The dating game?

Dear Sir/Madam,

I've got a new computer and it keeps crashing, especially when in Second Life. I was gonna phone the computer hospital and then I realized that they may ask which program I was running.

I decided not to bother


I guess I fear that these days SL has an image of being a dating game for losers.

Are you ashamed of Second Life?

Yours lovingly,

2k


ps - bum sex?

Thanks 2k, I'll take a rain check on that one...

.. and no, i am not embarrassed that I spend time in SL, there is so much more than dating that makes this world interesting that I don't give it too much thought.. with that in mind, it has impacted my rl social life some and my friends think I am nuts. So I keep it quiet.

.d

i'm not ashamed..cause nobody knows!! hahahaha

I once mentioned SL at work (my old job).

A waitress said "OH! Thats that game with all those sex perverts!!"

I played dumb- "There's sex in it? COOL! I never really bothered to look for that. How did you know about that? Why didnt anyone tell me??"

It's amazing how fast she shut up.

lol you should have asked her out ... since she evidently knows all about kinky sex

I had a friend who got her computer fixed once..

And the computer techs logged in on her computer .. as her

LOL was pretty weird.

i did have this one time when my bank shut my card and any fund transactions off because of all the purchases i was making on shopping spree's in sl..they shut it down because they thought someone was going crazy with my credit card lol.
i think i said something like "thats where i play the virtual land investing".

why i felt the need to explain i don't.but i had to go into the bank to get my funds released again lol

Lol If anyone I talk to about SL regurgitates only what the mass media has told them about it - that is my clue not to talk to them any further on any subject that requires an independently thinking brain.

Lulz

Tell them it's research for your Ph.D. program/tech news reporting job/corporate clients/novel/etc.

I will! In about 6 months when she's 18.

Ok, I "would" but I already got a fiancee.... with intelligence.



This is also my new response.

I'm not ashamed because - when I was much younger my mother had gotten a Christmas present for my nieces. It was some kind of toy she didn't really understand, but it hooked into your TV. She asked me to come over and play Santa and hook it up for them on Christmas Eve. It was a TI-99 home "computer." Almost no one had even heard of such a thing, including me. (This was back during the time of the Commodore 64's or maybe even before. Shortly after the end of the last ice age anyway)

I hooked it up for them alright. Read the instructions, wrote a little basic program and got the letter "A" to appear on the screen wherever I wanted. I stayed up all night doing this and everyone made fun of me, but something about that "A" appearing where I programmed it sent a chill up my spine. I didn't know how exactly, but I knew that this was going to be a very big deal.

And I was right. Look at where we are now.

I get the same feeling from Second Life.

heh... is a strange thing when SL is your full-time job, and you have to explain it to anyone who asks what you do for a living...

at first, I was sort of embarrassed and would say things like :

"I do computer graphics for 3D web applications"

and find an excuse to run away before having to explain any further.

but then I realized- I've always been a bit odd and should be completely used to folks looking at me funny when I try to explain anything- so I loosened up...

and apparently, if you're relaxed about it and can explain why you find it interesting, most folks find SL fascinating... sure, there's some teasing- but more often than not, they get really excited about discussing it.

so, I say: let your freak flag fly, 2K- attitude is king...

-lt

ps.- we prefer to be called "hobos"...

Dear Technical Support

18 months ago, I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from Drinking Mates 4.2,
which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are
apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution
was to try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off.

To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is incompatible with several
other applications, such as Lads Night Out 3.1, Football 4.5, and
Playboy 6.9. Successive versions of Girlfriend proved no better.

A shareware program, Party Girl 2.1, which I tried, had many bugs and
left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for
several weeks.

Eventually, I tried to run Girlfriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the
same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each
other, they caused severe damage to my hardware.

I then upgraded to Fiancée 1.0, only to discover that this product
soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to
use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSex
Plus and Cleanhouse 2002.

Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be
very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were
automatically stored in Wife 1.0's memory and could not be deleted.
They then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them.

Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail Filter, and
can, without warning, Launch TurboStrop and Whinge. These latter
products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the
problem is.

Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly,
requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express
which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Wife 1.0 also spawns
unwelcome child processes that drain my resources. These conflict
with some of the new games I wanted
to try out, warning me that they are an illegal operation.

Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Audi TT hard drive, it
often crashes. Wife 1.0 also comes with a rather annoying pop-up
called Mother-In-Law, which can't be turned off.

Recently I've been tempted to install Mistress 2003, but there could
be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife
1.0 detects Mistress 2003, it tends to delete all of your Money files
before uninstalling itself.

Why should i be?

I do not talk to anyone in RL about my Second Life. I have brought a person or two from RL into SL and it is far more trouble and aggravation than it is worth.

