Finding your sub-culture?

You know what - why not?

How about a permanent "SL Subculture Fayre"? Each subculture would get a stall/display for a little area built around their theme, that could offer non-ad freebie bits, landmarks, and contact names. If a subculture has splits, each split would get a section. "Adult" subcultures could be hidden away behind a phantom red curtain or something.. (ones revolving around sexual ageplay would be disqualified, sorry guys, I'm not going there). Think like a mall, but where you shop for your place in SL.

I have a land area that could be used for this - do people think people would be interested?

Ketra makes a good point. And the problem I'm finding right now is that it doesn't matter what I'm searching for, the top few entries on the return list invariably are the latest/hottest "^^^HOWLZZZ^^^" w00tage clubs with "sexy avie" contest events. Honest to god, I was looking for new window textures yesterday and kept getting those clubs in search results. I ended up just going to Home Depoz and Textures R Us, like always.

It's not much different than the problems with internet keywords in metatags. Used to be any old porn site could put things like "real estate", "insurance", "medicine", and "Thomas the Tank Engine" in their tags so you would get inappropriate search results (Last I heard, www.nasa.com is still a porn site unlike www.nasa.gov ). Smarter search engines that measure content relevance have helped this issue a great deal, but SL has no content relevance measurement. You will always get the "w00t sexy avie" results right alongside the more generic returns.

Best idea yet in this thread: Play around searching in the "Groups" find. Many groups can be joined on the spot, but you might have to IM the officers in other groups to join. There's your sub-cultures, right there.

Lol. I'm pretty sure this is what I was originally advocating that I would do if it had not been done. ;D

It may be worth pursuing even if you end up with something less spectacular.

Please read my OP. I was suggesting that *I* would do this *if it didn't already exist.* Since I am a n00b, I did not presume that just because I hadn't found it, it didn't exist.

It sounds like the verdict is that it doesn't exist, and that maybe I should go ahead and get on with the planning.

For the time being I want to take a day or two to think real hard (TM) about what my goals for such an effort would be, and maybe write up a proposal. If you think this would be an interesting/useful effort, would you please send me an IM? If I get 3-4 replies I will create a group.

Many thanks, especially to those that have been supportive and understanding! Goal #1 is to create something of value that does not already exist. If nothing else, this little (hah!) project will motivate me to find all the cool stuff I don't know about yet.

I think FIND is not very effective. For example, do a FIND on "men's clothing" and every other variant you can think of. Most places that advertise "men's clothing" have in fact only 1 or 2 things for men, and 500 things for women. The other ones are mostly "adult malls" and don't sell mainstream clothes...only naughty things.

So...how do I find the *really cool* men's clothing stores? I can either spend my whole day visiting everything that comes up in FIND, or I can look around for a nice guy who is well dressed and ask.

Maybe the wiki already has collections of slurls for specific kinds of things ppl want to find? Definitely maintaining a wiki would be WAY easier than trying to maintain a "picks" list.

I don't think this will necessarily be enormously helpful. Maybe I've just had bad luck with joining groups, but a lot of the social groups I've joined haven't been very active. Or at all active, really. While it's better than nothing, I don't think it's all that much better.

Hi, I'm a fairly new user and have been lurking in this thread.
I have this coy shyness on the surface that really has prevented me from finding a niche, I'm just one of those people who needs to be approached or I might never open up. I think plenty of people have this same weariness, it doesn't help that many places in-game, that I find appealing, appear to be exclusive to people who have known each other for a while, or more popular areas which seem to care more about numbers than actual people. It creates a feeling of being lost and unwelcome.
I'd feel like a jerk trying to squeeze my way into an existing social-scene, it really goes against my personality. So, the "just go for it" suggestions seem kind of moot and unsympathetic. People need introductions and a less painful way of becoming oriented socially, not everyone has a cookie-cutter outgoing personality.
The suggestion of having a sort of on-going fair to promote social introduction based on interest group, I think, is a wonderful idea. I certainly would be interested in going, to meet new like-minded people, and become more oriented with the cultural aspect of SL.
I've definately had my fill of exploration and shopping, and I understand the majority of the game mechanics at this point, I want to feel settled like I belong here. I am willing to make an effort, but with the appropriate mediums such as suggested.
I can see where this lack of immersion into the social/cultural aspects of SL would drive away many new users, if people within the community are willing to make an effort to change this it would be beneficial to SL as a whole.

Well I'm criminally shy, never wanting to impose, and that's mainly why I left Second Life for 3 or 4 months after my first day in the game/platform/metaverse. I don't even remember what brought me back, but I learned very quickly that if you just immerse yourself, friendly people will recognize you as a newbie and help you out.

Lots of people check out the profiles of newcomers without ever saying a word. Perhaps, if you have some idea what you're hoping to find in SL, you could put a few notes about it in your profile. This allows you to express your interests without feeling like you're imposing, and also gives others some basis for beginning a conversation with you.

Also, to echo what others have said: 'Find' absolutely sucks for locating things that might appeal to you. The results are too broad, and to susceptible to exploitation by sim owners who are only concerned about traffic. You will only discover the places that suit you most by learning from other players and by doing some random self-driven exploration. Oh yeah, and there are a number of cool sims that aren't even LISTED in the Find menu...

I do like the Groups idea too, but understand that many groups frown on people using the group chat to ask newbie questions (or any kind of non-officer chat at all). Better to check the group info, see which members are online, check their profiles, and IM them if you think they might be able to offer any advice. Most people here are nice; forget what you read in the forums...

Amen to that!

That's essentially how Wildefire and I met, because of a common interest (fat avatars) and a group. She and I had a great chat, a terrific face-to-face meeting and I'm very happy to know her as a result.

Meeting people and hooking up with folks in SL of similar interests is easiest with an open mind, a smile and a real desire to know. Can't imagine where it does NOT work, actually...

~Jenni~

My post was addressing Yumi's post, not yours, actually. Kinda why I mentioned her (?) by name.

(Admittedly, I could just be feeding my particular pet peeve of internet people saying "something should be done!" and not doing anything except saying that something should be done, thinking that sufficient to make something happen.)

In any case, even if it has been done before (I'm pretty new, myself, and don't usually have a lot of free time to SL due to other obligations, so I'm hardly an expert on SL history), there's nothing saying that it can't be done by someone else who may have different ideas. At this time I don't have any specific suggestions, beyond what my previous post mentioned, but if something comes to mind I'll probably mention it at some point.

That was from the last Pathfinder's Pick notecard, I believe.

I totally grok ya on this one. In my initial experience in SL, I remember coming across a couple or so social groups in that I *would* have liked to be a part of, but they seemed to have already been long established and not really interested in new blood even if I had the inclination to crowbar myself in or ingratiate myself with the regulars.

So, I did something else entirely; I went on ahead and did my own thing, which really resulted in my own "scene" ("subculture" or social circle or whatever we're calling it here) being born, and others who are similarly interested have naturally come out of the woodwork to hang about. It's worked out blissfully well.