What have you learned so far in Second Life

Here are the things I have learned in my first few months in SL, what insights have you had?

My design skills are not horrible as I had always thought, only bad. However, there appear to be a number of people who are a lot more creative than probably given credit for in first life.

Businesses in SL are like franchisees. You don’t really own it, but you are allowed to operate and make money from it within certain guidelines. And like franchisees (whom I have work worked with for many years), they believe there is a hidden agenda. Unless they can’t find it, then there must be a more carefully crafted hidden agenda.

In real life, I will never live in a land without zoning, ever!

There still is such thing as inexpensive fun. Just set a 16m piece of land for sale for $32L. Original Cost of Land - 64L
Sale Price of Land - $32L
Loss on Land - US 9-10 cents.
Watching four people try to rez on the same spot and then argue over less than a dime – Priceless.

Some people who cannot create try to take out their frustrations by destroying what others create (OK, I knew this already, but get reminders here).

If you see a Pink Power Ranger coming at you at a high rate of speed, teleport quickly. (Based on a true story.)

I am glad I don't handle my personal affairs like I do my tier or my inventory. The mess in the basement now looks more manageable.

People who don’t do their homework in first life, don’t do their homework in SL either. Every time I hear someone bragging “I just bought an 8096 and am building a kick *** club”, I realize I am looking at a future piece of Linden Land.

Nothing is permanent. My skybox I built to overlook the world trade center is now overlooking large red rotating for sale signs. Don’t get to caught up in things that are not yours and cannot control.

Sex still sells, even when it isn’t really sex.

What have you learned here?

I learned I'm insanely curious as to hear this story =^.^=

Also, I learned that any type of creation here simply takes practice and time to learn. Exception is true art as in handmade texturing, or exquisit arcitecture.

Scripting gives me a headache.

The first person you meet of a group is usually the worst represenative. The idiots are always the msot vocal *grins and waves hand*

You should never take yoruself too seriously.

Of everything in SL, the most important things are the friendships made. Everythign else is ephemeral.

~Jessy

Likewise.

I also learned that you should be VERY careful who you trust.

And that sometimes, the most unlikely people turn into the greatest friends.... (or enemies)

Nothing, arguably.



I'm still the same person I am in RL, with the same dreams and flaws.

Just like most of the rest of you.

Though at a blindingly faster rate, as RL months seem to correspond to SL years.


Were anyone to know me in my first life, my corresponding successes and failures in <business | relationships > would be laughably parallel in many ways.




Where is the promised land?
Where is the brave new world?
Where do all dreams go when they die?

Such places are always found within, metaverse or no.

I've learned not all privately owned sims are bad.


Cases in point: Caledon(s), Lost Gardens of Apollo, Svarog, and Mystical Kingdom

I've learned who I am.

Also, I think I've become a decent builder.

Well I learned that:
1) I can sit for several hours straight and not even realize it.
2) My av is also a shopaholic.
3) I want to be in the spotlight more IRL, as my SL life is increasingly so...
4) Morons exist everywhere.
5) I like some of my SL friends more than my RL ones.

Due to the fact that there are less restrictions in SL than in RL,
SL is a great place to model your self the way you want to be.

Many people use SL as a place to exercise what they would be unwilling or restricted from excercising in RL.

That a person's basic psychology does not automatically change
with a change of context. Regardless of supposed anonymity
and the freedom to appear any way they wish a person's basic
essence remains at it's current developmental level.

Regarding the perceived freedom a person has due to the
veil of anonymity and the ways they react to it is more revealing about a person's character than can be usually be attained in RL. However I believe this fact escapes many for
just as in RL people persist in their preconceptions of their
illusions of self and others.


In RL actions speak louder than words.

In this forum (double meaning intended) words are actions.

My experience in SL has made explicitly clear to me why appearance and posing are so important to some people in
RL.

For so long I have been sort of critical of the shallow trendy
poser types. Although my natural appearance seems to suggest to those types that I should join them. I have had my own forms of pose and shallowness in RL in my efforts to distinguish myself from those I disdained. Which was a form of
shallow arrogance in itself.
Which fortunately I am able to realize now. Thank Gosh, hehe
I hope.

Naturally it is preferable to increase personal substance with
knowledge and skill aquisition but the addition of such attributes as classic attractive poses and fashions to the
persona desiring substance is simply an increase in the total
package.
SL really helps to illustrate that what you have is what you have, no more no less. Whether it is personal attributes, personality, friends, or possessions.

For some reason motives seem easier to delineate especially among those attempting to capitalize on the anonymity factor.

From past experience I have learned that a small amount of
cocaine and alcohol can turn a seemingly ordinary person into
one that is willing to be totally direct in their wish to fulfill
thier base desires. For some SL seems to do the same
Which is neither always exclusively good or bad, yet alternatively it is definitely good and bad or at the very least
hilarious.

In here Words are Actions.

And no matter where you go, there you are.

The greatest distance a person can possibly travel is in their
own personal growth.

In many ways SL possesses utopian qualities such as magnificent people and amazing builds and the sharing of all this rich creativity and talent.

Your own experience will be dictated by what you bring and what you make of it.

Another thing I've learned:

No matter how many outfits I buy, my av never has anything to wear, either.

I have learned that SL is a great teacher of basic 3D building concepts; I've learned how to think and function in virtual 3D space and I now feel much more confident in my ability to pick up 3D modelling using "big time" products like Maya and 3DStudio and the like. That's the next step.

