What Methods Do You Use to Decide What to Do in Second Life?

When you log into Second Life, and you are undecided on what you want to do in Second Life, what do you do to help you make a decision?

I am asking the question for two reasons. One is that, by understanding how residents make their decisions, it can help me figure out the best methods to increase attendance at a Second Life club with which I am now currently associated.

The second is that, sometimes, I personally just want to do something in Second Life, and I am sometimes out of ideas as to how to find fun things.

Personally, I am mostly a creature of habit. There are a few clubs that I rotate through, looking for old friends, or to make interesting new ones, or to find some sort of fun activity. When looking for something new, I will use the Search -> Events tab, and search for events currently in progress (usually with the first with the Nightlife Filter, then with the Arts filter).

I sometimes ask my online friends what they are doing and what they recommend, but so often, if available, they are looking for things to do to and ask me what I suggest. When I do get the occasional recommendation from a friend, I almost always check it out. I occasionally pay attention to Group Notices concerning Events; Group Chat IM to advertise Events tends to annoy me.

When I was new, I made a lot of use of Search -> Places and Search -> Classified, but they never got great results for me, so I stopped using those. I have occasionally glanced at the forum here for Events, but the in-world Event search seems easier for me.

So what do you do to help you decide where to go?

I look here: http://slwtf.com/

I not infrequently don't go anywhere, I stay on my own parcel to putter around and play with my dog. If I go out exploring, I usually pick a location based on the availability of a spot to rez the pooch. I also go to events held by the groups I belong to--most of the time, when I log in, there are several invitations pending. I have a folder of landmarks for fun places that I like to visit. I also use the events search, but not very often. How do I decide? Well, any asset issues, and I don't take the dog off the parcel. Other than that, I just follow the whim of the day.

I really can't say. Sometimes I'll remember a place mentioned here that sounds interesting, or a favorite I have landmarked, othertimes, I just type a keyword in Search and see what comes up. Other times I just randomly map hop, sometimes rezzing my helicopter in a random place and just taking off.

I send a message announcing my availability via the "Desperate Women" group IM facility, and see where that takes me.

Pep (You get some surprising answers . . . )

I log back out

If I do not know what I want to do, then why be there?

Most of the time I am building, working on clothing prims, or in photoshop working on the textures

do not really go anywhere much

however when I log in, I have a purpose in mind so I know what I will be doing, and if I find myself unsure what to do next, I log out, and do something in RL

I look in my notecards folder. Usually I find about 30-40 things to do in there every day from residents. Toward the end of a long session I'll start to get around to stuff I have written down on my real clipboard: my agenda. Those items are usually about land development, events on land, or cool crazy things I'm getting up to.

Mostly I float in the air ignoring SL on one screen while reading the forums on the other screen, assuming I log in to SL at all.

The url mentioned, slwtf.com, does seem like a nice site.

My primary reason for SL is chat and friends.
So that is what I look for first. Sometimes me and a friend will go to a club.
I don't normally go to the club alone.

If none of my friends are around, I will go shopping or play with my avatar's look a bit.

If neither is feasible, no friends on and don't feel like shopping, I just call it a day.

I usually just putter around the house or the island, unless my sl husband is playing his music somewhere, then i go and watch him, im his #1 fan : ))

Truthfully I am only interested in creating and sometimes I make few friends.
Sometimes I go explore but I usually use search, or if I find something a friend or someone
mentions that sounds interesting.
Truthfully if I am not creating or hanging out with friends, most of time SL is very boring to me.

Normally, if I'm looking for something interesting, I never find it. So, I'll slip into my alt and tour the various malls, to see what's new. Invariably, something shiny catches my eye and I'll go off to investigate. I never know where I'll end up and the spontaneity adds to the fun.

Another way of finding places, look at the picks in the profiles of complete strangers. You never know what you'll find (mine's rather boring, though).

I've tried having an organised approach but it usually falls apart! Recently I've been doing a lot of exploring to find new places and things to do.I've also been busy updating some of my builds and making some clothes and shoes.

I do have 'housekeeping' sessions, when I sort out my inventory - I was quite pleased I got it down to below 3,500 items, although that does include boxes that I have filled with lots of rarely used stuff.

I must get around to putting some more stuff on sale to help make my time in SL break even!

"The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart - ISBN978-0006513902

Pep (Just a suggestion)

I like to look at this site for places.

http://www.koinup.com/sims/in-second-life/since/3-months/coolest/

I usually login to find a pile of IM's with landmarks in them. Some group I belong to is having a "festa" at a club and they want my body there. If I want company, I pick the most promising "festa" and teleport on over.

If I have textures to upload, I get those uploaded first.

If I want to build, I find a sandbox and tough crap to all teleport requests. I know I can set myself busy, but for some reason I never do. I just ignore the request until it gets in the wayand then cancel it. Sometimes I find as many as ten others underneath it. I sweep them away like dead bugs on a porch.

If I need to shop or explore, I also find places for that.

Sometimes I check out the building out by Serena. It's slowed down and some of the islands have failed or gone secret.

Sometimes I explore the land around my home. I ought to try walking the roads around Gatea. I haven't done it yet....Just too busy.

The worst times are when I am aimless and the clubs are half empty and I wonder: "why bother." I've had those moments. If I stay focused on building, I usually have too much on my plate but it is preferable.

I log out. Or more often, I don't log in in the first place.

Now if you were to ask me what I do when I want to explore, that's a different matter, but exploring *is* doing something in SL.

I used to just go green dot hunting, but these days green dots are all too often pits of zombies of some kind of another... whether they're bots or campers, they're not *there*.

Search works pretty well. Random jumps work pretty well, too. Some places like Caledon you can expect green dots to mean real people. Reading forums and blogs is also effective.

