What's right with Second Life?

Let's have a bit of balance here, people. I know that complaining helps get things off your chest, but should it not feel even better to talk about things that make you smile?

Tell me what has made you happy here.

Here are a couple from me to start:

- Watching live shows. Kaklick, Lyndon, Frogg, Billy, etc. These folks are awesome and the live performances are what drew me to this place just over a week ago.

- Performing live shows. People have come out to my humble little home made stage in my first land in Satang for the two shows I have done so far, and they stuck around. And they enjoyed it. They applauded and encouraged me. They tipped me though I asked for nothing and had no tip jar out. They requested songs. Danced. Had a good time.

- The sheer friendliness and generosity of strangers. My heart has been warmed by the amount of sweet people I have met here. I was genuinely happy when someone I had met just a couple of days previous told me about her SL "engagement" that happened just after one of my shows. She (and others) have made me feel very welcome, and not looked down on just because I am new. Everyone was new once.

- Learning. My head is almost exploding, trying to learn everything at once and it is a great experience. I am catching on to building fairly quickly, and will get even better once I find a campus that is teaching at the n00bish level I am currently at. I have found a template by a Robin person in another thread that will help me make my first t-shirt, and she kindly offered this template for free for anyone to use.

I could go on, but I am going to let you guys continue. I'm tired, and I am going to go to sleep. And dammit, I am going to do so with a smile on my face.

Flexi!!! Flexi is sooo right... it's the way Ylusive swooshes as she walks around... can't stop looking at her.

Finding creativity and ingenuity wherever you look!

Finding that sim you never saw before or visited, going there and thinking "WOW! This is really cool!"

There are two academies that I know of that teach beginners level building, texturing and scripting. Teazers and ASL (Acadmy for Second Learning??). just a hint.

It is always nice to hear about new residents experiences and it is really heart warming to hear that you had such a warm welcoming here.

Hope your cuóntinued stay will be even better.

Cheers!
/R

Friendly people!

Wings!

Flying!

Pixie Dust and Sugar!

but most importantly..... friends!

just like RL, SL is what you focus on - if you focus on the areas that fail, or depressing, or sad, then that is all it is to you. If you focus on the fun, enjoyable, happy, then that is what you see.

I've met some amazingly cool people. It's also a great creative outlet.

The Platinum Penis......It really pees!

What, Flossy is into watersports?

!

For L$20, she's into anyting you want.

Not bad. I always miss out on the sheep deals.

ba-dum-bum-CHING!!

Everybody has a price, I suppose.

I think that I'd have to say that what's really right about SL is this: In addition to being a great form of online recreation (read "game" for some people, a creative means of socialization (read: "3D chatroom" for others, and a means of making money (think "3D commercial website" for yet another group of people (and yes, the groups to tend to have quite a bit of overlap for many, right, Flipper?), Second Life is one of the most amazing experiments in social engineering ever attempted -- and pulled off! -- by human beings.

Think of it this way: in just three short years, plus some development time prior to that, Linden Lab has created a community which at this point is roughly equal in population to Toledo, Ohio, where people work, play, and, for the most part, spend a good deal of their lives. That's really a pretty amazing thing.

P2

The Shelter. And the community in general, as a whole. No matter what different 'scenes' they're into, the majority are friendly, witty people.

Things I love about Second Life:

1. Places. Some of the builds are just fantastic. Look for my upcoming article in the Metaverse Messenger where I write about the cool builds I find!
   
2. The classifieds. My new favorite past time is scanning the personals in the classifieds. These are not PG and not for the faint of heart but OMG OMG OMG they are wonderful.
   
3. The People. Most of the people are pretty danged cool.
   
4. The Forums (resmods notwithstanding)
   
5. SHOPPING! I SO love to shop
   
6. DJs! I have been turned on to so much cool music by all the cool DJs playing music I hadn't heard before
   
7. Live Muscians! Luvs the live music. Hates the spam on the live music group channel
   
8. Torley!
   
9. Goreans! Furries! Age Players (although the next 'parent' I see with someone whose sposed to be underage in a mature area I am going to have a strict talkin to. We MUST protect the children). And all the other fringe players who get beat up so much. I love you guys! Keep doing what yer doing. Pissing off close minded people is a good thing.
   
10. RP Sims. Some of the best RP sims have been going up lately. How cool is this?
    
11. Building. I have to be in the right frame of mine and I miss my workshop (which I shall have again soon). But other than that building is the bomb.
    

I know I am going to be stoned for this but:
* I like the newbies. I do. They make SL life worth living with all their excitement and interest in learning.

So shoot me.

