Do you need a cause to fight for?

there are starving people living in the streets under a bridge near your home. go help them.

SL is a game.

You and your damn reality checks.

Give me back my money!

Moved to Off-Topic.

wait! i mentioned SL in my post!

Probably their fault.


God helps those who help themselves


Me, LL (and just about everyone who matters) disagree with you.

while your post is off topic of this off topic thread, you should know everyone that matters already know that when a product is called "secondlife," it is an escapist fantasy world for the chronically depressed.

a platform is reliable, gives up time guarantees, and isn't marketed exclusively at gaming conventions and www.MMORPG-OMG.com.

secondlife is a game. maybe one day LL will make a platform.

jauani: hey eggy, are you playing make believe?
eggy: i'm not playing! i'm a race car driver!
jauani: that's not a car, it's a cardboard box.
eggy: it's a racing car! look! it has my sponsors names on the side
jauani: it says maytag
eggy: You and your damn reality checks!

J-wu wins the forums for this week with this post.

Eggy, how much you want for that racecar?

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, and I'll keep raking in the dough from SIC projects

Which you've admitted before is paltry peanuts compared to what a real dev platform would be raking in.

FYI

it's ok, not everyone can afford to use a platform.

Well, when I found myself diagnosed with catalepsy, narcolepsy, cerebral atrophy and memory, fatigue and cognition problems, I found that SL is the only way I can stay sane in any meaningful way.

Design work helps me to concentrate on making things that are enjoyable to look at and that people like.

I am now housebound due to my problems and have problems walking a few hundred feet without needing to rest for a few minutes. So going anywhere to do anything requires help.

In SL I can fly... I can walk... I can do things that would be unsafe for me to do in the real world. To *you* this may just be a game. To someone who cannot follow the thread of a short story, and who finds television *still* to be too mindless to watch... SL is a way to keep my mind active, to achieve things and make things. With my body not working well and my mind in bad straights, you want to tell me to get a life?

I got the official notification this week after the paperwork was done... today was my last day of *work* although I have been on leave without pay for months. It hurt. All the doctors, all the tests, the MRI showing where there should be something and there isn't, the PET scan showing that whatever happened is not progressing. No answers. No solutions. The meds put me up and down so my body and mind are barely in synch.

There are others in the same situation with other problems in SL. I have met a few and am *glad* and damn *glad* that I don't have their problems! I was very intelligent before mine hit and am still quite mentally capable in some things in life. Tracking a checkbook? No. Preparing all but the simplest of meals? No. Walking out to that non-existant homeless person by the underpass a half-mile away? No. Read a book? (and I would read and read and read and read if I could follow anything, all those books on my shelf I wanted to read and can no longer concentrate on) No.

I can barely keep myself together and *you* tell me to get a life!!

I *have* a life. I would not be here if I was well. How dare *you* set yourself above everyone and tell us to 'get a life'? That this is a 'game'?

If *you* are healthy, fit, active, fully competent and aware and can actually get *rest* from sleeping... count yourself as lucky! Sleep is a stopover to me, but the Land of Nod no longer gives succor nor respite. Try going without a good nights sleep... for 15 months... and face that for the rest of your 'life'.

Count your blessings. You are not me... and I am not bad off!

Now I will go and cool off... forgive me for any intemperance on my part.

-Diana

Mildred: What're you rebelling against, Johnny?
Johnny: Whaddya got?

hi diana,

i didn't say "get a life" anywhere. in my posts

i am sorry my tongue and cheek posts were misconstrued. my first post was in regards to people who buy into the metaphor that SL is a country, and thus try to politicize SL in a very offensive manner, using rhetoric that is illogical and irresponsible to our real world obligations while confounding constructive discussions of matters dealing with SL - a service provided to us by LL.

i'm sure my words: "escapist fantasy world for the chronically depressed" probably were inflamatory, but they were in reference to the name of the game.

my post to eggy is in response to his banner waving of the "platform" gang. while the platform potential is the most exciting aspect of SL for me, i don't believe that a game, marketed as a game, on game websites, with a game name, is a platform. specially when it is unreliable. i look forward to the platform version but this is not it. wells fargo and swivel media made that very clear.

