Why does LL detract from the new user experience to protect ruthless capitalists?

i should read threads through. i'm jealous of this response. i'll pay you 1000 L$ to transfer intellectual property rights of this post over to me in perpetuity etc etc yada yada. deal?

If the only thing that made SL so cool was being an early adopter, then the time for SL being cool has come and gone, no one can be an early adopter anymore.

A program that only seems nice to the first bunch who use it is clearly not destined for the big time.

Actually, I've already licensed all my forums content to Cory Edo through the end of 2006. Everything I produce between then and now belongs to her, as she is editing Second Asshole: The Musings of Enabran Templar. I get a royalty, too!

omg i'm terminating my RL account. special thanks to eggy for helping me realize life is just not worth it anymore. and that common sense is not my responsibility.

With all due respect, this seems a bit elietist. SL has long been a place where the world's huddled masses can come to enjoy a lifestyle they would not ordinarily be able to partake.

Freedom is exactly what makes SL beautiful and the loss of freedom - whether imposed by some official LL sanctioned government or through various ad-hoc MJW-esq special interest groups - would be the true tragedy.

Let people be free to experience the good,
Let people be free to experience the bad,
Let people be free to make good choices,
Let people be free to learn from their mistakes;

But let people be free!

In the interest of full disclosure, I only took on the job because I was insanely curious as to where someone might place a second asshole. He's also paying me in delicious, deadly cheeseburgers.

hmm see it is just that Boisteriousness that i find so refreashing!..seeing the magic of SL thru their eyes seeing teh simple excitement watching them with teh Lemming rezzer yay!
i think everybody should find a newbie they can connect with and take them around..it totally refreashed me!

*Had* to pop in and say something here...

I arrived on the wild idea that Uru was in fact down for the count, and a group of former Live players had settled here (this was after a six month boycott of online environments as I was rather miffed about the whole thing). That was in fact what had happened, and I found them within my third day here (would have been second but I had video card issues on the old notebook).

I had since then brought one friend of mine into the environment (who has turned out to be an amazing builder and scripter), and helped 4-5 relative newcomers to a varying degree over my past 20+ months here. And of course I've now stepped back to peruse a new dream of Uru, but its not stopping the projects of those I've helped here either.

I think some of my best newcomer conversations have been with those who used to visit my Money Tree. A number of them tended to be people interested in making money after one article or another lured them here. One relatively recent newcomer actually had a good answer to my follow-up question in cases like this ("How do you intend to make that money?", and so we spent an hour discussing what I knew on the subject (and no, it was not land, it was a unique twist on some other idea; I hope he's doing well, sounded neat).

Now, I'll freely admit that I've sounded like Eggy to those in the Uru forums I peruse daily. But the big thing that many of them had issues with is it *is* in fact a mature-built environment; Many of the folks I know in Uru/UU I would not be able to meet here, as they would qualify for TG (and yet are orders of magniture more mature than even some RL adults I've known over my life). I've since directed them to There for that reason, and now re-directing them to D'mala when possible.

I do think SL has its place however; Otherwise I'd have closed this account, and not pulled away for awhile instead to support my old cause. Who knows, that may still happen, but not yet...

I can promise you some people do do exactly this, one such person I named in this thread
/108/a1/86474/1.html.

I can see Eggy's point but I think he's even more of pessimist than I am which is truly saying something

My advice to the friends I get into SL is always the same:
- Get out of the welcome area asap.
- Spend your first few hours exploring.
- Persist, there's plenty of good stuff to be found amongst the junk.
- Don't be afraid to ask anyone for basic help.

I send them landmarks to places I like. And if I'm around I'll give them a whirlwind tour.

A few of them are still around

The most common complaint I hear from newcomers is about money not sex.
The number 1 top comment I hear repeated again and again is a variant of

"I'm not good enough to make things so I can't make any money"

At 5spf (seconds per frame) that can take a while.

Really, WAs aren't very welcoming. Immensely complex builds and a bunch of people hanging around saying "lol".

I must admit, Cory... I'd have taken the job on those terms too... mmm, nothing like ground up bits of dead animal, topped with sour milk product, fungus and rotting vegitation, placed in a bun made from crushed barley and more fungus.

I never saw Help Island, but there were many folks who helped me a great deal when I started.

