Another Negative Article about SL

This is another negative review I came across today about SL: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/354457/whatever-happened-to-second-life[url]I think the negative reaction that some people have towards SL results from the "uncanny valley hypothesis", which holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The "valley" in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot's lifelikeness.

My response to the article:

"Hi, I have been an active member of SL since 2006.

I have an active and busy RL life but I still find time for SL which I find to be an interesting and rewarding experience.

My spending has gone fro zero to over $1000 in 2009 alone.

You stated, " Second Life seems so increasingly obsessed with aping the real world." SL is really a lot like RL. You have to set your own goals, create your own motivation.

I use SL to explore my own creative ideas. You can do this with your avatar, your virtual clothes, and most importantly with your own land.

With my sim, I've created a memorial of the real life industrial tragedy in Bhopal, India, where toxic fumes killed thousands in 1985, and who have not been properly compensated up to today.

Whatever that moves you, you can create it and display it for the world to see through SL.

I have also been able to expose my photos and the paintings of a friend to a wider audience through SL, on my sim.

You can check out my sim at: http://world.secondlife.com/place/2a690d1d-2a14-1c63-926a-dfe82bc44e94

Just like RL, you have to know where to go to find people and a community that suits your own taste. Just like RL, it takes time and a few mistakes. I am a member of a few groups that offer good company, conversation and activities whenever I am online.

You will not find many people at random spots because most people do as you did. Teleport to different locations for only a few minutes and most people do their shopping on Xstreet - an online shopping webiste for SL customers, similar to Amazon.

Just like RL, SL can be either a rewarding or negative experience if you make it so, and of course, there is the element of luck. Being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people.

I hope that SL continues into the indefinite future because it has become a rewarding part of my life, more so than any other online activity."

The author actually has some very good observations.

We told LL that a virtual boardroom or a virtual classroom was nowhere near as good a draw as a virtual bordello, but they didn't listen.

Where he misses the mark is that there really IS a community of regulars who do things beyond virtual sex.

He did not have the time or the patience to seek out that community, or even to discover HOW to seek it out. He went wandering hither and yon on the grid and it appears that the only time he used Search was to find Zindra.

Any site that uses Vibrant pop-up advertising has no room at all to talk about sleaze.

Hmmm.. Be naughty or go to school? Hmmm.. Decisions, decisions..


Yes, well, that is usually the media (and congressional) way.

What he did is not a bad representation of what clueless newbies would do, and it does show up the lack of help that new players get. You are dropped into SL and left to find your own way. They have a great opportunity to link people to tutorials and help when they send out the confirmation email, or even as part of the client download, but for some reason they never thought that was necessary.

Oh and depending how widely this article gets circulated, expect a rash of newbies asking "where is Zindra?" LOL

They need more places like Caledon Oxbridge.

Am I losing my memory? Can somebody refresh it on the highlighted bits?

As I remember it, LL caused the mini-recession of it's own by declaring that their most popular product was going to have a montly free increase of about 65%.

Nope. It didn't happen.

Thanks for the info/link.

Some of the funnier excerpts:



Did he try, oh maybe, I don't know...virtual London?



Hehe, can't argue that one.



Aw, he got suckered into a PAID hunt. Poor noob.



Hope she didn't mind having that put on the 'net.



<3 wild squirrels. Hope they bit him.



Use your imagination?



noob!

It is good creative criticism. Here are my comments to that article:

Second Life Fails at Social Networking

Second Life knows their event calendar does not work - that is one of the main reasons there are no people anywhere- there is no way to let them know what is going on. I had to use the calendar on Facebook to get an audience for events in Second Life. 5 years and SL can't even make a calendar work right.

The New User Experience is a fail also.

And making contact with one's friendlist is an antiquated process.

Once they hire some people that know something about Social Networking in the year 2010 they will be able to permeate the internet and become relevant once again.

Aside from all the things SL does fail at, the lag, the poor introduction for noobs, etc- this so called journalist is Epic Fail. He set out to find what he found- emptiness. He should find more in himself first before he looks outside.

I have yet to wander about anywhere and be accosted for rough sex - heck, in four years I have even missed the allegedly ubiquitous noob, 'you wanna?' To say there is nothing to do- /me shakes head.. none so blind etc...


Obviously the same sort that would consider anyone not to his standards third-rate losers in their mother's basement.

No, Lindal, academia and corporations are much better tennants than Joe Blow Land Baron and his Field of Dreams Rental Estates whether the estates are on Zindra or a squeaky clean PG island. The reason is that SL is lawless and most rentals (even whole islands) are week to week or month to month. Car repairs, medical bills, a layoff and goodbye rental, and goodbye tennant for the landlord, and if enough tennants have trouble, goodbye island for Mr. Land Baron.

Now Podunk U. has a 12 month fiscal year and they budget accordingly unless they are in Texas where the State Legislature meets EVERY OTHER YEAR or some places in Michigan which also practice somewhat longer range budgeting. Podunk pays for its islands yearly, and budgets for them so it is much harder for it to uncommit. In addition, professors at Podunk each bring twenty-five to a hundred newbies with them, some of whom will become paying members in their own right. Podunk is not only a customer with a stable budget, it brings in an endless stream of referrals.

I would guess corporate customers are similar.

