What is wrong with people?

Why is it that everyone in SL has an opinion about how everyone else in SL should live and just have to tell them? No don't play Tringo, don't gamble, don't dance, don't sit alone building or scripting, don't practice a religion, don't make your house too dark, don't make your house to light, don't buy land you aren't going to use, don't sell at these prices. What ever happened to live and let live? Geez.

when you're not like me, you don't validate my existence.

simple stoneself...we arent real! there is no existing! you are dreaming that all of this is real!

Kasandra, sometimes people are expressing how THEY feel about something and others assume they are telling them what to think or how to act. For example I have a real aversion to rap music and won't go to clubs that play it. I have been jumped all over by people telling me that rap is cool etc. Rap may be cool to them, and that is their right to like it, but I am not telling them stop listening to that crappy stuff.

The point is that when most people express their opinions they are saying how they feel and not telling others what to think. I do expect to be slammed in here for this post which is no big deal since I get slapped around in SL all the time!

I also think that some people have insecurities that they manifest by certain patterns of outward speech. There are some very primal things that kick in like survival instincts, and as ridiculous as that may sound in a high-tech environment, there is still plenty of greed and selfishness to go around. Far more than I'd care to see, certainly.

I do listen to a wide variety of opinions, and then to paraphrase Bruce Lee, I discard what is useless to me: for example, something said that I find ill-informed I will throw away, but well-articulated opinions that run counter to mine I am more likely to consider and incorporate into my personal pool of knowledge.

As long as someone isn't too pushy and preachy about what they believe in, I'm generally fine with expressing your joy. For me as a person, I tend to focus on the positive and want to uplift instead of push anything down. After all, the time one spends bashing X or Y is the same time they could use to talk about how much they love the clothes a friend just made or how they never played Tringo before and decided to give it a whirl and ended up liking it. And time is so very precious and life is so very short, so what does that make Second Life?

I'm just keeping my senses open for options I haven't considered before.

I wouldn't want to miss out on wonder!

As I like to say: "Better to be curious than be a dumbass."

I think Torley and Susie pretty much summed it up well. I just wanted to add that this is a discussion forum and people sometimes discuss things in different ways that some my take as abrasive.

And also there's the fact that we are typing and not face to face with people, this may make it "easier" to be harsher than one normally might be.

The beauty of this forum is most stuff is just discussion and not written in stone, more like written in playdoh and not the hardening kind.

If it were something like, "I don't like Tringo." or "I don't like to script". Then it wouldn't register on my "Stop telling me how to live" radar. It's when people say things like, "those people who sit in boxes all day scripting are just anti-social" or "those people that sit in clubs all day are just uncreative." or "those people that make their avatars do it all day are just lame and underage" or "those people that play Tringo all day are just stupid and unimaginative." I here stuff like this all day long in the forums and it drives me nuts. I mean I have tried most these things and while some I liked and some I didn't, I am not going to sit around knocking other people for their taste. There are so many better reasons to sit around knocking people.

I think that's a truly excellent point Susie and I couldn't agree more.

Let's take it one more step, shall we?

Why is everyone so fanatical about a simulated virtual reality, so as to think that everything in it is so important as to treat them like real-world world-shaking events?

Everything in this system is transitory on a major level. Places are built and torn down at a rate hundreds of times faster than real-life, and yet people still try to fight change in any way possible.

Yes. SL changed. It's different from when it started, and is different than last week, and is different than yesterday. Tomorrow, something will be build, someone will leave, and someone will just be joining for the first time. Someone will make an ugly build, a griefer will crash a sim, and everyone will kick their favorite whipping boy (or girl) for whatever personal reason they have.

Overall, I got bored with the drama over whatever someone could argue about within a week. It's so...

Eh... Why bother. The drama will continue, because people want drama. It's just another aspect of the community...


I just wish it was easier to find real issues and info and skip the threads that had devolved into drama...


Later,

Something you said, Foolish, reminded me of this tome:



More info available here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553277375/qid=1111881492/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-2900594-2530558?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I highly recommend reading it as a companion to Second Life.

Very relevant, fun, and true.

For the most part they are idiots. Me included.

<mini-hijack>
Has anyone but me read "The Cassini Division" by Ken MacLeod?

The novel has the Inner Planets of the solar system fighting a group of humans who have bootstrapped themselves into nano-supported VR and promptly moved to Jupiter.

They're called "The Fast Folk" because their society evolves at an incredibly accelerated rate, moving through entire epochs in the course of a single Earthly afternoon.

I've been here just long enough to see how things come and go, and I've thought more than once of MacLeod's premise as I watch the pace of society on The Grid.

Anyway, Foolish's post just brought that to mind.

BTW, MacLeod is a Socialist ideologue who expresses himself mostly through sci-fi. His novels are pretty good in their own right, I think...that is, actual stories rather than badly-disguised tracts...and "The Cassini Division" is probably the best of the bunch.

From what I've seen her post, I think Torley might enjoy it, at least
</mini-hijack>

-- jj

Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and 99% of them stink.

I take it yours is one that doesn't, huh?

Eh... Why bother. The drama will continue, because people want drama. It's just another aspect of the community...


I just wish it was easier to find real issues and info and skip the threads that had devolved into drama..

I am always looking for good drama like Shakespear's plays but just what in the heck does this have to do with this thread? Do we have a production company in Second Life?

Uhhh sorry but I ain't so good at this. The first two paragraphs are a quote from another poster

You said it not me.

The answer is that people can express their opinions in ways online that they would rarely, if ever do it in real life. The extremist nature of boards such as this (and being in-world) is there because most people feel comfortable hiding behind their keyboards and pontificating; such as what I am doing right now . In rl you may try to reason with someone, 95% of the people here would rather go for the jugular and be done with it.

Opinion-giving is not unique to SL. People have been hiding behind keyboards and spouting off for years. My best battles were on the Genie network back in the 80's.

What will be an issue is if this roving band of P.C. thugs has their way and starts having people banished for looking at them the wrong way. They know who they are and if left unchecked will destroy SL. But, that's just my opinion