One side effect that the "come and make money here!" adverts has had is that when a new player asks "how do I make money?", you never know if they mean "how do I make RL money in SL?" or "how do I get a few extra L$ to buy the cool stuff I've seen around?". And I've heard stories from both sides - where a newbie has asked that question with the latter meaning, but wound up getting quizzed about their "business model" and scared off; and the vice versa case where the newbie means the former, and gets frustrated when sent to a money tree.

I also think freebies given to newbies have to be done quite carefully - from my own newbie time, and from some others I've spoken to, it can be very demoralising to find that someone else is "doing better" than you (by whatever definition) because they happened to bump into the right person and you didn't - not because of jealousy or spite, but because it gives the feeling of lacking control, that how you do is out of your hands, that what you might do to earn things is subsidiary to social luck (and don't say "networking is important" - true, yes it is, but newbies aren't "networking". Bluntly, there's something wrong if in order to retain new players it's necessary to give them things that can't be given to every new player.

You are partially right Aimee. A lot of mentoring is sorting out the godawful graphics defaults (what genius decided 'disable far clip /ON' was a sensible default for noobs?) explaining the interface and one2one tutorials on basics (rezing inventory, managing inventory, creating, editing, removing boxes from heads and so on).

BUT, along the way an awful lot of questions are asked and where possible most mentors will give impartial advice. It's important that noobs aren't told what to do, but presented with possible choices and likely consequences.
In this way they leave Help Island far better equipped to enjoy SL that the ones who jump straight to the Welcome Area.

One thing, a noob who's spent some time on Help Island and listened to the mentors is far less likely to get into trouble in their first days on the Mainland, the ones who jump straight in are easy meat...

Oooooooo Chip said G O D!!!

Briana Dawson

Only in the metaphorical sense

Jamie, if people were free, you would resell them at a profit

hehehe... well, maybe a third then... there is no shortage of RL pics of me on these forums, you know

I know, the first pictures of Eggy are bound to have appeared in the forums during Beta.

i reread eggy's post and found myself puzzled - which detracts from the newbie experience most?

1> sex and nudity? - because the last thing anybody is interested in is sex and nudity. because porn just doesn't sell!

2> first land scams? yes most of us are to embarrased to admit it but 99% of were swindled out of a 12 pack of beer for a lousy big mac. the pain lives with me still

3> spending L$? because we all buy our groceries with stipends? (don't you know a 72$ annual membership gives a return of 100$)

so i realized - eggy just trolled the trolls! took me a few glasses to gain perspective!

eggy 1
j-wu 0

Curses! Foiled again! You haven't seen the last of me, J-Wu! We SHALL meet again.

Anarchy is why they invented MONARCHY during the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age -- somebody with a bodyguard of guys with bronze battleaxes decided that enough was enough, and someone had to be in charge of the madhouse, rather than have their little sister raped by the tribe across the next hill or their baby eaten by the neighbors.

Your day job is _NOT_ in sales or customer service, is it? ROFLMAO!

Every environment has its good points and its bad points... even NeverLand had Hook (or Michael).

Yes, I have to say, I don't disagree with you.

Interesting that Catherine Cotton was warning about the commercialisation of sl at least a year ago, and she was shouted out of court. However, what she foresaw has definitely come about. There *is* a difference in many of the people coming into second life now.

Mind you, having said all that, if you are putting off creative people from coming inworld, then you are contributing to the problem.

I think CatCot was more concerned with big RL businesses invading SL and defacing it with ugly billboards and advertisements. Little did she know that the real troublemakers would be the "little people" she was trying to protect.
I have nothing against SL commerce, but I have a lot against SL fraud, deception and other kinds of predatory, unscrupulous behavior.


If you were forced to tell the truth about yourself to everyone, then you would probably adjust your behavior so that eventually you would have nothing to be ashamed of.
If there is anything about Second Life that LL would be reluctant to include in all their marketing material, then they should probably remove it from the face of SL as well.

That's probably why they focus on the money making aspect so much; the culture is too fucked up to advertise.

"Second Life: We have whips!"

"Second Life: Baby Fetishists and Furry Orgies!"

"Second Life: Seriously, what the fuck is up with us?"

"Second Life: Camping is a fun way to play!"

"Second Life: Buy and sell prim children online!"

"Second Life: Think a fetus cannon is funny? SO DO WE!"

"Second Life: Jealous exes are all the rage!"

And so on.

Yeah, probably the only redeeming factor to this madhouse, from an outside perspective, is that you can make money at it. The PG pockets of community are too small to focus on, at least without mad howls of favoritism from the peanut gallery.