How to Meet People in Second Life

Tags

clubs, destinations, groups, meeting, people, second life, Socializing

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 /^^^

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One of the Smartest Things I’ve Ever Heard of a Virtual World Company Doing

Tags

culture, greeters, high fidelity, philip linden, philip rosedale, project sansar, second life, society, virtual reality, VR headsets

On New World Notes, Hamlet Au reported that High Fidelity is hiring people to work 4-hour greeter shifts in a virtual world. Here’s the link to the ad.

High Fidelity, if you didn’t already know, is the next-generation virtual world by a team assembled by Philip Rosedale, aka Philip Linden, aka the creator of Second Life (who is no longer at Linden Labs. Linden Labs is creating a new virtual reality experience called Project Sansar).

Project Sansar Advertisement

Why do I think this is incredibly smart? Because it’s a direct and well-conceived approach to addressing probably the two biggest problems from which a fully operational virtual world can suffer: the learning curve for getting comfortable in that world, and the disconnect between the developers and corporate types on the one end and the actual users on the other.

A greeter can prevent all kinds of frustration and wasted time as new users get used to their surroundings. (For instance, on Second Life resi confessed recently in a Second Life forum post that for weeks after she joined, she assumed she had to park her avatar somewhere safe when she was logged off so that no one would do anything harmful or disruptive to it.)

A presentation showing off High Fidelity

A greeter can also gather unstructured, open feedback on the virtual world experience, quickly getting up to speed with resis’ joys and frustrations, and so act as a crucial link between residents and those who run the world.

None of this means I’ll be racing to join High Fidelity (or Project Sansar, for that matter). The most important things to me about Second Life are my friends, the social scene, my home in the CDS, and secondarily, my wardrobe. I’m certainly not planning on getting a virtual reality headset any time soon. None of those are going to be easily replicated in another virtual world, so for the immediate future, I plan to stay where I am, though I’ll probably explore these new worlds at some point before too, too long.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

My First Ten Years in Second Life

Tags

anniversary, rezday, second life, ten years

My ability to spend time in Second Life comes and goes, and I’ve been so tied up with other things lately that I almost missed the fact that today marks ten years in Second Life. Ten years! That hardly even makes sense to me.

A lot has happened in that ten years, so rather than blathering on forever, I thought I would choose the five or six things that have stood out the most for me in that time. This isn’t a complete list of everything that’s been important to me (for instance, where’s mention of the store I had for a couple of years long ago? It didn’t make the list, that’s where it is).

They weren’t easy to choose, and I’m sure that soon enough I’ll realize I left out something bigger than any of them, but oh well, that kind of thing happens. In no particular order, here they are:

Friends

Friends have always been hands down the most important and wonderful thing in Second Life to me. I can’t even name all the remarkable people I’ve met and cared about and spent time with, because I’d be sure to forget someone, but from the friends I met in my first days who helped me get oriented to the friend I met the day before yesterday moving into a new home, you are the people I log in to see and the reason that Second Life is wonderful. Some of you are long gone (Eris and Wrean, I’m thinking of you two particularly), some I barely see but am delighted to come across every now and then (Lanna, Vaneeesa), and some are still delightfully present (like Andi, Ant, Peter, Robby, Sadie, Lynn, and Katt).

The Sweet-Tongued Sylphs

Long, long ago, on the shores of a virtual sea, Eris Fallon and I set up a tiki house for parties and, far above it, a cascade of stone platforms with a glass-floored tower and a waterfall and flower gardens. We then adopted (or were adopted by) Andi Spear, and together the three of us were the Sweet-Tongued Sylphs–sweet tongued, officially, because we are all talkers. It was a wonderful virtual home for quite some time.

The Diversionarium

I’ve tried all kinds of approaches to make it easier for people to connect in Second Life, because for some reason I’m obsessed with that. The one that was the most fun was Eris’s and my venue, the Diversionarium, a place where people could go to hang out and play social games. There was a limerick game and a building game, an improv game, and others, all of which we built ourselves. We thought it would be great to have a place to go where you could socialize that wasn’t a dance club–not because dance clubs aren’t very nice, but because it’s good to have options. What we didn’t count on was how much time and effort it requires, day after day, to keep bringing people to a venue like that! Neither of us could spare the time from our First Lives to keep that up, so after a long, brave try, we folded up the Diversionarium and put it away. (It was actually a little more involved then that, but that’s another story.)

The Confederation of Democratic Simulators

CDS is very new to me, only something I’ve known about since last month, so it’s surprising it makes this list, but it’s a kind of place I never realized existed in Second Life–a neighborhood, a community that stays in place where you can know the people who live around you. I spent a few weeks exploring it and rhapsodizing about it here, but just last week I moved in, and I’ve set up a little house to furnish and live in there, hopefully for a very long time. Everyone I’ve met there to date has been not only friendly and welcoming, but also interesting and worth knowing (Naftali, Pip, Lilith, Callie, Han, Widget!). Unfortunately, there’s still the problem of not being online at the same time as other people, but I’m very curious to see what life will be like there over time.

What’s ironic is that CDS has been around longer than I have: I had just never known much about it until recently.