Blah, blah ... Reuters and their bloody in-world correspondent ... blah, blah ... Anshe Chung made a fortune ... blah, blah ... oh noes!? Facebook and Twitter ... blah, blah ... SL's so empty these days ... blah, blah ... joke about not being able to speak French, hur, hur, so British ... blah blah ... hope I'm getting paid by the word ... blah, blah ... controversy about corporates and copulation ... blah, blah ... pretend prostitutes on Zindra, hur, hur, so British ... blah, blah ... wot larks, Pip, eh? ... blah, blah ... land is where the dosh is made you know ... blah, blah ... people buying virtual trinkets, snicker ... blah, blah ... nobody around after three bloody years and THE PUB'S GONE!? ... blah, blah ... And yet, I still can’t help wondering what the point of all this is? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah-de-f@cking blah, blah ...

No nous. No insight. No imagination. No news.

Totally incorrect. Your argument is not supported by the numbers, Iyoba...even though LL would like to think it was true.

EDIT: Iyoba, I apologize for the above knee-jerk response. On further thought, your argument has merit. However, I'd point out that it doesn't matter where the tier comes from, as long as it DOES come in. While steady customers with annual budgets are certainly nice to have, if you have a thousand Joe Blows and only ten Podunk U.'s, guess where you should be placing your emphasis? Sex sells. Always has.

Now, I admit, I don't have the numbers on this. I'm not sure anyone does, except maybe LL. They only give us the aggregated economic stats, not broken out by industry group. But my strong impression is that there are a LOT more businesses devoted to sex, and the peripheral support industries like fashion and dance animation, than there are educational and corporate sims.

As with most articles of this type, there are some good points and some bad.

I think a lot of it comes from the European timezone. I know that I often complain about having to go to sex-type places and clubs because everywhere else is empty, and others say I'm wrong; but that's very probably because they're online at US times, and I'm online at UK times. Of course, there's always a "bell curve" of popular activities on the grid (with sex and dancing in the high section), but when concurrency drops, the low ends of the bell curve drop to zero and essentially cease to exist - to all intents and purposes the activity is gone from the grid. That's combined by another issue he raises - that the introduction of voice has pushed the language barrier up, splitting the Euro community even more.

He is right about the "aimlessness" of the Showcase builds, though.

I work in a college. I tried to get them interested in making a SL campus. Offering classes. Building in SL requires photography , 3d graphics, animation, art, making textures, many disciplines that would be a benefit to students. The problem I see is the negative use of SL, (most outsiders see SL as just porn).


But most money made on the internet is sex related. That does not stop colleges from using it.

I feel that SL needs to address this and the adult sims it the answer if they can enforce it. You still can search PG and get sex sites so it is not working yet.

The internet made the mistake of not creating domains for adult use and banning all others adult entertainment. So now they we can not effectively control porn with filters. Schools have a real problem with that.

I think maybe once it is "safe" SL might be an 3d alternative or supplement to the internet. I prefer 3d than 2d of the browser.

FYI I have been in SL since 2006 and still spend about 2 hours a night on it. Most people expect a "game" so they do not last long. SL is what you make it. There is plenty to do without sex sites. RP is my favorite.

Oh yes the hardware problem, SL does need to address that, most people I know cannot use SL because of the restrictive video cards it needs.

It's not really just that. The problem is, why would a college pay a lot of money for having a campus hosting on a multiuser hosting service, when most likely they'll have to lock all other users out of their campus to keep out the adult content and griefers?



There is very little way to "make" anything if there just aren't any other people around. If he was online at noon UK time - that's about 4am US time - that's fairly likely.

LMAO
More likely these companies couldn't handle that this Dana's place, if it even exists, would be 100 times more popular than their big, corporate sponsored, white shirt and pen protector festival.

After all, a lot of people already visit those places...it's called going to work. I'll take Dana's place.

I recommend both.

"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to a library."

Frank Zappa

Meh. He used the Showcase instead of search and followed up by looking for sex... OF COURSE he found what he found. (=_=)

Next time: NCI or The Shelter. (^_^)y

Meh,he made some good points. Unless you can create,have tons of hot monkey sex or own a business,there really isn't much to do in SL. You can only explore and shop so much. I can't tell you how many times I've been somewhere,where a crowd of people are but yet no one is talking. It gets boring quick.I log into SL lately and sit there and wonder why I even bothered logging in. Which of course is probably my own fault,because I don't care to run a business again,work in world or create anything. I do like to take pictures,but it is so unstable all the time even that is hard to do. Just my 2 lindens.

You do realize that educational institutions only pay half the tier we do and LL has stated that they're prepared to keep them on SL at below cost if that's what it takes?

---

I thought the article might have been a bit too overdone with the sex hunting sensationalism but otherwise probably isn't too far off with the impression that the 90% of all people who ever tried SL and don't end up sticking around have of it.

"finding people was never this hard back in 2006" in particular rang very, very true. SL is becoming more and more of a deserted wasteland with every passing month since the increase in landmass is disproportionate to the increase in concurrency.

Add in a useless search, gamed traffic and it is a whole lot more difficult to find other or new people to socialize with which is one of the primary corner stones of SL aside from creative expression.

You know, it's often said by people (like this guy) who don't understand the concept, that people immerse themselves in Second Life, because they can't function in First Life.

This guy is a clear example that if you can't get around and explore Second Life, and end up with some kind of amazing sense of wonderment and impulse for creativity, no matter what your interests are.....and if you can't meet two dozen very interesting people from all over the world, within 48 hours, and be Wowed by that......

.....you ain't making it in First Life, either.....you're probably missing 95% of First Life, as well.

(dude doesn't even like cute little squirrels. Loser.)