Who denoobyfied you?

Nobody in particular. For me it's been a 3 year voyage of discovery and I'm still learning.
Trial and error, helpful hints in-world and on these forums, a bit of being influenced by what others have done. So, although there's no particular person I can thank - Thanks to everyone who's helped me in the past!

I wanna be denoobyfied next!

me! Me! ME! MEEE! MEEeee! meeee.... *me*

OK... not me. I get in line... i wait.

What these two ladies said.

I left OI after about five minutes, LOL, and found myself at the infohub in beautiful downtown Braunworth. There weren't as many griefers around in those days and I quickly made it out to the Linden road. That's the moment I fell utterly and irrevocably in love with SL.

i don't believe in the steep learning curve either, but I'm still learning new stuff. It was only a few days ago that I learned (ah, Torley and his wonderful vid tuts) you can find out the name of the avs near you by clicking on the mini-map. Up until now I'd seen that as a nuisance that cluttered up my screen. I still see it as that, but if I'm not in Emerald, I sometimes open it to see who's around if they're out of range of my mysti.

LMAO...when I first read the title of this I thought it said Who deboobyfied you! Of course I had to come in and read lol.

My story of coming into SL is too long to post but it was a long hard process for me to get denoobyfied! A whole group of us learned everything the hard way...except how to right click items and select buy..

I think it's just really trying to convey too much information all at once.

If you happen to run into a mentor who starts talking about the building (rez? prim?? tower of what????) and land ownership (mainland what? estate what?? prim limits???) and "oh your hair doesn't fit and here's how you adjust that" ("why did they make those arrows so tiny? oh... where did they go now and hey what's wrong with my arm?" and tell you you have to go visit these 500 landmarks for freebies (free sounds good!) and pick everything up and then sort through it (geez... this is complicated and a lot of work!) and and and...

I ran through "parrot OI", ended up at Ahern (lucky me) and simply started wandering around. Most people were indifferent but the ones that did act friendly were more interested in showing things than dump hundreds of boxes of freebies on me (not that there really were that many freebies back then). Changing clothing and poseballs and whatever else is "essential" was explained as it came up rather than all at once.

Shopping came up fairly soon and once the initial L$250 was spent I simply bought more because noone had made a big deal out of buying L$, or gone on a rant about how needless it is to spend US$ on SL (which seems to be today's norm). It also helped that there simply wasn't really a way to look decent much in just freebies (no freebie prim hair back then, or prim shoes for instance) so after a few helpful links to fashion blogs ("hmmm... they look a lot better than I do!" I was happily buying and spending L$ without a moment's thought (thank god that noone ever tried to convince me of the joys of camping when I was new).

It was akward having to find empty places to change so after someone suggested renting somewhere by the end of my first week I found a house for L$200/week. I still had no idea about rezzing (aside from a pose stand) or building or "prims" since all I'd really wanted was a place to change in peace. The landlord filled in some of the details and after running into other people I was off shopping for furniture this time and editing was next on the menu of things to learn about.

By the end of my first month I had moved up to a 4096m² rental and learned about the difference between mainland and estate land (it was also before LL introduced the scam of being able to sell land on a private estate so you were *always* renting and the parcel simply got group-deeded to your/a group) and building became to slowly creep up when some things weren't quite right as well as learning about group-deeded objects, land management, etc.

All in all it was always a rather gradual progression and only learning about something when the need for it came up so I never had any sense of any kind of curve either. Although I guess if I had joined today then I probably would have my head filled with the evilness of spending US$ to buy L$ and would be running around looking for camping spots or otherwise expect all of SL to be handed to me on a silver platter for free as so many do these days.

Miki Gymnast - she showed me the possibilities in SL, what one can build if you applied yourself to it, that practically anything your imagination can bring up, it can be built in SL.

My very best friend early in my second life was Sarah Nerd, who started a few weeks prior to me. We spent a lot of time together, always sharing the new things we learned and cool places we discovered. She tried hard to improve my image, taking me to stores and buying me a plethora of gifts.

I was always very grateful for everything that Sarah did for me in the beginning, and for getting me hooked into Second Life at all. Today she has a freebie venue which is filled with high quality items that every newbie (and not so newbie) can benefit from. It's worth checking out even if you've been around for a while.

Although Dimitrio ended up as more of a mascot than an actual avatar, I do have alts which I spend a great deal more effort on with regards to appearance, and with which I can better express my personality. Ofc none of them are furries.

This topic brings back pleasant memories for me, of several generous-hearted folks who helped me get a sense of what SL was about. And not just technically ("How do I...?", "Where do I...?" but socially and even spiritually. They made me appreciate, by their examples, what was possible in a positive SL community.

I hope newcomers today get to experience something of the same spirit from SL residents. By nature, I'm not enough of a social animal to have that effect on many, but I'm sure grateful to those who do.

I didn't. I came armed with a printed guide on where to get good freebies and how to make money, which has been tremendously helpful back then.

(I should explain that I wanted to check it out because I was expected to sell these guides in the computer books section, so I wanted to know what it's all about. Damn thing proved addictive.)

No one really - I flew off of Orientation Island and muddled through.

I expect I'm still a noob, but I felt I stopped being a noob the day I was trapped in an invisible cage and managed to work out what had happened and got myself out without TPing home.

