When the Phone Rings - Oh she's just an Escort

It's happened to you. Your happy chattering to a nicely treating bloke when all of a sudden he goes stiff. Seconds pass and "BRB. Real phone. I'll be back asap, dont go!

So there you are twitching away waiting for this bloke. And nothing happens. Ages ago, I had a client and he'd set my up at his place for sex and a chat and this heppened and I waited and waited.

Anyway, after a unhealthy time he comes back on and is upset coz I say how rude he has been to keep me waiting. And he says he was taking to a REAL person!!!!

What am I? Chopped liver and kidneys I ask????

What has happened to etiquette around here when a man goes tripping off frpm SL as if talking chatting or IMing anyone here isnt a REAL conversation or a visit.

What is you take on this? Should we establish a set of Miss Manners Commandments here and now for muppets and wombats who have no common sense or decency?

"It's happened to you." no it has not

RL > game


If I have rl people come over I close sl regardless of what im in middle of doing.

rl always comes before some computer cartoon pixels

Keep the meter running.

RL always comes first. Don't think my friends or family would understand why I must sit at the computer while they visit. Someone rings my bell,I excuse myself from any computer conversations,answer it and go from there.

Wait..you are an escort Jig?

I think I'd better stand up for my SL sister here . . .

No, Jig is not an escort. She's just a . . .

Well, she's very popular, and has a lot of friends. A LOT of friends.

Lol!

*REAL* SL escorts insist on being paid in full up front - and if the punter disappears during his time that's his problem.

Pep (The problem is, *you* are just an amateur, Jig.)

I am not entirely sure you are helping her.

Back on topic:

I will generally cut people in SL slack for interruptions. Especially my friends.

However, equating the people one meets in SL to "some computer cartoon pixels" and treating them as such is inexcusably rude. People who do this to me generally find themselves alone when they return to their computer.

RL comes first.
That said, it still is rather rude to keep your conversation partner on the other side of the internet waiting without telling him/her.

Totally agree with you on that one.

The OP makes a very good point.

It does not matter if SL is only a game. It is still a game being played with another, living, breathing individual. Yep, it's all pixels in between but everybody has an RL and to dismiss another person along with SL itself is flat-out pig-ignorance.

If there is someone at the door or on the telephone then it is only good grace to wind up the in-world meeting with due apologies or else make the RL interruption as brief as possible.

By the same token, it is really bad form to intiate any kind of in-world interaction while expecting something else in RL. There are plenty of games on the computer desktop to while away a few minutes without occupying yourself at the expense of someone else's time only to drop them like a hot potato when the doorbell eventually rings.

This is the kind of question that really separates the unthinking pricks and prats from solid, responsible individuals.

there are REAL people behind those pixels...If you were dealing with an NPC then no harm no foul...but we are all living breathing humans behind these avatars. Common courtesy is a must! Oh and for the record a BOT is an NPC...so don't try playing that card.

The problem with exercising your right to sexual freedom is that in order to be promiscuous you often have to portray yourself as an object of sexual desire to attract partners. Unfortunately to a lot of people an object is simply a thing to be used and discarded without consideration, then picked up again whenever it's convenient to do so.

It's a terrible attitude to have and personally when I encounter people that treat myself or others that way I simply take it as a sign of their own ignorance and find someone more deserving of my attention.

As for what can be done about it, it's an attitude thats been around a lot longer than SL (or the internet for that matter) so it's unlikely that you're going to be able to facilitate some sweeping tide of change. My advice is be more demanding of peoples respect and attention right from the start, or possibly more discerning over the people you choose to spend your time with. One thing I have noticed about people with that kind of attitude, the decent ones tend to become a lot more considerate the more they get to know you and recognise you as a fellow human being rather than a thing on their computer screen.

If it has happened to me......it's not something that sticks in my brain.