Mesh Bodies

This is a superficial one, I admit, but once I realized that mesh bodies used custom shapes and got a Maitreya Lara body for myself, I ended up completely rebuilding my wardrobe, which considering how extensive my wardrobe needs to be in Second Life for me to be satisfied meant a huge undertaking. It’s not that I think that mesh bodies are the end-all: I don’t always even know whether a person’s wearing one or not. It’s just that so many subtle problems with system bodies, like weird angles at joints, are fixed with my mesh body, even though some other problems (like skinny arms) are introduced because each mesh body reflects some individual idea of what a beautiful body looks like.

You

This was originally a 5-item list, but I couldn’t let it go without mentioning you. This blog and my readers (and especially the readers I get to meet in Second Life who actually recognize me from it) have been a source of happiness for me since nearly the beginning. Thank you for reading, and may your first ten years in virtual reality–or your next ten–be as joyful as mine have been.

^^^\ Kate /^^^

 

What Would Second Life Be Like If Everybody Kept Their Pants On?

Tags

clothing, designers, G rated, problems, R rated, second life, sexy, X rated

I’m sure I’m as much a part of the problem as part of the solution, but one of the real troubles with Second Life is that its raciness keeps it from being something we can easily talk about or do publicly.

I guess it all starts with everyone out there who has needs or desires to do with sex and romance and body image. We come to Second Life, and here’s a world where we can be sexy people and do sexy things without worrying about the consequences. But the more sexy people and sexy things there are in Second Life, the less comfortable people will be if they don’t want to see cleavage and X-rated pose balls everywhere, and the less we can, for instance, show our world to children, or to our easy-scandalized maiden aunts.

Then sexy people and sexy things attract other sexy people, who add more sexy things to the world, and all of these people do a lot of shopping, because even in Second Life looking sexy takes some effort. Then designers end up making sexy clothes because they’re much more popular than normal clothes, to the point where it’s really difficult to go out there with a mesh body and find anything to put on that isn’t low-cut, high-cut, keyholed, skin-tight, see-through, high-heeled, latex, or all of those together. (Although, OK, I’d be genuinely interested to see an outfit that was all of those together.)

When I first starting buying things from Addams, for instance, I was looking for tops that weren’t so low-cut, and I was thinking “Oh, here’s a great designer who offers that!” Afterward, though, I realized that Addams isn’t not sexy–it’s just differently-sexy. I mean, look at this top. It’s not exactly something you’d wear to a PTA meeting.

Not that I would want the sexy parts of Second Life to go away! But that’s probably it…we probably can’t have it both ways.

So what are my unreasonable demands? Well, I wasn’t going to say, but since you asked, here they are.

1. Fun, G-rated areas where there are interesting people in not-sexy getups and interesting things to do. I know, this isn’t an original idea, but I haven’t found a place where it’s done well (maybe because I’m always flouncing around in my short skirts and am not trying hard enough). Maybe you know one? This would be a place that would be so neat to go to where you wouldn’t mind if someone IM’d you and said, “Hey Kate, too sexy! Take it down a notch, OK?”, a place you could show your maiden aunt or a seven-year old.Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever having been offended anywhere at being told I was too sexy. It’s one of those things that doesn’t really bother me.
2. Great clothing by great designers, including items for mesh bodies, that looks amazing but isn’t provocative. I know there’s a bit of this out there, but honestly, most of the really good stuff is designed to stop traffic. For example, take a look at the Luxe Box for July and tell me you’d wear any one of those articles of clothing to teach preschool.

I think that’s it. It’s a tall order, and I know it won’t happen, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to mention Second Life and have someone say “Oh, you mean that great 3-D socializing environment?” instead of “Oh, you mean that sex game?”

^^^\ Kate /^^^

Found: Real Civilization in Second Life! (part 1)

Tags

cds, confederation of democratic simulators, culture, government, second life

 

I really appreciated Han Held’s response to my recent post imagining what government might be like in Second Life, because she pointed me to the Confederation of Democratic Simulators, or CDS. It sounded awfully appealing: several sims of people working together in an environment made up of harmonious sections, with themes like an alpine village and the Tuscany countryside.

So, after logging in yesterday, I looked for Neufreistadt, one of the sims Han had mentioned, on the map. I was disappointed to discover that there were only a couple of green dots in the region. Apparently it would just be a bunch of empty sims, though maybe with some nice design work … just like everywhere else in Second Life.

But I’m an optimist by nature, so I double clicked on the map at a spot that looked like it might be a kind of town center, near one of the green blips, and teleported.

I arrived in the middle of an empty blue sky. Oops! I’d forgotten about altitude in my teleport coordinates. I was teleporting from my sky house, and I’m not used to going places without a landmark, so I didn’t even look. Still, I’ve always liked the Alice in Wonderland feeling of falling into a sim, though the landings can be painful, so I let myself fall and spent the time trying to get a good picture of me tumbling through the sky. It’s kind of hard to get my camera to frame correctly in mid-sky, though, and when I did, everything shook. Anyway, I was distracted: while I was still falling, not yet in sight of the ground, I saw what looked like most of an Italian villa.

