Are people holding SL back?

Is it just me, or does it seem like some creators are holding SL back by making very poor-mediocre content?

Of course, I'm not saying it's intentional, and I know I can't name names. I often see people wearing or using things that look like they were made by a little kid the day Second Life launched, but were made years later, even today, people are still making garbage...

Second life has a lot of potential, and I'm not sure if people know they're able to make something great as opposed to the mediocre stuff they see everyday and imitate.

For every one thing I see that's amazing here, I see many hundreds more that are sub-par at best. Bad textures, bad builds, bad scripts. Many vendors haven't even figured out how to properly flex things yet, and people are still making cardboard looking sims.

People curious about Second Life that haven't already made up their minds about it due to many web sites saying it's just a game for sexual deviants likely see the horrid content and pass on it. Even those awful looking ancient avatars on the banner on top of this screen are better than many I see today.

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel this way?

Well- it seems you have been here a long time- what do you create and or build? Give us a SLURL we can refer to and perhaps it will serve as inspiration.

Perhaps my standards are set way too low- but I have walked many beautiful places in SL - places that have actually brought a tear to my eyes to think wow- someone dreamt that and made it happen. I don't know where you have been walking for three years- but the grand far outweighs the mediocre.

You have to make some rubbish which no one will use before you can make anything worth buying or using. That is the whole point of SL. If it was easy to make high quality sculpty furniture or high quality anything, EVERYONE would be doing it...

If someone has a bad build on their land, rather than complaining about it, why not give them some constructive feedback. If no one says anything then how are they supposed to know what other people think?

Yep, without all those pesky people, SL could reach the stratosphere!

















(Oh, wait, user created content...riiiight.)

If you take away the ability of people to develop skills then we'll lose more people than we do now.

it's just Sturgeon's Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

We need more bots...

I have just learned how to make sculpted things..ok..so I'm making vases right now..LOL But soon..I hope to make more...for some of us it takes a bit longer to learn everything..our online time is limited so we can't be at it 24/7.

SL is an amazing place..check out Burning Life if you think creativity levels are low! Oh I am amazed daily!

I do agree!

It takes people some time to get to the level of building where they can run a really good store and sell quality products. I love watching people grow as they experience building stuff in 3D. We will always have rubbishy builds...and also good builds... but the journey to building good stuff is to build a lot of not so good stuff, some really very bad stuff.

Matter of opinion. You think it is rubbish, someone else might love it.

Um, isn't that the POINT of a free enterprise society? And hey, just like RL....as long as the consumers will buy it....crap will sell. And I agree....there's a huge learning curve in SL and I've been here well over a year....no way am I adept at building. I am in awe of what I see in SL.....and when I see stuff that's not so impressive...I figure, hey, someone enjoys it and someone is learning and experimenting. Good for them!! I think the fact that SL promotes that kind of open creativity does just the opposite.....rather then holding it back....it surges forward.

Look at it this way.....what if....all crap products were banned from being produced IRL.....what if we HAD to only create and purchase the absolute top end? Hmmmmm....first of all....only a small % of society can afford the absolute top end....or even the mid-grade, for that matter. A good portion of the population would be out of jobs.....we'd be catapulted into an aristocratic society and next thing ya know we're squatting for land and selling our children into slave labor so Mr. and Mrs. filthy rich and snobby can get their windows washed and their Mercedes waxed.

Um, ok....a bit extreme. LOL But, my point being....crap makes the world go round man.

I understand one has to learn, and will likely suck before they're good, but some people don't seem to give a crap about getting any better, have been making the same garbage for years...

And yes, it's the consumers fault, but it still gets me. Like when someone pays 1500l for something when there is a much, much better FREEBIE version....AAAAAAAHHHH! I try to help and explain but am often given a rude response or they just don't get it.

And, I have been lookin around burning life, just now, and a few things are quite good, some very much not so... But still, what I've seen so far that was good made me smile.

And yes, I'm far from the best builder in SL, and no, I don't expect everyone to be super great right away and make beautiful sculpts and such...

