The sound of silence ...

ahhh so your'e focusing on the last line of my first post..well let me say then "Im sorry" I didn't mean or intend for anyone to take that personally.

However that is indeed what I and alot of other people truly think when we read these self important descripts in peoples profiles about "how busy they are".

I don't buy it

It's an exscuse

And a weak one at that.

Again I was generalising attitudes personality and quality traits..not really calling anyone a a specific name.
I'm sure you took very good care Raymond. I don't know what buisness you were in and have never had a personal interaction with you that I know of. So i would be crazy to pass a personal judgement on you.

~Lana Tomba

Thanks for that.

I don't fault people who say they are busy in their profile, go into busy mode or are actually busy when I IM and thus not very chatty. Sometimes it's the truth. Oh well...

If the console chat, the scrolling up the screen chat, could be made to show only local public chat, no group IMs or personal IMs, that would increase my tendency to go somewhere and try to engage in public chat.

If I could have a chat history window open while the current local chat still displayed scrolling up the screen, so that I always see the current local chat, and can look back at the history to catch stuff I missed, that would be even better.

I don't like having to use the chat history window to read the current local chat, it has too much padding on the interface and it's too easy to scroll back to catch something and fail to scroll perfectly to the end, which makes you not see incoming chat.

With all the chat from Mental Mentors, Second Life Mentors, Second Life Mentors Q & A, Scripters of Second Life, Builders of Second Life, and the rest of the 25 groups mixed in with the local chat the scrolling up the screen display is nearly useless for me for reading local chat.

I totally agree..I've been there..but never always.."Too Busy" is not a permanent residence..never should be...Only a place im dragged too kicking and screaming on occasion.

I feel the same for anyone else here. And I suspect that they're not always busy But they've come to a "comfortable zone" where they don't want more friends..they don't feel they need more friends and any extra friends they do make are strictly chosen by them..for their own purposes.

Alot of times when i meet people like this with all that in their profiles..I don't even bother speaking...cause their profile has made me feel.."guess what??" ..youre last in a race to be my friend!!..you just started running and theres ten others ahead of you who have been racing for the last year ! Good luck!" It strikes me as a level of self importance that I'd rather not feed into.

Some of my biggest clients and oppurtunities...were available because i was "open" to new friendships. I've never once even considered placing all that mess into my profile telling people "Dont even try!!.....MORTAL!!!"

Im' just not like that. I go out of my way to be VERY approachable.

~Lana Tomba

I've always been one easily approached as well. You could say that I'm something of an "outtie". For instance....

Yesterday I landed in a store that caters to the darker characters. Now my av is by no means dark. In SL I'm just a normal human female, normal clothing, mostly jeans and a top, long pretty hair..just light...and I'm perusing the boots in this store, cause ok well, i have a SL boot fetish...

There is one other shopper in the store and she's more the character that actually belongs in this place. She says to me..."soooo pretty". On this side of the keyboard, this cracked me up and so I chat her back.

"Pretty would look good in these boots, they're amazing!!"

Then she goes on to tell me about this outfit that she's in love with and would I like to see it and me being social says sure! Next thing I know she's tp'd out and offering me a tp back to her place. So this being SL I go along with it, afterall I'm just going to see her in this outfit, right? OMG wrong! What a naive little sissy I must be! She just wanted to chain me to her castle wall and have me for dinner.

She was a sweet transvestite from Transylvaniaaaa....

LOL! It's scary out there! So now I'm just another wary little avi.

When I was a wee lass working my very first job as a deli counter girl at Safeway, I was always told that the customer in front of me is more important that a customer on the phone. In other words, it's more impolite to ignore the person on my screen than to tell the person in IM, "hey can I get back to you? I'm sort of busy right now." *shrug* Seems to work for me.

Well, I post here, but it took a really long time before I felt at all comfortable doing it. I am really shy, and if you bump into me in world - especially at a social gathering - I generally don't say much for that reason. I am really chatty one on one, or once I feel a little more comfortable, but my comfort on the forum has never really translated to face-to-face interactions in world.

For me, shopping is not a communal experience unless, like the Dazzle sale, we are all mutually frustrated. I don't mind giving opinions to someone that asks, but generally, I know what I like and what is good for me, and I don't need others to give their input. Some people are not like that. If you go to a club or an event, and no one is talking, that's different. But random chatter while out...usually that's a couple of people having conversation in open chat that is really meant for only them to hear.