RL comes first....if a person I am communicating with in SL steps away for any reason.....I'm not worried about it. I realize I have absolutely NO idea what's going on in their world beyond the moniter, and therefor I pass no judgement on anyone's actions. I don't see being in front of the computer as ranking very high on my list of obligations....especially when it's something I only do for creative entertainment.

But...I also do not make it any kind of prioroty to develope relationships in SL. It's too tiring to have to maintain a bunch of social connections, when this is somehing I'm doing to di-stress and escape for a while. I don't get too involved.....and I don't have very high expectations of others in SL. NOT because I don't have high expectations of other human beings.....but because I do understand the very different dynamic of being in a virtual environment....and I understand that people have very different perceptions of how they should behave in SL. For myself....I always offer explanations if I need to step away.....and I try to be as considerate as possible in a given situation. (but I don't actually give a rats ass how someone else handles manners.....I don't take it all that seriously) Um...and I don't do pixel sex or romance...so none of that sort of hook-up ever enters my radar anyway

I never blow of anyone in SL just because RL comes a knocking. If it is a phone call, i won't answer it, let the machine get it, if i do answer it, i tell them i will get back to them. If it is the door and a neighbor i tell them i am in the middle of something if i can.

People in SL ARE NOT LESS than people in RL just because they are inside a "virtual world". I find it extremely rude to keep people waiting without so much as an update with a time as to when you can return to keyboard or what is keeping you.

It is extremely rude to blow off people in SL just because they are not in RL. No matter where the conversation is taking place - in my computer or in my living room, whomever it may be deserves common mutual respect and not being blown off because they "are not real".

To me, this is sad.

But hey, to each her own. I just find people that don't take relationships serious in SL to be not worth knowing. And i don't mean sexual relationships, i mean the relationship of "Hi how are you, lets be friends, lets hang out, etc". When i meet people like that i generally stop IMing them as my investment in SL is serious, and theirs is just a time waster where they don't care about the people they meet or anything else, just whatever it is they are doing that is entertaining them for the moment. That is fine, i just steer a wide berth around it. No need to form a bond with someone that does not value the friendship/relationship and time together chatting or hanging out.

RL-Kids,animals,parents,important phone calls, mailman,appliances flooding kitchen,police coming to take you away...all kinds of things can happen in RL that make you have to get up from your computer.


SL-yes the person you are talking to may be real,but that doesn't stop your life from happening around you. And my children always come first,even if they just wanted me to see their latest crayon masterpiece on the bedroom wall. And that would be true if a friend was sitting next to me in RL or in SL.

I place talking to people in SL in the category as talking to someone on the phone or face to face depending on the situation.

There will always be priorities that interrupt things however, that, cannot be stopped.

I run into the same (although not in that SL situation). RL people who do not use SL tend to think of SL people as "fake" and my commitments there as easily broken/interrupted. I guess they have decided all other avatars except for me are computer generated?

it's all situational for me. Sometimes I can ignore a call, or deal with it as I continue in SL. If something in RL absolutely needs my attention, I politely excuse myself from the keyboard, trying to never be away more than a couple of minutes. If things require a longer AFK, I will apologize to my SL friend and ask to continue at a later time.

I would have dropped him right there.

Jig, you did bill him for the time he kept you waiting didn't you?

I'm with Briana and Brenda on this one. I treat interruptions in SL as I treat the doorbell ringing when I'm on the phone. I'll normally either end the call, or excuse myself to interrupt a phone call when I have an unexpected visitor to see who it is at the door, but there's no way I would just put the phone down and leave the other party hanging on till they got fed up with waiting.

My flat is so arranged that I don't normally receive visitors in the room where the PC lives, so it's not difficult, if I need to invite my visitor in, to excuse myself to go and end the conversation in SL. I can see, though, that it would be difficult, were the computer in the living room, to keep the screen visible in some circumstances while I logged off, but if that were to happen, I guess I'd just have to explain to my partner -- were I to decide to answer the door -- that I'd got to log and, if I wasn't back in five minutes, I wouldn't be back for another half hour or so.