Voice - positives/negatives

I agree - but isn it strange that I live alone and hate it coz its so damn inconvenient and you have tons of people walloping around and YOU also find it inconvenient but fo rdiffrent reasons. I never thought of what it would be liek if you had kids and husbands or bfs around. Or dogs. (I dont have a dog).

Oh yes, what Ceera says. I use to sneak into SL for shopping, hunting, picking up a freebie while the kids are watching cartoons on the TV. I don't want them hanging over my laptop, picking on the tabs and demanding they "want to play too". It doesn't mean I do some naughty, I just want to cam around after a hidden cube with gifts in. Voice? No way. I don't even have sound on. I've heard some horror stories about ppl yelling to their children with the mic on. A really awful thought.

Same when they are in bed, they want me to sit outside their room with the door half open until they sleep. It is just "normal" for me to not use voice. I was just curious about how voice worked, tried it, and found out it was best with text.

Where is the need for mobile's or landlines when I can just log-in and talk? I find so many people use cell's now and half the time they fade in or out during conversations or batteries go dead...it gets very irritating. A lot of people no longer used landlines. And it doesn't cost a cent using SL voice. I feel WAY more insecure using Facebook on the internet....than voice in sL.

And I also think it is easier to communicate. You miss so much in not being able to hear voice inflections...it causes a great deal of miscommunications.

Anyway...I think voice is the best thing SL has come out with...but I also understand it is not for everyone

Oh I'll explain.
At home, I have one mobile and one blackberry at my side. Different numbers. Also a landline. And a fax. I like business calls on a landline. I only use sl for sl things. None of my friends in real - to my knowledge - use sl. What I do for a living requires almost constant chatter and use of phones. I like the older style phones coz I can tuck them under my chin and text-message someone else at the same time. I do need a new fax. I dont use skype etc. My phone bills are high but necessary. I am a child of the techno age and mass communication.
I realize as I type this I only go on forums when I am at home and working my emails and use sl at same time.

How to tell if the girl you are talking to is a G.I.R.L.
- If she asks if you really are a girl.
- Tell her you are a guy. If she freaks, SHE is a guy.

If they look like a girl and act like a gir then they are a girl as far as I am concerned. I do have a friend that has told me before she is a guy and I have met her guy avatar but she is still a girl to me. We shop, we talk about boys we go dancing and we sit around and chat about nothing at all. I don't see what the big deal is. Maybe guys are just homophobic to an extreme or something. Maybe their egos get hurt because some guy is prettier than they are. 1960 is long past; just grow up and join the oh-oh's.

I can't find the cartoon now, but there was this great picture I saw once: "Homophobia: fear of guys who have better hair than you do".

I never want a boyfriend that has to share a mirror with me to check his "highlights".

I am the girl, he is the guy - all he should be doing is combing the hair and moving out of my way. Let me deal with highlights and being pretty.

I'm shocked when someone says they use it regularly. I tried it recently for almost a week and rarely saw anyone who was in talk mode and I hang out with a pretty diverse crowd.

I have a small group of friends who use voice everyday as we are lazy typists. We used to use Skype in world before SL added voice. And yeah I am one of those annoying people who frequently break out in song...haha

Do you sound like Pepe le Pew?

Oh that's ok, I manage to get back at him well enough to make it worth it.

Unfortunately no, but I do smell like him.

Would that count as immersion or augmentation?

I rarely use voice, for only one reason = The Giggler.

Ladies, I love you all to bits, but I just can't tolerate The Giggler, that one woman who giggles insanely at every statement - be it a weather report or mention of a football score. Total turn-off.

I dont voice all the time but i do enjoy chatting. I like hearing the different accents and I dont feel it spoils the fantasy as I dont talk in RP sims

Yes to this!

I find it helpful for teaching/helping new people.

I hate hearing my own voice.

I LOVE hearing the different accents & languages.

Just think.... 20-40 years ago, would you have believed someone if they told you you'd be talking to total strangers from around the world, much less in a 3D world?

True Names, Vernor Vinge, published 1981, most recently collected eponymously in "True Names and Other Dangers"

I hate using voice in SL like I hated using Ventrillo/Teamspeak in WOW like I hate phonecalls.

Garageband can do that.

Voice pros - I can communicate with people on a level that most humans have been developing since birth.

Voice cons - Can't really think of any.

Hey... nobody can say you are inconsistent.

you just need to learn how to take The Giggler and turn her into Jenna Jameson.

That is where we differ as I never come in SL from work...I only log in after I get home ...finish cooking dinner and have all my RL stuff caught up at home. The only exception to this was during RFL season...which was a priority I gave to myself. I work in a busy Data Center all day...emails, teleconferencing, constant chatting and phones. Communication is key in my job...so when I get home I rarely even pick up my landline when it rings..unless it is one of my daughters or good friends. I leave my personal cell in the car and just have my work cell if it is work related. But since I automatically get paged if something goes wrong with any of our systems at work...I mainly just use the work cell for traveling.

If I get paged...I logoff SL on my personal computer and login to work on my work PC. I need to have my complete attention on work if this happens. So when I am in SL my attention is there... and voice works very well for me

Positives

1. An additional means of communication for people to use. It's particularly useful for people that are awful at typing either in speed, spelling or both but it's also a convenience for people who are just too tired or too lazy to type as well.

2. Voice communication can sometimes better convey emotive aspects of what a person is saying which can be a good thing.

Negatives

1. Voice communication can sometimes better convey emotive aspects of what a person is saying which can be a bad thing.

2. Voice communication cannot be tracked. If you fall out of voice communication in a discussion you're pretty much SOL unless someone else is going to retell everything that you missed to you and there is no guarantee that what that someone says will be accurate which leads to...

3. Voice communication enables an additional form of griefing which cannot be tracked and therefore cannot be reported in a verifiable manner.

4. Voice can be divisive and exclusionary. I've been fortunate enough to have access to voice areas where this is not the case but I have witnessed how it often is the case. There is inevitably always an individual or a group that can be encountered aggressively harassing people who don't use voice, often insinuating there is something untrustworthy about someone who will not voice with them which leads to...

5. Voice seems to create an illogical belief among some people that the use of voice somehow implies more trustworthiness or good character to someone who uses voice. The truth of the matter is that it's just as likely to lull a person into being more susceptible to betrayal if they hold such false belief. Voice doesn't objectively convey anything about the person behind the voice, not even age or gender.

I attempted to get voice working once but very unsuccessfully. Partly an issue of having a crap internet connection, and mostly I think being too technologically dumb to do it right.

Most of the time I can't hear what people are saying and I have to keep asking them to type what they just said, which defeats the object of it all to me.

Plus, I dislike the way it breaks the whole immersion of SL. It grates on me when people's voices dont match their avatars, and that most definitely includes me. I don't necessarily avoid it for secrecy - I'm very open about my gender situation, so most people I talk to know anyway. I just get uncomfortable about it.

I ended up giving my mic away.