On the Second Life Community forums, someone recently asked
I would like to get social and meet people but i dont really know how to do that !?
Are there famous places/destinations that people hang out ? Is there a search engine inside SL that can find places based on population ? Thank you!
I realized I had some suggestions about this for newer residents. In case you’re interested, here those are.
First, importantly, Search is your friend! She’s a lazy friend with limited skills, but she’s mostly there when you need her, and ultimately she really does want to help.
Dancing at Muddy’s Music Café
Where to go to meet people depends on what you want to meet people for. If you just want to be with some other folks and don’t mind if there’s not a lot of connection or (depending) conversation, there are plenty of dance clubs where you can go, and that would be the thing to search for. Use the drop-down in search to narrow your results to places only. Some of these clubs, at times, have people at them who want to meet other people or have conversations. Others will mostly have people dancing and perhaps yelling things out from time to time (“Hi”, “Great song”, “Woo-hoo”, that kind of thing) but not much in the way of actual connection.
If you have special interests that you want to share with people, search for groups using that same search feature. Some of the groups will be old and defunct, and there’s no good way to tell, but often groups with a lot of people are active. Some of these groups have places connected with them, like churches or nude beaches or residential areas.
If you just want to have sex, I suppose you know what to type into search for that, but if you want to meet someone romantically without it suddenly getting grabby, try Frank’s or Sweethearts Jazz, both of which tend to be full of single avatars seeking other single avatars for a dance and maybe more. Frank’s is formal attire, and Sweethearts is formal or semi-formal. These are mostly for straight people, though there are some other destinations that work well for other orientations.
While you never know whether you’ll meet someone or stand around looking until you give up, for an example I stopped in at Frank’s just long enough for people to rez and for me to take this picture, but it was still enough time for a very tall, newish guy (not pictured) to politely introduce himself and ask me to dance.
Some resis standing by the dance floor at Frank’s
For conversation or connecting with other people, try discussion events, or just teleport to a hub, like London Town, where there are always a lot of people milling around.
People watching in London Town
If you want to meet people serendipidously, go to one of the more popular “wander around” destinations like DaVinci Gardens or whatever’s being touted by Linden Labs currently in the viewer. Just go wherever things look interesting and see if you run into anyone.
Taking a free Dragon ride at DaVinci Gardens
If you want to stack the deck as you wander, use the button that looks like a dot inside several circles (on the Linden Labs viewer that you’re probably on if you’re new), which brings up a local map. Try to move your green dot closer to the other green dots you see, if any, since each one is a person. If you see a little green V or ^, that means the person is above or below your level.
Looking at the people radar in DaVinci Gardens
None of these methods are sure-fire, I’m sorry to say, but if you keep at it for a little while and do things you’re genuinely interested in, you’ll start running into intriguing people and can build a list of friends. Then, whenever you log on, you can just see if any of your friends are around and available.
Good luck!
^^^\ Kate /^^^
