Another Negative Article about SL

"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.

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.

Does it seem like SL would be better if there were less land? Which might happen if the land market bottoms out. People will just abandon.

I think it would be much better if buyers had the option to pay lower tier and have their land disappear when they're not logged in.

I think it would be much better if buyers had the option to pay lower tier and have their land disappear when they're not logged in.

Tell me what you do to find people. Exactly. As a noob. What tool do you use. What text (exactly) do you type to find stuff?

Most importantly, ask people. Don't depend on machines, depend on people.

This is another negative review I came across today about SL: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/354457/whatever-happened-to-second-life[url]

Too narrow minded to be of any use

When one puts on blinders and only looks at a slim negative position, that is what one sees.

On the other hand, I've been in secondlife now for three and a half years and I'm very glad I found it.

You see, in my senior year in high school, just as I was a month shy of graduating, the car I was riding in was hit head on by a drunk driver while we were stopped at a stop sign. I was paralyzed for three days, my left arm for two months. Not only did this bonehead almost destroy all 13 years I worked so hard in school toward my graduation as I was almost unable to go back to school in time, but he also brought an end to 9 years of dancing, 6 years of gymnastics and three years of springboard diving. Laying in a bed having to be fed like a baby, dressed, bathed etc I had a very livid slow burn of hatred for the person who caused this. Fortunately I did regain the ability to move, though I was never again able to enjoy the activities that once filled my every waking hour in some way. I spent THIRTY YEARS locked in an emotional prison separated from my beloved dancing, diving and gymnastics. Lo and behold, in 2006 I read an article in Wired (a fair perspective and open minded article, I might add here) about this new virtual place Secondlife, and I came to check it out. Not only was I thrilled to join, but within a few days discovered that I could dance here. I didn't realize just how much not being able to dance had tormented me for those decades until one day I was filled with pure joy at how well certain animations fit with a certain song. At last, the smile was back in my heart and it was so real for me, I could almost feel the same sensations in my muscles as I used to when I danced.

The grid was relatively new at that time and I found that the variety in available dances in secondlife slightly lacking. Eventually I learned to create my own animations and used them to create a more fulfilling experience. I now sell a few of them and have a moderately successful business. I also film dance videos hosted on blip.tv, myspace and youtube, and even created a dance tutorial on the SL wiki for other people who also might enjoy dancing the way I do. When I want to be around people, it's easy to find them.

Furthermore, your very tunnel-visioned article says nothing of the many good works the secondlife residents have contributed to real life causes. Everything from relay for life, contributions after disasters, and even many inworld agencies helping people of all walks of life with disabilities and other issues. I've met many people who are disabled like I am, whose offline lives are greatly enhanced by their secondlife existance.

Maybe the next time you come traipsing into secondlife, wallowing through the sex alleys, you might try taking the blinders off and aiming to see more of secondlife and the variety of experiences in it. Go someplace like Inspire Space Park, I've never seen that place empty.

I dare you.

/me shrugs, walks away and goes back to her dancing.

By PhoenixaSol on 5 Jan 2010

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

For everyone ridiculing him, here's an exercise for you...

Pretend you are a newbie.

For everyone ridiculing him, here's an exercise for you...

Pretend you are a newbie. Go to one of the info hubs and pretend you've just been dumped there. Set your home there. Now, without cheating and going to a place you already know about, pretend you don't know where anything is.

Tell me what you do to find people. Exactly. As a noob. What tool do you use. What text (exactly) do you type to find stuff?

First assignment: find a conversation worth participating in.

I'm going to start at an info hub of my choosing and follow your instructions, and I'll let you know what I find.

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.

Sure. But what if all that's available is a ferret?

Except he's not a newbie, he's a journalist. He's got a professional standard he's supposed to live up to that requires research.

Except he's not a newbie, he's a journalist. He's got a professional standard he's supposed to live up to that requires research.

You don't get Tom Brokaw flying into Iraq and looking around, and then coming on the news and saying:

"Looks like they's just got a bunch Ae-Rahbs all up in this place. And they's mad 'bout someth'n. Huh. Go figure."

He'd get fired... hopefully... O.o

I took a shot there myself:

I find the dance clubs to be echoingly soul-dead places. A lot of marionettes are literally, jerking around, burning up CPU cycles for exactly nothing. Most of the people driving them say nothing more than "WOOOOOOOOOOT!" every so often - they could be watching a locally stored .flv file on a 10-second loop, with a 2kbps text chat stream running alongside it, for all the "originality", "creativity" or "expression" inherent in what they are doing.

When a sharp decline in property sales threatened to send Second Life into a mini-recession of its own at the end of 2008, Linden slashed the fees for services, such as in-world classified advertising and uploads, to stimulate the economy. If Alistair Darling needs a job next spring, he knows where to send his CV. And just imagine the eyebrows on his avatar...

usually, maybe influenced by the pond scum that preys on the unwary at infohubs and newb island, that opinion includes "SL is a big brothel".

Looking around the site, it appears pretty much nobody actually reads "PC Pro" except for a few SL folks drawn over by this thread.

I wonder if it was this empty three years ago?

For everyone ridiculing him, here's an exercise for you...

Pretend you are a newbie. Go to one of the info hubs and pretend you've just been dumped there. Set your home there. Now, without cheating and going to a place you already know about, pretend you don't know where anything is.

Tell me what you do to find people. Exactly. As a noob. What tool do you use. What text (exactly) do you type to find stuff?

First assignment: find a conversation worth participating in.

I'm going to start at an info hub of my choosing and follow your instructions, and I'll let you know what I find.

if the noob experience is so poor, and yet the other threads in the forum spend all their time bitching about bots, then how come all the opinion-formers here can't get their finger out and make a noob-guiding bot, so this kind of thing doesn't happen? Oh yes, I get it - because the object of the game here is to be able to point and yell "noob!" at ten minute intervals.