Stagecoach Island is only one of four RL-on-SL projects I had in 2005. Foxy did not budget for a massive scripting system because the nature of the work was misrepresented to her, and being a non-technical person she doens't know how to ask the right questions.
On our new project, I'm the one negotiating with the client.

Deeply so, but yesterday was not a good day for me and today is the first day of... I really have no idea.

As to the decisions that other companies, groups or organizations outside of SL make about how to term SL... Unless they actually bother to send some people into the world, I really don't care.

Same goes for bloggers and journalists writing about it. Unless they actually bother to get here and look and think... I don't care.

I came here not to play a game or because it was marketed as such, but first, and foremost, because it was a *world* and represented a new way of presenting information. In the real world how one overlays information on the physical world can gain insight into many things and I thought (and still think) that SL offers something that I can get absolutely nowhere else. I came here for the experience and to see what could be done... now I am here to learn what I have left in my life that I *can* do.

Personally I am deeply gratified and greatful to all of the social experiments going on, and community building.

Again, my apologies!

Sincerely,

-Diana

Your posting was remarkably temperate, considering what you are coping with in your life at the moment.

Unfortunately some people are very lacking in empathy, and cannot understand the importance that second life takes in the lives of some people who are disabled for one reason or another. The people who say 'SL is a game' sometimes tend to fall into this category.

I would imagine that a relatively large proportion of players in sl are disabled or housebound in some way, or suffer from mental problems which make socialising difficult in real. The wonderful thing about this place is that it sometimes gives such people the abilities they are losing, or have lost, in real life.

It's not that those who measure other people by their own lives are intentionally unkind - just that they find it difficult to understand that other people's lives are not necessarily identical to theirs. There was a recent thread in which a poster was mocked over the over-the-top way she reacted to the failure of an sl supplier to deliver a baby which had been ordered. Eventually she was forced to reveal that in real life she was infertile, and because of her inability to give her husband a child, she had pinned a lot of emotional baggage onto the sl baby. At least a few of the posters in that thread had the good grace to be ashamed.

I would hope that before we take a superior attitude to others, and mock their approach to second life, we would take a second to reflect that perhaps their circumstances are not quite the same as ours, and there might be reasons for their dependence on this world.

Anyway, I am sorry that things have been so bad for you, but do hope that things go more smoothly for you from now on.

Thank you for your well wishes, Selador!

I do not hide nor advertise my problems, I seek no sympathy, I want no pity. The few things in life that I *know* is that a little bit of ettiquette, a little bit of forethought and a little bit of humility goes a long way. I do my best to give equal treatment to everyone and respect for what they do, because it is important to them (even if not to me). For that alone I get adoration and respect from all ages... I was *astonished* to hear that children adored me because I treated them as equals when I was approached openly and with respect. But I only gave the same in return.

If I do not like something I try to have the grace to be quiet and keep my thoughts to myself. Speak kindly and do no harm, first.

If someone offends me, I do try not to give back as given to, save if they decide I am an *easy* target. Then they can find out what it means to deal with one of the spiritual Daughters of Old Hickory.

I have problems even following those simple ideas, of late, but try my best to stick to them.

I need no causes to fight for, save the struggle to keep myself sane and the society around me viable. Without the modern era and the medication and medical understandings that come with it, I would not be here. Period.

I felt hurt and was intemperate, responding to what I thought was being said and not what was being said, and I apologize for that. I do *not* apologize for being ticked off by the mind set I thought was being put forth.

-Diana

Nor should you Diana - far too many people within the community are eager to classify SL in the terms that best describe their own needs and experience. They fail completely to see that this classification is completely unnecessary. SL IS a game... but it's also a development platform, a graphical chatroom, a social life and a myriad of hundreds of other things as unique and varied as the people that occupy it. This is why SL is such a powerful and unique experience - it is whatever we as individuals want it to be.

Cause of edit: See Jack Linden's quote below for explanation