Night of the Living Dead

The problem is that there is so much overwhelming information presented in the first 12 hours to a newbie that it's almost impossible to sort it out. Plus, the help islands seem to be filled with long term players who seem only interested in picking on the noobs. At least, that was my experience, me being almost exactly one month old.

Fortunately I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck by the right person who has pounded me mercilessly since almost the day I arrived, trying to craft a functional SL personality out of a totally clueless newbie. The jury, however, is still out on how successful she has been (thank you for the efforts, my friend)! I don't know how you could formalize this unless you require an entrance exam to SL after passing a course, which would be IMO patently ridiculous I do see lots of Forum Cartel members in the Hangout (/me included) latching onto newbies and giving them prods in the "right" direction, but I'm not experienced enough to take them to the level they have to achieve...yet.

Wish there were simple answers to all this...Jackie

It's not only the men...something that helps is to tell the individual that the reason a lot of people don't talk is that they are shy, or don't speak the language, or have forgotten where to type what they want to say. I advise that newbies keep trying to communicate until the subject walks away. More than half the time a little persistence works for me and we end up having a great chat. I've met 2 or 3 real friends that way, one of whom does not speak a word of English...fortunately my high school french is OK, if lacking in current idioms. Jackie

I have been a Mentor for 3 years here in SL and i positively discourage newbies from using IM to open a conversation, personally i think it rude. It's a bit like walking up the road and seeing someone in the Mall and going up and whispering in their ear instead of just saying Hello There are certainly no guidelines as to encourage this officially that i am aware of, but we have a new breed of Mentor today totally different to the earlier days and forgetting we are there to help new folks integrate into SL culture and not creating little clones of themselves.

Just my thoughts tho

I love reading profiles, some can be very enlightening and i have found some great places in SL just because someone bothered to to put it in their picks

You don't get it do you Jackie

This would explain why I've started getting IM-to-Email messages maybe 2-3 times a week that just consist of "hello" or "hi".

One thing new people should keep in mind is.....you are going to make mistakes. Just get out into the world and start doing stuff. If you goof in public just grin sheepishly , say you're sorry and move on. If they get bent out of shape over innocent mistakes it says more about them than you.

It's always been my opinion that the vaunted SL learning curve is vastly overhyped. Of course there are endless things to do and learn in SL if one chooses, but isn't that the point of it all? To take time to learn it? You aren't going to be a Master Builder/Texture Artist/Real Estate Mogul/Entrepenuer overnight. But the basics, walking ,TPing, IMing, rezzing a box, etc, are not Masonic Secrets. Getting the hang of them doesn't take that long. The Viewer interface isn't that difficult to get down after a little time alone somewhere to play with it.

I spent a couple of hours on the old OI, then just hit the SL street and picked things up as I went along. 3 or 4 hours was all I needed to have the basic functional grasp, and the rest just took care of itself. I think there is too much of a "I want to know it all now" mindset in some.

But then why are you still wearing that box on your head?

Because it goes with the ones on my feet, silly.

Have the lambs stopped screaming, Clarice?

If only the men around here were half that slow. Or do I mean twice. Or

I read fast, so 20 lines of chat disappearing after 10-15 seconds is easy to follow.

Unless its spammed with ASCII Art.

Unless I am saying something private to a person, or they are not with in 20 meters, I use open chat. Keeping track of multiple conversations is not difficult. Well, unless I am already deep into the bottle..

Even in IRC or other channel based chat systems, I tend to have anywhere from 3 to 10 channels open talking in them.

Chat history does make it easy if you do get lost though.

Maybe you and Tod here should get together. He's a smart guy, has a personality. Twisted, but a personality all the same.

I know of one - my land group, because I created a Maneater tag to give to one member of it as a joke.

I don't know of any others, offhand. Maybe try some of the femdom groups?

The other, probably easier, option would be to create your own group (with an alt or a friend, because a group needs at least 2 members to keep from being closed) and invent amusing tags to your heart's content. (I think there's a limit of 9 group roles, but you can change the text of the tag for any particular role as often as you please, so there's really no limit to the number of taglines you can cycle through.)

I suspected there might be a development like this somewhere along the line and I think SL is in trouble if the latter breed is more common than the first. Surely residents like that are not cut out for the job of mentor if they think their style is the only way? Bad teachers do this in RL: it's a classic flaw in education that hampers a student's innate creative ability.

