do Voice because my mic’s broken and I usually have problems hearing people because my ears are a bit messed up, but I know a lot of people who use Voice a _lot_), there are places that are pretty rule free, there are places that have free fly policies (I also hate walking! Most places I go have fly enabled though, and those that don’t are the exception, not the rule- barring RP areas that often are no fly for RP reasons), and admittedly I don’t have a sexxxy avatar, but I’m almost never hit on.
Of course, those all also go back to number 1 on your hates list- there is so much out there! I used to check out tourist blogs and certain flickr accounts (Torley’s, of course! but I also adore Romona Forcella’s photostream too- she takes absolutely amazing pictures, and travels around a lot to really neat places, with slurls). I don’t have the time to travel as much any more with my time in SL, but I still will try to find time to go to new places. A whole lot of finding neat things in SL is word of mouth and stumbling across the right blogs, if you just grid hop, you are going to run into a lot of zombie bots. If you find interesting places though, you’re far more likely to run into people who will chat with you- although the population is so spread out because the world is so large that lots of really neat places are deserted most of the time. There are places out there with more “community” that if you keep visiting, you’re bound to run into nice people though.
Ann, Uncle Adric will always talk to you. If you can find him (Zindra most likely).
By poor child’s hate numbers;
1) No need to be overwhelmed. Most places are ghost towns or lame. When you focus on occupied good stuff it’s much easier.
2) Once you get that 50th ban it’s a badge of honor (which you cannot show anyone as you can’t go where they are). Once you own land you can make insane rules too.
3) I never ban flying unless I am having a naked day.
4) Respect is an issue I agree but in a world where anywhere from half to three quarters of the ladies are alts of men, it’s often a fair fight. Besides, ladies hit on me (albeit using lines I use giving them away as alts).
Great post, Arwyn
I feel overwhelmed too, even after more than a year here. I know there are loads of places to go, but no idea where to go… all I do is shop, and I know all the well-known/popular places to shop, but it gets boring after awhile.
When it comes to voice, I and almost all of my friends use it. Most times in public people are in a private conference call. When we are a group, about 4-7 of us, it makes it easier to chat and not worry how far away we are from each other. This also helps as to not annoy people who don’t want to hear us go on and on about this outfit, or that hair colour. I do not think it’s rude to open chat in stores, but I find it more polite to be in private.
I was about to say pretty much the exact thing KhloeK did. How ironic to get to the bottom of the comments and find that she has already beat me to it, because she is one of my dearest friends. About 75-85% of my time is spent on voice and I find that it really enhances my over all experience. I have friends who voice and friends who don’t and sometimes I even have one of those days where I just don’t feel like “talking” to anyone as in on voice, but it is very rare that I ever log into SL and think “I don’t want to “talk” to anyone.” as in no communication at all not even IMs. Now there are plenty of times that I do what is called “Pulling an Ais” which is talking for minutes on end to people and forget to turn on my mic.
As for cool places to see, check out flickr and koinup and anything in the showcase, there are loads of great pics there that frequently list SLURLs. Also I would strongly recommend the Rezzables sims and pretty much anything designed by AM Radio … Also i agree with the previous post which mentioned reading the blogs for places to go and hunts are another good way to see cool places and meet people. Talking to fellow hunters can be a great way to find a friend.
Join groups for subjects that you have an interest in learning more about and go to the events that are listed there and participate in group chats when they happen. As for meeting people, there are loads of places to do that including the fore mentioned places of interests and Clubs. It takes a little time to get your way around things but 2 weeks is barely any time at all … give it time, chances are you will either grow to love it or hate it.
As for getting hit on it is more likely to happen when you are alone, but don’t completely rule out all interactions with someone who makes a pass. I have met some of my best friends just because they were being a flirt or used a lame pic up line. Sometimes asking someone to dance is just because you enjoy dancing. Try not to read to much into things and if someone is particularly rude or inappropriate don’t be afraid to use your mute button.
Feel free to message me in world some time. Most of the time I am happy to have strangers tag along and I will share my notecards with tips for noobies.
Last but not least, never neglect your inventory.