The drama of "Leaving SL"

party time, woopie

Some people are just whiney little b***hes. They are that way in RL and they'll eventually be that way here too. A bright and shiny AV is all fine and good, but the reality of a personality is the reality of a personality. We all know extremely pretty people in real life who are vain, petty, and annoying. Some folks say that if they "looked like that" they wouldn't be like that. Sorry, but yes they would. Maybe even be worse.

On here everyone can be as beautiful as they want to be, looks-wise. There are, however, no scripts or objects available to beautify a personality.

I've seen a lot of people come and go on here, some because they are tired of what they see to be a neverending black hole of a money-pit, and some others because SL became boring to them. Even more said they hated the ban lines, security orbs, limitations, and to quote: "There are no public walkways anywhere! You are stumbling into privately owned property after privately owned property. You never know if you are going to be welcomed, banned, or ejected."

I became friends of a sort with a person who suddenly one day said that she was leaving SL. She said that she was disheartened because she could not "do" what she wanted to do with her 512 lot. She wasn't a premium user; Her property was owned by a group and the owner of that group allowed her to "live" on one of the group lots, gratis. What she wanted to have was a "beautiful and elegant" retreat for herself and her select friends. The house she wanted (and had in her inventory, because a former SL significant other gifted it to her) was 350 some odd prims - without furniture or landscaping. So she wanted to leave SL because she couldn't do what she wanted to do, free and easy.

I've met and heard of a lot of those types here, believe you me. A great many tramps too, tramp being a non-paid user who moves from paid user to paid user for their home and property.

As others have mentioned: drama. There is always drama, in RL and on SL, and on any site of any type, and inside the county drunk-tank on the weekends too. Some people are born to it and bring it with them when they come.

Life.

So far, I've met someone whose SL girlfriend left because she was married & felt guilty, someone who had a spouse in the military & made a dramatic exit when he returned from deployment, and someone who, upon meeting me, gave me all her remaining linden and transferable inventory, and told me she was leaving because SL was negatively affecting her real life.

I also met someone who I really got on well with, and about a week after meeting him, I did a people search to IM him and he was just gone. I'm was hoping to be able to blame it on changes to 'search', but I checked some groups that he and I both belonged to, and he's gone from the lists.

I wish there was some sort of "no longer a user' tag that could be activated when someone left, and would show in search. That way, there'd be no need for drama, but people wouldn't just be...gone.

The Greeks are to blame...they invented oratory and drama!
well actually drama is a multi-faceted word...
[Late Latin drāma, drāmat-, from Greek, from drān, to do, perform.]

/me blinks, whatever you say

When you say "hid her profile" what, specifically, do you mean? You can opt out of New Search, in which case the person's name will still come up, but it will say something like "This resident has chosen not to be in search." Even if you do that, your full profile still comes up in the old Search > People tab.

If the person doesn't come up in Search > People, that means the account has either been banned by LL, or was deleted at the user's request. I imagine that deleting your account would result in you disappearing from groups and friends lists as well.

Most of the people I personally have known who "left SL" did come back, often as their main avatar, but usually as an alt. Hell, I've even known some who supposedly "died in RL" and managed to return to SL. (This is another topic altogether.)

I got an IM yesterday morning from a friend saying that she had cleared out the residential lot and mall space she'd been renting from me because she was leaving SL. She was already gone by the time I logged in, and none of her other friends even knew she had gone. Sometimes you never know why.

I had a friend who died IRL. At least that is what I was told. But every now and then I am thinking of the possibility that she after all perhaps is alive.

She was in a complicated love affair. She was in love with a person that wanted to go a step further and wanted to meet her IRL. She wanted to keep this relationship purely SL.

One day I got a letter where she told she is going to leave SL because it was not compatible with her RL. So she left. Her partner was totally devastated. After some weeks (or was it days) she came back and they were together again. But after a short time she disappeared. She had been seriously ill. She came back and I lost contact with her, but she stayed with her SL partner.

After some time she decided she must leave SL but this time she "deconstructed" herself together with her SL partner, meaning that her partner was with her when she emptied her inventory and shut down her account. They continued to keep some contact via sms.

It didn't take that long before I was informed that she had died in RL. One of her RL friends in SL had told her SL partner that she was hospitalized and died shortly after that.

I was totally shocked.

But still I keep wondering if this is true. As a person she was so far away from the drama. She was an unobtrusive and thoughtful person. Her death affected me very much.