I checked Tod's posting history last night and if you don't mind I think I'll pass. Nothing personal Tod but my culture expects men to suffer in silence.

As people were kind enough to make suggestions here I thought that I should report back then go start a thread of my own to continue the discussion.

Last night I accepted the invitation Chris Norse sent to join the Forum Cartel and visited the hangout picking up the freebies there and spending half an hour trying to get the HUDs to work. Noone else was there for the hour that I was.

So I changed my profile to try to make it sound challenging but not so pissed off and went to Sweethearts. It may have worked because I only had to hang around for about ten minutes looking at grey blobs because it was full because they were having a competition before someone threw my rl tab text back at me. I was impressed by his freedom of expression in IM until I discovered that he was drunk although he blamed it on jetlag. Men are such liars and bad ones at that. Having done The Scottish Play for GSCE I am afraid I may have been a bit caustic about the effects of alcohol upon men which led me to discover that he was two timing me from the start as he went off to dance with someone else. Would it be nasty of me to say I was pleased that a sim closing announcement appeared almost immediately.

I noticed on the HUD that there were some people at the hangout so I went there for a bit and met some nice people although they were all female I think.

....to be continued elsewhere.

Do that thing, please, Annabel.

It isn't unusual for a thread to get somewhat side-tracked and, heaven knows, I've led a few astray myself on a number of occasions but this man-hunting schtick is wearing thin.

I opened the thread to get an idea of why residents are resorting to IM almost by default and I'd like to get a result on that. Otherwise I'll read some Helen Fielding if I want a rehash of hackneyed tosh about how men are.

Personally, I'm just shy. I tend to stick to IM unless spoken to in open chat, as I don't want to bother anyone, or because I feel like I might seem idiotic. (Irrational fears for the win, right?)

Then again, I tend not to hang out in particularly social areas, either.

Sorry if I have diverted your thread from its higher purpose. Maybe I should say in response to your original question that I wouldn't care if communication was in public chat, IM or voice if the content was intresting. I have found that the men here should be reading more Helen Fielding and less Frank Miller. Maybe they are embarassed to say things in public chat because they know they are generally typing absolute rubbish.

Not every guy is influenced by reading Frank Miller. It is plain, however, that your poor concept of men is probably closer to the root of your problem with finding one you're comfortable with.

It seems to me you can't frame a sentence on the topic of men without being sour. I don't think I've read such ill-tempered, misanthropic bile in a long while.

Why don't you give yourself a break from us if we're all such sad bastards?

Hence men's rate of suicide being higher

Back to the original subject, I also have noticed the tendency of newer folks to initiate contact in an IM instead of in open chat in public places, or heck, even when I'm somewhere where there are only a couple of people around. Unfortunately, I've accidentally ignored a few of them that way, even though they've been telling me how cute I am, and I love being told how cute I am! Why, you may ask?

Because often I have a couple different active group chats going at any given time, which I have minimized during the times I'm not actively participating, and actively shopping or sightseeing instead. If I'm not paying attention to the IM's flying across the corner of my screen, I'm pretty likely to miss the IM coming in from the person standing next to me. But if they say something in local chat, I'll see it, because it shows up differently.

So then I feel bad a half hour or so later when I reopen the communication box and notice a lonely little IM tab off in the far corner from someone who just wanted to say something nice to me.

I gotta say I have the opposite feeling about open chat.......

I do agree that it can be off putting when EVERYONE in a public area seems to be zombified because they're all in IM......... but the flip side, to me, is a LOT more frustrating. I cannot stand being somewhere and trying to have a conversation with one person in open chat......and have to weed through 8 other people's conversations just to find the reply from the person I'm talking to.

I often miss what they've said......or miss something new someone may have directed at me.......and it's just annoying. It makes ME appear rude if I don't answer......and I'm definitely not a rude person. In RL even if you ARE in a room full of people....you're only going to tune in to voices with-in the closest proximity to you. You'll hear the buzz of conversation in a crowded cafe.....but you'll still be able to hear your friend across the table from you clearly.

This is what open lines of text chat lacks.......and to me, it's irritating and I just don't have the patience to deal with a screen full of nonsensical text when I'm trying to have an intelligent conversation with one person. But....that's just me.....I don't even really go to crowded clubs or busy public areas anyway. And, I don't have any problem with the way anyone else chooses to communicate.