I've learned that some of the most interesting, kind, generous, talented and funny people can be found wandering around in SL, and that random chance meetings can yield some wonderful friendships.

I've learned that the quickest route to accumulating morale-dampening aggro is to read certain toxic forums, and the best antidote *to* that aggro is SL itself. Losing myself in good long productive building session always makes me feel right as rain.

Oh please tell...please!

I have learned that I am much more creative than I thought I was and much less.

Actually the build-up is much better than the story.

I was building away, when approached by a Pink Power Ranger that kept bumping me into the adjoining plot. Very realistic AV by the way.

Having seen them as valiant (albiet hokey) heros in my past, I was very forlorn to hit the ban button and watch it disappear in a puff. I guess that is part of being a childhood star, sometimes the pressure just gets to be too much and they turn to evil. I mean first Danny Bonaduce, then Mary-Kate & Ashley, now the Pink Power Ranger.

Where have all the heros gone?

It's always a tragedy when good rangers go bad.

http://thedamnblog.com/index.php?y=2005&m=08&d=26

I learned to type english in numbers: I have something 4 u 2
I learned all things like LOL, BRB, WTF...

Now i read:

So first i learn: what the fuck, then easily typed WTF and now this get typed out nicely in a long version again wich i like

I never want to hear again Americans are not multilingual, they invent new ones every day!

PS: does anyone know a good tranlation for WTF to dutch or french? Thank you!

What I've learned... hmmm.

You bring your shit with you, even though you try to be someone else. I already knew this, but you relearn it every time.

I am more suseptible to consumerism and shopping than I'd like to believe.

I am easily distracted and thrown off my "goals", since I haven't learned much building when that was my interest. (that is going to change, though)

I have been distracted by people (friends) and exploring and I've decided that is ok.

I hate decorating even though I want to make buildings and furniture.

I'm not as attached to a "virtual home" as I thought I would be. I don't care about land, either, except for occasional privacy.

I don't like heights in virtual reality, either. Weird.

I'm more impressed with the imaginative now than the realism I was looking for at first.

What have I learned..?

hmm... well

- be very, very careful who you trust. virtual worlds make people forget there is someone at the other keyboard with feelings.

- a box on the head never looks good

- it's way too easy for me to get sucked in to the point SL affects RL. not good at all.

- I actually have some graphic skills! I'd never touched a graphics program before SL.

- I'm as unsocialable (is that a word?) in a virtual world as I am in RL

- I suck at interior design. and exterior come to that. infact, buildings in general just bore the hell out of me. let me build small shiny stuff instead!

I've learned that diet mountain dew does not taste like regular mountain dew.
And sharks don't like mountain dew at all.

Oh and never call a shark "fishy"

- I have learned to type VERY fast.

- I have learned how to turn a plywood box in to hoochie hair.

- I have learned that German Guys are HAWT. ( I <3 you baby ! )

- I have learned that the sandboxes are far more fun and useful when sitting on a cube.

- I have learned that when people ask you to help them 'allign their balls' they actually mean ' I'm too cheap for an escort, its late I just wanna see some avatar humpage before I go to sleep".

- I have learned to never pre-judge people before you actually spend time with them.

-I have learned that not all of the people that use the forums are geeks.. some are just dorks ( I keeed, sorta )

1. I've learned that Cybertown wasn't that great at all.
2. Photoshop (How to color pixel by pixel if need be)
3. How to deal with headaches better (Photoshop again)
4. That Building in SL is a headache too (why do prims suddenly rotate on me all the time.)
5. SL is a lot like RL. There are really nice people and some really rotten people.
6. How to organized files better. Where did that go again???
7. To never be surprised at what SL does
8. Avoid griefers
9. How to walk around SL through thick lag especially in a club
10. It's Fun

Ok well that all I can think of.

What have I learned since joining SL?

1) 3D building really resurrected my lego passion. The money I make from building now pays for my SL premium account and tier. Yay!

2) That I'm really, really *not* interested in programming / scripting.

3) Ditto photoshop.

4) Ditto being an SL tycoon / entrepreneur / businessperson.

5) How to stream music live across the internet to an audience. This was what I really wanted to do when I joined SL. It took me over a year to get that together!

6) That I prefer SL over RL because the people I meet in SL tend to be way more imaginitive, creative and open-minded than people I know and meet in RL.

!ve learnt that resident moderation is a lousy idea.

Ohhhhhh....inworld....
Ive learnt never that too many poseballs close together in the bedroom, can lead to confusion.

New skills, I learned:

- to write OpenGL code
- to compile said code on linux and windows
- to work with libpcap
- to work around stupid or unnecessary limits in a sripting language

Additional things I learned or realized:

- all the time spent figuring out different software products pays off (graphics, sound, 3D, animation)
- every social place has its heroes, misfits and trolls
- you actually *can* make friends over a distance of 6000 miles
- people can achieve a lot if you can get them roused
- Lindens are humans, too
- high anxiety works on second life, too (really, I mean it)

There probably are hundreds of little things you learn during your stay on SL, most of them sneak in without you realizing it, but when you look back, you will see them, their outcome and how they changed your life, second or first respectively.

I'm ready to learn more.

Making friends is as important in SL as it is in real life, possible more so. There is no way you are going to enjoy this game is you spend all of your time alone, who would you show your latest creation to?

Relaxing comes in many many forms.