The last person in RL that mentioned SL to me, I said in response "oh really, is that some place you go online?", and I see this person 3-4 times a week in RL. I do not need her knowing anything about my SL,or calling me at home to talk about SL or bringing me her SL social drama and most all, I do not want to be asked about how to make Linden dollars and the always quickly to follow "can i have some?". We can talk about our children, dogs & cats, and cooking, no problem, whenever she likes...but never Second Life.

This is me as well. SL is my business, not anyone else's business in RL. It isn't because I'm ashamed of SL. Rather, it's because I am private both ways -- that is, I am generally private about my RL with people I meet in SL, and I am equally private about my SL with people I know in RL. Keeping the two separate and distinct helps me protect both of them and works best for me. I do not want my RL friends to know what I am doing in SL -- that's why I am in SL, after all, to do things that, to some degree, I am not doing in my RL.

I don't go round telling everyone in SL that I've got the world's largest paintbrush on display in my underground picture gallery because they might think I'm a bit loopy but it's true.

I'd add I'm private with my RL with people in RL. There are many things about me friends and family don't know. Some call it aloofness, which may be accurate.

Welcome to technology in it's infancy.

PC's are on the way out. I have no idea what will replace them, I just know that in 15 years, nothing you know now will be the same.

Internal combustion engines will be the exception on cars, not the norm.
Sitting at a keyboard will be quaint and nostalgic.
But disco will still suck, don't worry abiut that

Dear 2k Suisei

We have received your letter voicing your concerns about our product, Second Life (tm) and want you to know that we take all complaints and concerns about our products, our services and the interaction between our clientele "very, very seriously" (c). As you may know, we are in the process of identifying a new CEO, and we are givving special consideration to fat men with big walrus moustaches who look like the Monopoly (r) guy. That way he can sit around in an expensive suit and stroke his moustache thoughtfully while saying things like "harumph" and "tsk, tsk, tsk". We feel this will address most of our issues by lending an appropriate air of seriousness, or, as we like to call it, seriousity (pat. pend.), to the situation.

Now that we have established how serious we are about your issue, we want to let you know the steps we have taken to address it. It does not appear that we can fully remove the shame from Second Life (xxx). It has seeped into the public water system and the smell of it is in the upholstery. Additionally, try as we might, we can't resist the urge to enjoy some of the more "adult" activities which evidently have injured your delicate sensibilities.

It is our ultimate goal to remove all vestiges of fun from Second Life (s) and turn it into a very, very serious place, where businesspeople gather to discuss such important topics as the stock market, globalization, outsourcing, and which luxury car is the most pretentious. Since we are hoping to attract the finest and most entrenched corporate leaders, string-pullers and politicians, removing sexual content is contrary to our business model.

As a consolation for our inability to address your problem, please accept this inflatable hobo and a blindfold. You will note that the hobo is anatomically correct. We suspect that you will be so ashamed of your relationship with the hobo that you will forget all about the shame Second Life causes you, but if not, please wear the blindfold whenever you log in. It makes Windlight look...well...dark. But it does a fine job of hiding inappropriate content.

Sincerely, and with much adulation and laudatory remarks,

Mangusfreebie Linden

So that makes us Babysitters?



The Hell you say. Disco will be immortalized right next to Cheeze Whiz as American Cultural Monoliths by future generations.

The grid is getting more commonly known.

If I get the response of: "oh yeah I tried that, I think I have an account somewhere" I tell them I'm a private estate land baron.

Nuff said.

If I get the response of "Ooooh what is that? isn't that for... weird internet people?" I tell them this:

"I am the Guvnah of a small country - not terribly unlike Babar the Elephant. People play dollies and dress-up and house and play with trains and aerocraft and have tea parties. Sometimes they are tiny rabbits, ferrets or foxes, often in flowery hats or waistcoats."

This usually gets a fun reaction. If it's a derogatory reaction, I tell them what my avatar's income is, and its current rate of increase. That pretty much guarantees that they are little rabbits in waistcoats too, within 72 hours or so.

When you tell them this, do you say "air-o-kraft" so they know you are spelling it aerocraft and not aircraft? I'm assuming you pronounce "guv-nah" so they don't think "governor" with the "r".

If I had never heard of SL and asked you and got this response, I wouldn't care what your income was, I'd be on the grid within hours.

I would too, and I'd be strolling around saying "guvnah" in the best Dick van Dyke accent I could muster.

Trout, I'm thinking of gathering up all those gems into one volume, "The Trout Letters." It could be the biggest thing to hit the Publishing world since Clifford Irving. It can set us both up for Life (tm) Whattdya Say? I'll have my agent call your agent.

It's a deal. We can couple it with my coffee table book - Crappy Builds in Second Life. Where I go around and snap photos of the worst garbage that I can find, blow them way up and print them on glossy pages that people can display in their RL homes. Maybe I could do a little commentary in the margins.

What's the over/under on how long it takes us to get sued?