Interpersonal caution...

it makes me giggle when people insist nothing in sl is real . . a poster above even going so far as to suggest the players behind the residents in sl are not real (when they exist inside SL). Oh really? is that true 100 percent of the time? what percentage? Nothing real at all there? lol . . and then this 3ring guy who was obviously burned by some chick and bitter about it. well you know i wont laugh . . thats just awful for you. i feel your pain. But because you had a bad experience with someone now everyone is loopy? insane? untrustworthy? sighs

my first impression when i scanned over the posts in this thread is that alot of people seem really paranoid. No you shouldnt be giving out your rl info to strangers and disclose at your own risk what you choose to. Safety first. and to be honest, it made me feel validated to read that people are being so careful.

ive felt a great deal of pressure to provide rl pictures here. but, im hesitant at first because i really dont want my rl to color my important relationships and experiences at their beginnings. i feel like it becomes too much an extension of real life. which is also why i hate my space. i want to explore ideas and relationships that may but do not necessary translate into my real life. This is the same reason im very selective about who i decide to voice with and also anything else that facilitates OOC relations.

But i do have special relationships that developed inside Second Life. and im very open about my rl self with those select people. i feel confident that im intelligent enough to decipher bullshit and weed out the crazies. i dont give out my phone number or my address but i might if i ever decided to meet someone from online. i dont anticipate it happening. But, i wont rule it out.

The internet is full of horror stories but then so is real life. and some people actually get married who meet in Second Life. But, im guessing none of this is a very persuasive argument to those of you who insist Second Life is full of dangerous insane people lol.

so, id like to pull out my trump card now. or my crazy card as im sure youll call it.

Not only is it possible to have an intimate personal relationship with someone inside Second Life that is "real" but some of us actually have specific talents that make physical and spiritual connections possible even inside this virtual environment. im talking about psychic abilities. and, to clarify, this isnt achieved through Second Life, but using Second Life as the vehicle. Real world connections between people thousands of miles apart that are established because of interactions inside of this platform.

Some people who read this post will understand what im talking about. The people who insist nothing is real in Second Life wont have the first clue what i mean. They wont understand the idea of telepathy or sexual tantra or readings or projection or any of it. They wont understand that any argument about what is real or not is ended where those talents begin.

Intolerance. Thats what a poster said in this thread. Yes this is about intolerance. and it always is about intolerance isnt it? "its not real for me so i wont accept its real for you either" Your experiences inside Second Life (and real life for that matter) are in direct relation to your ability to make connections. If nothing is real to you, if you have no investment in others here, if you exist consciously on a superficial level inside this world, then thats all you will experience.

and i dont have a problem with that. what i do have a problem with is people who insist nothing can be real or valuable to me in Second Life simply because its beyond their own comprehension. and some, because of their own fears or frustrations, become aggressive in order to drive their points home. the well known griefing groups inside of Second Life thrive on it. They mock everyone and everything in their efforts to convince themselves that there isnt something they are missing.

i think of it as a natural backlash when this happens. Backlash against what? There is a good question for a new thread. If you start one id be happy to elaborate.

LOLOLOL i'm a girl (but don't feel bad, i get that a lot). she was supposedly a friend. i don't want your sympathy. my point was that even after 9 years of communication, i didn't 'really' know this woman until i dealt with her in RL, and then within about 4 months the disappointing reality revealed itself. i guess i should have seen it coming, but i dared to trust and wanted to believe. my bad.

i'm not bitter. i'm thankful. i learned and that's always a good thing.

how funny that people automatically assume that every relationship is all about sex. honey, i don't do online love relationships. i'm perfectly content with my RL one, although sometimes i do have to wonder what planet men are from. *rolls eyes*

and i didn't say everyone is loopy. jsut 65%+ of you.

Swan...thats absolutely fascinating but I think your post might have just proved 3rings point.

well you know technically you didnt even meet her in rl. Just online. and you know, people are people. If you had met her in real life and not online, would things be different? Would you still be friends? i have a feeling your friendship with that girl failed for other reasons besides just the fact that you met online. im willing to bet its a bit more complicated then that.

its a calculated risk but basically i decided i didnt care and wrote it anyway because i think its absurd to even discuss the topic without mentioning it.

OMGOMGOMG! Poooooor Poor Sk8tr! ROFPIMP!!!


Oh yeah, back to topic....and then there's me.

I am in the E category and I know at least few others in SL who are there due to disability.
Most of us who are here are here to create, make friends but often are doing so on computers that are probably on very low end of the required computers.

I am just as valuable as resident as anyone else.
I can't afford to care what others think.
I create or try to create very beautiful things and while I have few marbles loose
I keep to myself and few friends, pretty harmless.

Yet I know there are people out there who don't have good intentions and often
are hurtful knowingly or accidentally to others just like real life.

I am just grateful for real friends I have here, they are real here, and real world too. I am just really selective and lucky.

Yet I must confess I have met people I have felt emotionally manipulated by and often have felt need to withdraw.

There are people I have run into that have lot serious "emo" drama going on, and I can relate but at certain point I just can't deal with it....I just want to create, focus on art and distracting myself from my own first life difficulties.