Perhaps the people who buy these horrible creations you speak of, actually like them. Not everyone likes the same thing and we all have different views of what we think are good and bad.
Do you seriously have that much time on your hands to bother with what other people are are wearing or purchasing or creating? C'mon now, you know what you like, isn't that all that matters?

Sometimes there is a sort of method in the madness, a genius in the insanity... a crazy, funky order in the midst of chaos.

It just takes the right artist to see it. Maybe one just needs a Kerouac, or a Pollock to realise the dream and make it accessible!

The grid is defining its own culture. Someday lossy compression, the z-flicker of textures and that quirky lagtastic dance will define our time just as surely as grainy black and white movies defined another.

Live it, drink deep of it! It's still real. Not yet a parody of itself. Not yet used as a website theme, or a photoshop filter ("SecondLife SnapShot"?), or associated with a stylised font type.

For in another decade it will go horribly out of favour. Then it will be campy, then rediscovered, then stylishly retro.

The TV generation never expected the metaverse, I'm sure. Will we expect what is coming in 50 years?

Perhaps those not-quite-ideal creations will someday exude the real truth about themselves: unwitting innocence. From a time when the metaverse wasn't quite yet the cutting edge, ultracompetitive, most globalised arena of human endeavour ever known.

Which is 90% of everything is crap. Old stuff doesn't really disappear either. I blame Businesses in a Box.

/me applaudes.
Very well said.
No burn, no flame, just a simple look at SLife.

Blurry textures-bad

Misaligned prims-bad

Scripts that are laggy or do not function properly-bad

IF there is someone who does likes these things, then yes, I am wrong.

I doubt most of the people wearing and or using them would still have chosen them had they seen what else is out there.

It depends on what you mean. I think human nature could be considered to hold things back - because everyone wants their own "dream", and won't yield to anyone else, in fact nobody gets theirs at all; what we get is a kind of group consensus - which tends to come down to chatting, dancing, howling, and having sex.

Whether or not this could be deemed as "holding SL back", when, arguably - because humans are always humans - it's all it could ever have become, I'm not sure. But it does have an impact on the "mediocre content" issue that you mention, because unless you just want to make money, there's no point spending more time than you'll earn recognition for - and if you do just want to make money, there's no point doing more work than the minimum needed to sell.

(I almost jokingly made a script called "Sim Avatar" to simulate the experience of having a really high quality avatar - at random times, it randomly picked a name from around you, and sent an "IM" from them saying "hey, you look great", "where did you get that?" or "want 2 cyber". You can see why people are reluctant to spend lots of $ on one )

No, I don't believe it. Maybe very few people are building truly great content, but that's all it takes to move things forward. Kind of like real life.

Maybe rubbish helps you appreciate something really good when you do find it. I enjoy finding really well done and clever content, and there's a lot of it out there.

I do agree about fairly simple things like misaligned prims or malfunctioning scripts. That's just sloppy inattention to detail. Setting the notecards in your notecard giver to no copy/no transfer... Not that I would know anyone who ever did this... (/me looks innocent).

Well Yumi that's a real life problem too... Hey let's mass produce garbage, people will buy it.

Anyway I guess I got the answer I should have expected, the same one I always get.


People suck

at the same time are people in RL holding RL back ??cause i see the same crap going on there..
some people are just better than others and some are learning.to them it may not be crap but something they may be proud they just learned to make

That's what you think.

Of course TOS prevents me from revealing anything that was said. But you can expect much more and even crappier content in SL in the future. And it will be very successful because, well... those fellows seemed to know something about Search.

Qie: I'm not sure what you're getting at, but it sounds cool? Haha I'm not sure?

Ceka: yes, people in the real world have been holding us back since..... maybe since we were here.

Someone once said something along the lines of, "What is the greatest human flaw? Fear, or laziness?" Add to that, the worst thing we're capable of and all suffer from on some level, greed, and yes, of course, we're holding ourselves back, some more than others.

What a smug, unhelpful, and depressing post. Thanks for reminding me why I spend less and less time in the forums, and more time in-world.

--Avion

Oh, should I dare?

Oh god it's temtping.

/me grits his teeth and turns away.

Bye, yall.
Back to the salt mine for me.

Please, watch your hands as you feed the trolls.