Oh goodness, I am so very sorry. Yes that does sound way to true.

Am I the only one who finds that notion scary? I kinda get used to the "being" that some people are, an the idea of someone "deconstructing" themselves sounds jes creepy-scary to me.

Mari

No, I would feel like you do too - kinda like comitting SLuicide

Deconstruction....Hmmmmm. Yes, it sounds scary, but sometimes it is neccessary when milder forms of self re-invention (like SL) are insufficient. When I hear of such an instance, I'm more scared for the person doing it than I am for myself or whatever relationship I have with them; desperate people have this tendency to put themselves at risk.
As for drama, there's more than enough of it around in my RL and on that great and terrible brainsucker known as TV to really have time for drama queenery in SL, so I try to avoid it wherever possible.
On leaving SL.........If I do, I will not say good-bye; that implies a permanency that I cannot guarantee, given our universe's rather warped sense of ha-ha. Rather, I'd say something like, ' Later, all. Expect me when you see me' and vanish.

Possibly my best friend on SL logged out on the 1st July last year without so much as a word.

I'm still waiting for her to return...

That's sad. I don't understand why people do that to others. It only takes a minute to say Im taking a break or leaving. Then ofcourse it could be something else and it makes you worry and wonder...

I have caught several friends on the verge of leaving without a word and luckily persuaded them to let me know in future if they have to leave. Of course I don't know that they will. The idea of not knowing what happened to someone you have emotionally invested in can be very stressful.

Well this is weird... now it's showing up. When I searched a few days ago it said something like, "This user has chosen to keep their profile hidden". It was something to that effect. Now the profile is back and says, "Adios it's been real."

Very good point. I should be happy that this person at least announced it instead of leaving me to wonder what happened.

How does one drop inventory onto another avatar? Can you pass no trans items?

open the profile and drag and drop the item from your inv into the little space at the bottom. You need to detach or un-wear it before you do this though.
You cant give no trans items. and if it is no copy you will lose it too.

You pull up their profile and drag the inventory to the place that says "drop inventory here", or if they are present, you can drag it to their avatar and drop it. You can't pass no transfer items.

Edit: dang ol' Claire. I thought I was going to actually answer a real, honest to goodness Resident Question for once.

Trout, look at Claire's post at the bottom left. If the light is green it means she's watching the threads like hawk and you will never answer in time...

/me sticks her tongue out

ner ner lol.

how in the hell do you think my post count is so ridiculous?

Im. Just. That. Good.

lol...not that im big headed or anything

What makes the abrupt disappearance scenario so harrowing is that people really do die in RL, and not always from a long illness that at least gives you a hint of what might have happened. Car accidents, heart attack, stroke -- they happen often enough that you know some residents must have "left" this way.

No one else knows my account password/login, and I'm not sure my family would even think to contact LL customer support to sell my land and close my account. By the time they had finished dealing with RL estate issues, my land would probably have been forfeited for lack of payment of tier anyway.

I've always been a bit twitchy about how many people know my RL identity, but the advantage is that they would learn of any circumstances that removed me from SL ('cause I'm not leaving of my own free will, no way, no how). They wouldn't be left wondering.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately- feeling kind of morbid I guess- but I would want several friends to know if anything happened to me. I am going to give a friend a manilla envelope with some email addresses, and phone numbers of people to get in touch with if anything happened to me-I feel a little bit better knowing that at least the people I care about would know if something happened and didn't think I just dropped off the face of the earth.

I have thought of this too. I have people in SL that know me in RL, but they don't know my passwords. I actually thought of giving my SL password to one of them who I trust with my whole heart. Not a very good thing though if you are talking about data security. But I would like things to be sorted out if anything would happen to me.

So long as it's intentional. I took a non-consensual break when I moved house, left on a high saying "see ya in 5 days" and was not able to get back online never mind into SL for three months. And when I came back ... what I left on a high was smoking ruins and in the hands of idiots (there, I said it).

***

The people who know me RL also know each other. I think between them they're more than capable and likely of letting people know if - come on let's face is WHEN - something happens to me. Key people who are close to me are CLOSE to me, they've got all my rl contact details including work, home and mobile, alternative email addresses, Skype, MSN ... the lot. These people are exceptionally rare, and I knew them well enough before SL except one friend I realised I knew when I met her in SL, and my partner.