I have friend who says often these attention drama seekers often do so to manipulate others and don't have anything seriously wrong with them other then possibly few marbles loose.

Starts labeling himself with a marker...
"these 6 fingers are insane...these 5 aren't"
"Never did trust that elbow"
/spins around trying to catch his own butt to properly label himself...

I just let it all blow over my head. Truth or fiction, belief or disbelief. We're never going to know. Nobody's pulled a fast one on me yet or managed to manipulate me emotionally. When I sense trouble I just keep going and laugh. But that's just meee!

Sorry I got here after the discussion of class has already about wrapped up. One of the most striking things to me when I moved to England from California a lot of years ago was how important class was over there then. In the States we almost all think of ourselves as middle class and pretty much seem to recognize only 2 other classes: Those who are way way wealthier than we are an those who are way way more desperately poor than we are.
In the UK it hasn't always been just marketing experts who understood the many distinctive gradations in between.

When I moved from the UK to the US, one thing which I noticed was the intricate US class system, whereby slight differences in accent, background, employment and so on all contributed to your position in the hierarchy. Also the insistence that there was no class system.

*shrugs*

It is always far more obvious if one is a foreigner, in any society.

Swan is a tiny bit excentric, but she has a point.

2nd Life is as 'real' as 1st Life.
Just different boundry conditions.

I'm sorry I made it sound as if I thought USer's were less hierarchal than UKers. I agree that isn't true at all. I'll even admit we are more hypocritical about it. I was trying to say that the term "middle class" is used differently in each place.

Oh no, we are very hypocritical about it, when we are not being aspirational. And yes, certainly, the definition is a bit different - similar, but not identical.

Actually I think that the ABC groupings (I'm not sure of the official names) are increasingly regarded as crude anyway, and people are moving more towards more analysis groupings like the Mosaic system, but the old ones are still used quite a bit. Certainly judging by the online polls that I take, where I find myself basically unable to place myself anywhere.

did i say that? i didn't bring to my house, though.... no.

oh my mistake. i didnt realize you actually met face to face. That changes everything. and i would agree with you completely. You really do have to start all over when you take a friendship or any relationship into real life. its not that the person you know isnt real online, although admittedly sometimes thats true.

its just that rl and sl/internet have different rules. which is complicated and takes awhile to explain. but an example of it would be the fact that online you meet people who live in different time zones. That has implications that affect relationships, implications that would not normally exist in rl. There are many examples of this type of thing and collectively they matter enough to change the dynamics of a relationship once it moves from online to real life.

and just like in rl, you always take your chances. well, yes same can be said for relationships born online. its a trade off really. somethings are better online. somethings are better in rl. something you learn about a person better online. somethings better in rl. etc.

after your experiences, id expect you to be aware of all this. so i dont mean to disrespect you by suggesting you are not already aware. its just . . odd to me . . that youd allow one unpleasant experience color your whole view like that. after all, maybe you didnt know everything about your friends personality or life before you met in rl. but, thats the same situation when you first become friends with someone you meet in rl as opposed to online.

chances are you are more likely to meet someone your compatible with online then in rl if you really do take the time to learn about people and not just create a fantasy you expect to magically transfer into rl.

i was aware of all these things well before we met. it was 9 years until that, remember? my view was colored long before... i'm not sure why you assume i am so naive. but thank you for your intrepretation of my reality. been interesting.

I've read that 90% of people polled rated themselves as being of "above average intelligence" I know I do Lol.

... and i have the test resluts to prove it! LOL

Well me too, actually.

I always say "well, I don't believe in the concept of generalised intelligence in the first place, and IQ testing is a socially-prejudiced construct based on utterly arbitrary concepts whose relevance to the real world is only tangential and coincidental...

...and my IQ was tested as XYZ. Ahem. Just so you don't think I'm bitter or anything."

Not at all I think you have a good point. Although I happen to do well on the "I.Q." tests I've taken I know I'd fail on the ones that would be relevant to say the people who live deep in the Amazon jungle. Or in many other real life situations where I would be clueless.

Well that would depend on what exactly you learned


I assume as you're here that you mean "65+% of us"


I would go further and say that some of us choose to use the talents that everyone has. I have surprised and shocked many people in various virtual worlds who were convinced that it was impossible to "feel" someone online.

My SL partner is a gamer; he thought SL was just another game and was stunned to realise he had feelings for me simply from interacting with me online - yes, even non-sexual interacting

I believe we're all capable of sensing energy without physical contact but not everyone is prepared to allow themselves to do it. No special talents are required, except an open mind .... hmm, ok maybe that's a special talent!

Isobel

anything learned is productive and progress.

no. i meant 65%+ of you.

SL is not the first internet format that opened the doors to internet relationships. this is an old, old, and ongoing phenomenon. being open minded is not the issue. being disciplined and aware, is.

A long time ago - I'm thinking ten years, is that possible? I used to participate in a chat room where two people met and then met in rl and fell in love and got married. Then they both moved into my rl neighborhood. I then met the woman in rl and she confided in me that she was unhappy because her husband was still carrying on internet romances with other women. *sigh*