Now, I’ve always been the kind of person who can’t resist taking a look at places I’ve come across that might otherwise be nearly impossible to find, so flapped my wings, pulled up into a hover, and then flew over to take a look.

To my surprise, this was where one of the green blips actually was, and the name of this blip was Lilith. I apologized for interrupting, but she said nothing — I’m used to that in Second Life, of course — so I quietly walked back out onto the patio and jumped off. I decided to hover for a moment not far down, though, to see if I could get my camera pointing in the right direction for that freefall picture, and while I was there she IM’d me, apologizing and saying she’d been in Photoshop. So I flew back up.

Well, it turned out that she was building this villa for a CDS resident, but she put that aside, saying she could use a break, and I had a wonderful conversation with her about CDS. She’s about ten years old, the same as me, but she’s lived in CDS most of that time, whereas my homes have come and gone, just like the neighborhoods around them. Actually, except for Seven and Jen Shikami’s island, I’ve never lived in anything that could really be described as a neighborhood, and there I experienced the homes around me gradually vanishing as the residential area shrunk until it was just me and one other house, at which point I decided I should get out of Seven and Jen’s hair. To my surprise, though, the house was still there last time I checked. But there’s still no one else around.

I eventually left Lilith to her building, but I was encouraged when I jumped off the patio the second time. I never did manage to get a tumbling picture, because it wasn’t long after that that the ground appeared below me like an enormous flyswatter, and I didn’t hover quickly enough to avoid splatting against it. Thank goodness for immortality, right?

Neufreistadt was lovely but mostly empty, so I began trekking down its cobbled streets in search of that other green blip I’d seen on my screen. The town was lovely, but there was more to it, as well: it wasn’t like other towns I’d seen, which were either stores jammed against stores or else empty buildings just there for show, like in the very nicely-constructed but abandoned area around Fogbound Blues. What was different was that the buildings and places here seemed to each have a purpose. It didn’t feel like a build: it felt like a place.

It took me some time of wandering uphill, through beautiful and intriguing areas, before I came near that second blip, but when I did…well, but this post is long enough already. Why don’t I tell you what happened then in my next post?

What Would Second Life Be Like If It Had a Government?

Tags

governance, government, linden labs, lindens, second life, society, voting

Hamlet got me thinking …

Hamlet Au

So, over on New World Notes, Hamlet Au posted the results of a survey of Second Life residents about U.S. presidential candidates. Spoiler: Hillary Clinton won by a wide margin. But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is an offhand comment Hamlet made about Libertarianism: “I guess I’m most surprised by how few in Second Life support Gary Johnson, since Second Life itself is more or less a laissez faire libertarian virtual world.”

Well, OK, but … no, not really. My response to that was “As to Libertarianism appealing to Second Life residents because there’s no law or structure to our world, I’d like to point out that this isn’t really by our choice! I’d love for Second Life to be a place with some governance and stability, and living in a world where things appear and disappear and the authorities are rarely involved in resolving disputes and injustices does not make me at all more enthusiastic about societies without constraints!

In fact, that makes me really interested to imagine what a virtual world that did have some governance would be like…”

What would a Second Life government do?

Of course, when we think of “Second Life government,” we think of the Lindens, because they have the power–but they aren’t a government at all, really. Actually, they’ve worked really hard not to be a government, avoiding responsibility for all but the absolute worst problems, like the plague of griefers long ago, or the plague of billboards a while after that. Even when they intervene, all they do is change the terms of service and the physical laws of the universe. They don’t really get involved in group action or personal consequences or anything like that. It’s a bit of a shame, but I can understand that they’re they’re trying to provide a platform and not a society. If it were me, of course, I would have wanted to provide a society!

Anyway, that’s exactly what a Second Life government, if there were one, could do. They could work on addressing questions like vast, empty spaces or problem behavior, the difficulty of disentangling sex-focused venues from non-sex-focused venues, and things like that. They couldn’t really be a good go-between between the resis and the Lindens, since they wouldn’t have much leverage to make the Lindens do anything, but perhaps they could obtain some powers in some cases so that there could be actual enforcement if they were to come up with laws.

But how?

Since this kind of thing wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea, I think the way it could work the best would be for someone to pay for some sims in Second Life and invite people who want to live in a structured society to live, sell, shop, and play there. The sim owners could sponsor elections (or I suppose simply annoint a monarch if they wanted to go that way), and there could be representatives to help work out laws and perhaps even a judiciary. Of course, laws would vanish at the borders of this area, but if it were successful, the governance could grow to encompass other sims, even if they weren’t adjacent, and without the original sim owner or sim owners needing to do anything.

And yet, maybe not

However, I don’t know if I think a Second Life government is realistic. Does anyone care that much? I’d find it fascinating, but I’m hardly normal. And can you have a working government when not just your citizens but your elected and appointed officials keep winking in and out of existence? Still, it’s a fascinating idea, isn’t it?

^^^\ Kate /^^^

Photo credits

• capitol – cea +
• voter – Gwyneth Llewelyn
• queen – Naniel