I usually have at least something in mind before I log in or I just don’t log in. When there is a specific event I will log in just for that. Or if friends or acquaintances IM that there is a fun time happening somewhere I sometimes go. For “random starts” I’ll go SLGeocaching and that can lead to cool things. Yesterday, for example, I ended up doing a little windsurfing. Totally forgot I was looking for a cache. Then I remembered I wanted to check out a certain well-known Tiny area and ran into some charming avatars that I exchanged gifts with—didn’t get very far exploring but enjoyed myself more than I would have otherwise. Then I shot home to try to figure out if I could make a certain prim shape I was contemplating the other day, watched some Tiny Empires drama unfold in IM and then be resolved and called it a day.

In other words, if it’s not something at a set time and place, I just grab on to one of my usual starting points and see where it takes me. Unless I’m really involved in a building project I’m very happy to let myself just be open to what unfolds.

I usually see who of my friends are on, and see what they are doing. And if nothing materializes that way, find a nice sandbox and start pushing prims around....until something better comes along.

If I'm at a loss, I generally teleport to the busiest Help Island with no mentor coverage and answer newbies' questions for a while.

Once in a while, I'll open the map, look for a collection of green dots, and pop into the midst of a camping spot. I'll snarl at the campers, "You idiots! Get a Second Life!" I'll wait a few moments to see if any of them are alive. (So far, no luck. Everyone's either a bot or AFK). Then I'll tp away to the next clump of dots and repeat.

Maybe I should take a different approach. TP in and holler, "I'll give L$100 to the first two people to promise me they'll stop camping for the next week and actually explore Second Life!"

I no longer go to clubs for the most part. If I want to listen to music while my AV jiggles around, I have a much better time just listening to the radio and dancing in one of my SL living rooms than going somewhere with chat spam, endless annoying gestures, nauseating flashing lights and constant reminders to tip, play the sploder, enter the contest, donate, shop, etc. etc. The social aspect of clubs in SL is also not an attraction as, if I'm at a club, I want to listen to the music (assuming I can find a club that plays something other than that annoying dance/pop music) not talk or have a screen full of other people talking.

I have a few people I talk to, in IM or voice, besides my SL hubby and that's plenty. Most my time in SL is spent building, exploring, shopping for various and sundry things, and, very very occasionally, going to whatever club my SL hubby is DJing at (and then usually for a limited time). I have been known to shop for clothes, but as I'm looking for men's clothes, that is mostly a hit or miss exercise in frustration.

When I don't already have something in mind to do when I log in, I go to Showcase and see if there is anything new that is not a clothing store for women, a club or a commercial venture full of advertising. Showcase doesn't add or change things very often so usually I switch over to "events" and just have it show everything.

Out of all the entries for about a 2 or 3 hour block, I might find one "event" that looks vaguely interesting. Sometimes that is a live music event, sometimes it's a sale going on or a new store opening that might possibly have something other than female related things or sex related things. Sometimes it's a museum or a themed sim to explore.

The way I find most "things to do" are using all search or places search and using keywords to find places to explore. If I really can't find anything I want to do in the various searches, I'll pull up the map, TP somewhere I've never been that appears to have roads (like the old continent), and just wander around via walking, flying, horseback or, if there is rezzing allowed, by motorcycle or car. Sometimes I find nowhere I want to stop, sometimes I don't even get out of the sim because there is so much I want to stop and look at.

If I'm feeling particularly impatient with the lack of "things I want to do that I can actually find", I just log out and go do something else in RL.

I IM random Lindens with long streams of profanity, just to see if they're online. =^-^=

Oh...

Wait...

Noes, actually, I pretty much go Eenie, Meenie, Meinie, Moe with whatever activities I have waiting for me when I log in and do that. (^_^)y

There are a few people here that can vouch for all the times I've said I was going to do something of visit a place only to not do it because I had a few other things to do, then get some projects out of the way, then help someone out, then answer some group chat questions, then see how this latest build is going, then see that one place I forgot to look at before, then try to get in on that lucky chair I missed yesterday, then visit the store I found while inspecting someone's hair, then try to remember to IM that person I was talking to on the forum, then remember that event I wanted to go to, but forgot what day or time it was, then *AAAAAAAA~~~~H!!!!!* I just realized.. I missed the Lummerland S&T yesterday!, then double-check my....... Heh..... I guess you know where I'm going with this. =^-^=

Thank you for the responses so far, and I look forward to seeing more.

As I stated, one of the primary purposes of starting this thread was to help me give advice to my friends to help them increase attendance to their club. One things I try to do to figure out how to reach out to prospective customers is to just try to imagine myself as the prospective customer and analyze what motivates me.

Aside from some of the specific ideas mentioned in this thread so far, I have drawn out one, overall important lesson. I have been making the assumption that I am an "average" or "typical" customer, assuming "most people" probably think like I do, and I expected this thread to confirm my assumption. I'm learning that I have been making an incorrect assumption.

(And of course, NOW I feel foolish for all the times I have advised my friends that "most people" would think or do something based solely on the foundation that I would think or do something.)

I also appreciate the answers from people who just aren't interested in clubs. I suspect that many SL club owners make the mistake of assuming that everyone is a potential customer, as long as the owners convince them hard enough to come. One of the things that I have been advising my friends is that there are just some people who will never enjoy your club, for reasons that have nothing to do with how great your club is, and to obsess over those people is a waste of your time and resources, at best. The answers in this thread from people who just don't do clubs have at least helped illustrate my point.

So I thank everyone for their time and thoughtfulness so far, and hope to see more.

Generalizing from my own experience, I think most people make that mistake. Oh, wait...

would these normally include two word phrases ending in ...'off' ??