If I'm remembering correctly, I have seen you at the Forum Cartel where I thought you fit in really well.

I prefer the term introverted. To me, it's a personality trait and not necessarily like a disease to overcome. We are outnumbered three to one I understand, but we are also more in our own heads and often very creative because of that.

I know what you mean though. I post a lot more here than I chat in world. I run out of steam after "Hello . . ." I hate the awkward silences. I think it depends too on having the optimum number of people around. One on one doesn't work so well with me. I went to a progressive rock concert recently. I think there are about three fans of that genre in all of SL. I was the only audience. I just couldn't stand it and so I left, rather rudely I'm afraid.

It seems to work better for me when several other people are around and already communicating. But it's very hard to find that optimum number. I wish there were more hangouts that aren't just about sex and dancing.

It's funny I should see this post today. This afternoon, my husband and I both put our plots of land up for sale. They were adjacent to each other in Trasimeno, I had a 4608 plot and his was a 5120, or something like that. We had both had our plots there for about a year, but we decided to buy a 1/4 sim together and both put our stores on there. It would be cheaper for us, and more prims!

Where we lived in Trasimeno was always pretty nice, I was never bothered, there were no ad farms, it was quiet. Still sometimes felt a little isolated, though, even though there hasn't been any land for sale there in several weeks.

Today, just the act of clearing our parcels of land, subdividing it, and taking all of our stuff, attracted the attention of some neighbors. We found ourselves meeting and chatting with some neighbors we had never spoken to before, and now have made some new friends.....lol. Funny, it took moving before we met our neighbors. It almost makes me regret putting the land up for sale because it really is a nice area and I'm afraid we won't get that somewhere else. Right now, we're looking on one of the new sims, and I hope we meet our neighbors this time, before we're ready to move.

This thread just made me think about how long it took all of use to talk to each other.

Awww, that is nice of you to say. It's possible, but I haven't been there too often.

I think I saw you in world at my shop the other day. I was too introverted to say hi.

I think I love you. LOL.

***

I was chatting with my baby in the air at 300, having made a little fake beach and skybox ensemble, when someone IMmed him and said "You might want to take your voice chat into IM as I can hear you 55m away". He said "hi, and good job you weren't here 20 minutes ago". *cough*

How depressing ... on my own land, that I pay for, should not be able to just do as I please within good reason ...

Re being busy ... see, maybe my original thoughts were not clear. I mean just wandering about through SL ... I remember when I started I'd fly about (yes, banlines for the banline bashing people - this has stopped flying about) and if i saw someone I'd look to see if they looked approachable and I'd go say hi ... they'd say hi back. I am naturally gregarious and find it easy to work an audience and get conversations flowing but this observation is not about me.

Let's say you go to a place - and there's TONS of people there. I did this last night at House of V - I went and stood and observed. In a relatively high traffic and populated place I saw THREE lines of text in fifteen minutes. Granted most people were in IM and it's a specialised place, but those three lines were filler. I didn't say a word as I felt totally uncomfortable there but this is a very specific case.

I am often AFK, for one reason or another, but still logged into SL. When I come back, I return an IM with a "sorry afk" - but I generally am afk at home so I haven't missed casual chat.

Maybe they are afraid that if they chat, they will be Ejected and Permanently Banned?..

I always talk to people wherever I go, but I have walked into places with 40 People in it, where nobody was saying booh to anyone, and the simple question .. " hey how come nobody is talking?" got me ejected and Banned... or was it that I was standing too close to another un-rezed cartoon character.. you tell me... (Clubs and Events included)

In any case, it appears that many people that have been on SL for a long time, become so hypnotized by acting out their own cartoon character fantasy that they fail to remember that SL is basically nothing more than a fancy Chat-room and stop communicating with the public. Many take the " Don't even look at me" ..or "Don't even Talk to me" .. and.. "get off my property" attitudes that are associated with the miseries of RL to a whole new level.

On the flip-side I find that New People are more entertaining and friendly, so maybe you could go to Helpless Island and make some new friends that actually still have a pulse.