I was lucky; MY RL best friend introduced me to SL, so once I got off OI, she was waiting for me, to show me around.

I more or less made things up as I went along. I started my account to attend a historians conference in Second Life, and so after I left WTF island, I just started playing with sliders to get a shape that looks like me, and then used a list of educational sites to find professional-looking freebies. Then I bought myself a suit and my Steampunk clothes for basic wandering the grid and blending in in Caledon (which is a very noob-friendly place if the noobs are respectful). I'm still learning...with the new Emerald viewer I've started changing up my AO instead of using the packaged ones that I had, things like that. Still trying to find the right prim hair so that I can get rid of my noob hair (long hair for men in SL are hard to find).

As in rl, a succession of women have generously attempted to take me in hand . . .

Pep ( . . . and also as in rl, they have failed.)

I went through Parrot island and landed in Ahern. A nice lady offered to help me out. Unfortunately she said follow me and walked away. I um....couldn't remember how to move. I had come from TSO and was trying to click on the ground. By the time I figured it out she had vanished. I still wonder what she thought about that LOL.

After that I was on my own from then on.

SL had a very different culture in 2004 than it does now. AO's didnt exist. everyone had a slider skin. Prim hair hadnt been invented yet, and there was no lindex. Yadni's Junkyard was there I LEARNED from taking apart freebies. Free clothing etc was not great.

Just a different way of doing things.

Prim hair was invented. Nephilaine and Mistress Midnight both made prim hair and even I made piggie tails. It is just that prim hair was not sold widely (Nephi sold some at Pixel Dolls), and the prim hair at the start of 04 was "add ons" to augment your Linden hair except for a few full hair replacements that Mistress Midnight made.

Prim hair was not popular but it was there and i wore it and in Feb 2004 paid around 35k for an exclusive prim pony tail no one else had.

And animations came out the month you came to SL, in June 2004.

I think this is a good point. I'm not a gamer, but there seems to be that impatience, I think due in part to LL waving all the shiny in front of us on their website. People come and expect it all now. The basic funtions to exist and enjoy SL are not difficult to master, a couple of days was all it tok for me. But all the things beyond that do take time to learn, and figure out. That's part of what makes SL fun, at least for me.

I'm glad I learned most of what I do on my own. I never liked being taught, ironic for me, i prefer to read and figure things out on my own, and ask a question occasionally.

I'm glad you asked, because I hadn't realized when it was happening.

I got rid of the newbie avatar pretty quickly all by myself just because I was rummaging around the freebie places, and because I was frustrated at not being able to alter my appearance (the start-up avatar was no-mod).

I thought I looked pretty good in my freebies, but when I began to visit some Victorian sims, a friend suggested that I might want to look at skins that "fit the period" and he brought me to a skin store.

I never realized until just now that he was easing me out of my not-very-good skin.

However, about five months later, I was back at it in an alt with freebie skin, shape, and hair.

I'm not saying that freebies are bad. It's possible to look quite good using only freebies, but I didn't look good. I didn't realize how much better was possible.

A friend offered to give my alt a makeover. She insisted, really, but I was pretty agreeable. I could see she knew more about making an avatar than I did, and we took HOURS, comparing skins, shapes, eyes (I was so surprised to learn that a store sold only eyes!)... it took so long we had to leave the hair for another day.

What was great about it was that it broke my idea of what was possible for me. I think I was actually afraid of looking beautiful.

One anonymous angel took me out of the welcome area to The Free Dove. That one act of kindness helped a lot.

I never had one single person take me in hand and lead me through all the various things to learn. Some I learned on my own. Many times, someone has helped me understand something, or told me where I could find something.

I've had a lot of help, a bit here, a bit there. A great deal of it has come from all of you here.

Thanks.

I too had several months of *this*. Then I met Musashi Yeshto, and he taught me basic things like how to use the build tool, how to texture, etc. I didn't 'get' skin and such, for a long time, months I was in my noob toon. Suddenly one day, I 'got it'. I had decent hair before that but I didn't understand skins/shapes for ages. I bought my first hair by trial and error too. I didn't actually understand that I could buy from the color chart under the picture. It was from Sirena, and I somehow bought from her website. God I was SO slow.

I do have to add a couple of shoutouts...One to Colette Meiji...she helped me enourmously in getting my shape to where I wanted it, and the second is to someone whose name I don't even remember...i was in the Blarney Stone and he dropped $2,500 L on my without saying a word. When I asked him why, he said "Because I can ".

I've done that for a couple people too. One I met right outside OI and the other I pulled out of OI as soon as she logged in per our agreement; friended her and we started shopping. She'd been watching SL for awhile over her husband's shoulder so knew what to expect, and didn't want to spend time in OI.

Our own wonderful Lindal. Thank you again, Lin.

On the other side of the coin I have rescued a few people, given them stuff and offered advice . . .

Pep ( . . . but they get so clingy and reliant, so I don't any more.)

Well, it was all a bit embarrassing, really. I got just a little drunk one night, while dancing, and there was this guy who was sitting at the next ta . . .

Oh, wait . . .

Sorry, "denoobyfied"??

NVM then . . .

pixplxthnxbai