As a matter of fact, I know someone who's home is a empty cardboard Box on Help Island, and this Cartoon person is the most entertaining character I have met on SL so far..that is, unless he's been ejected and Banned from there by now too.

language.

the primary reason I do not chat with random people, aside from being dead-ass tired most of the time, is that there's a 70% chance that they won't speak my language. Worse, there's a fair chance that they'll try to talk to me anyways. (giggle)

I disagree that there is little pressure to use voice. I was once again interrogated tonight by a friend about "why" I won't use it.

most everyone I know is using it regularly, leaving me generally on the outside of most conversation among my friends. But I spend most of my SL time alone, writing a script, banging on something... testing, trying to fix things, responding to the unending mountains of Ims..

I wish I had time to just get in a car and go... but I'm a builder, and I focus too much on redesigning the car.

SL is a very lonely place for me. Ironically I joined SL BECAUSE I was lonely.

In some places this is good thing they don't talk in open chat. No one wants to see someone telling their partner how much they love them. And this happens a lot. Some things are better said in private and this is one of them.

So a while back I went to the Latte Coffe Shop place which is touted to be a super nice place to hang out and chat. After a while I felt like asking if I was actually rezzed and people could see me. Although people were chatting, no one even said hello to the newcomers, never mind answer a question or two I posed.
So perhaps some people haven't had good experiences in open chat and won't just start one?

In The Place That Must Not Be Mentioned In RA, however, the opposite is true. I have yet to see anyone arrive there who was not welcomed quite enthusiastically into the place. So, again, it depends on WHERE you go to find chat. I don't look for it in a shoe store.

For the most part, I communicate in IM when I'm out and about with someone. Having had to witness many an assinine conversation, I wish to spare others from my own

B.

I totally agree with this. I had a really interesting conversation with someone when I was walking around the Princeton University Campus. I just thought it might be an interesting place to have a look around; it was completely deserted but I bumped into another lone wanderer and we had a great chat.

Another time, I went to visit an art gallery and met a little monkey who was admiring the art and we had a really lovely conversation about art, life and all things creative.
I think it's something that is affected by environment, much like real life.

Sometimes you meet people who are up for chatting to strangers and others like to stick to their own little cliques.

wander around caledon, people there will talk your ear off about nothing and anything... if you're lucky, not in that order =)

The last part of this is why my voice chat tends to be in IM when out and about no one needs to hear my injokes.

This thread's evolution is fascinating for me, not least in the way in which it is becoming fractal i.e. some people's observations about shops leading to people talking about shops not being places for conversations etc etc.

Caledon is lovely Void but in all the times I have been there I've never once seen a soul ... LOL

people accually use voice...spoockyyyyyyyyy!!!!

/me thinks this is a silly thread.

I talk to people all the time. On the forums (duh!) in chat, in IM, on voice...

And I've met very few people who won't talk to me. Except Ray, of course, and I forgive him. He probably had fifteen or twenty IMs going at the time.

SL is all about the talk. It's an interactive world. If it weren't for that, the graphics and animation quality isn't good enough to keep people coming back all by themselves.

Having said that, I'll admit that it seems to come and go in cycles. Some days, I'm so busy meeting people and talking to them that I don't have time to turn around. Other times, the world is empty, and the few people I meet are bots or don't speak english or don't care to converse with me.

So...just wait a bit. Your problem will go away.

I was delighted when I was out shopping the other day and someone just walked up to me and said "Hi, I've never seen a left-handed smoker before." I explained that my cigarettes are left-handed because my drinks are right-handed.

I complement her and her friend on their avatars, and we had a nice little chat. I got a couple of interesting shopping LMs. It was very pleasant.

I really enjoy that kind of thing when it happens in SL, and I too wish it would happen more. I do try to engage people in conversation whenever I am moved to do so. I am a compulsive profile-reader and I will often engage people in whose profiles I see something interesting.

On the flip side, I have had people TP in to my cafe, walk around touching all the givers and trying all the seats, and not even respond when I say "Hello ----, welcome to my little cafe!" or otherwise make friendly advances. At my own place! I admit to being mystified by that.

EDIT:

I misunderstood--I thought 'talk' as much meant, voice.

Anyway...to reiterate, and explain--I think people chat/talk/voice just as much as before. You have to remember, it takes two to tango...are you getting involved? Are you self absorbed?

And as far as voice, what I mentioned before, it has increased quite a bit in my circle of activity. A lot of people I pass use voice--events I host are mostly voice driven, and people that stop by my studio are about half and half.

I think people are just as friendly--some very, some not.

I didn't understand the OP's comment to be "people aren't using voice as much." I understood it be people aren't chatting publicly as much - whether in voice or in text chat. Maybe I misunderstood?

No, you're right--see my edit.