Troy

A couple of weeks ago, three of us went to the edge of a sim, on a hilltop, to watch the neighboring sim be re-started. I handed out tubs of popcorn. As two of us stood munching popcorn waiting to see the sim disappear, the other friend pulls out a 2 meter wide chocolate chip cookie and sticks it in her mouth. The memory of her typing away with that huge cookie in her mouth as we stood on that hillside still makes me laugh out loud.
Viva Second Life.

Ohhhh noooo!! Thats my @#%)(@ cookie!!

Awww these are great!

I like surprises... emergent surprises. Things I don't expect. The positive unpredictable. Meeting amazing people from all around the world, and hey, communication is great. We could all be sub-simians without much of a language, but we can talk to each other. So I don't take that for granted.

Especially when I fling my mind back to a decade ago and would think how farfetched all of this is--but it really is happening.

Oh, I love all the inspirational stories too... the other day, still on the holidays, Pathfinder Linden shared the story he heard from Quirky McArdle of "The Infinite Mind" (http://www.theinfinitemind.com/), about an older woman who had a stroke, and then found out about SL again. She took to it greatly, apparently enjoying moving her avatar around and building things in here, and then--lo and behold!--she began walking again for real. (The original story is much better; mine is just a capsule.)

My candid reaction:
It doesn't deny that there are problems, oh no. There was, is, and always will be. But it gives hope that in life, and Second Life--there's more than just problems. There's hope, there are solutions, and to paraphrase Aliasi Stonebender, SL is a rehumanizer.

I think the reason you get such a strong reaction when the Lindens make a poor decision or one that is perceived as poor, is that all of us love this Second Life, and when anything changes or threatens it, we tend to react strongly.

I have been here for a long time now, and some things are better than when I first set foot in this world, and some things are worse. Unfortunately those that are worse tend to have more of an impact on our experience here.

Troy, I think you're right!

Hi, my name is Mickey McLuhan and I wear a furry AV. I jus' like having a tail! *grin*

I hang out in Sables D'Alliez more often than not, and I LOVE meeting the new people that get there. So polite, so embarrassed by simple questions, so grateful for anyone spending the time. The great part is that most of the ones I've met have ended up being really productive, integral members of SL.

I'll tell you. You help someone adjust a hairdo to fit the way they want, or throw a tshirt together for them with a personalized message? You got someone that will do the same for the others they meet.

As for what I like about SL? Hmmm.. where to start.

Building: I love that I can make ANYTHING I want. Anything that pops into my warped little mind. And if I can't, either someone can help me make it, or LL will make it possible in an update. (I'm looking at you, flexiprims! I FINALLY got my 9 foot long swishy tail with a life of its own!)

Scripting: Ok... Not scripting per se, but I love the fact that I CAN'T script to save my life. Like... not at all. No idea where to start whatsoever. But I LOVE that I've met people that can. My complete and utter incompetance in scripting has help form some of my best friendships on SL.

The Limitations: I like a challenge. When I first got into webdesign, *mumblemumble* years ago, everything was done in HTML with such advanced tools and programs as... Notepad. What got me into it was that there was so much you COULDN'T do with it... and I had to figger out how to get it done. SL is the same way for me. I'm a "Wanna bet?" kinda person. "You can't do that..." Wanna bet?

The people: For all the garbage we see on the forums about how people hate Furries and Goreans and this and that and the other, the only real Anti-anything I've come across while in SL has been the usual douchebag griefers who would do it to anyone. I've never met someone while shopping who says, "Ewww... a furry" or ANYTHING like that (Although, I've seen instances of the opposite and I'll tell you... all of you Furries who say crap like, "Eww, a hyooman"... Cut that shit out. It's not helping. It doesn't make you cool, it doesn't make you funny... it just makes you a bigot. Stop it.)
But almost everyone I've met are just awesome.

The fact that I can find anything: ANYTHING. It constantly amazes me that I can find people who listen to Louis Prima and Hoagy Carmichael, then hit a button and be transported to a Ska palace with Desmond Dekker posters on the wall and Bad Manners playing on the radio, then, in about an hour, pop over and listen to The Lone Ranger radio show.
And what's even better is that if I CAN'T find, it, I can make it and share with others!

and finally...

That it pays for itself.

With just a little initial outlay of time and a small amount of money, you can set it up, if you want, that this amazing little world pays for itself.

That's the part I love the most.

My Starax Wand!!!!

Six random things...

#1 All the amazingly friendly and helpful people
#2 Being able to easily communicate and interact with #1 (I am deaf in RL so this is huge)
#3 Incredible 3D works of art like the Gardens Apollo
#4 Syncdancing
#5 Clothes I could never afford (and don't have the bod for) in RL
#6 The anticipation of never knowing what I will stumble into the next time I log in

The other day I went back to another online game I played for some time, and found it to be very much the same as it had been when I left. Structures all looked pretty much the same. People were doing the same activities and having the same conversations.

It made me appreicate the way that SL continually evolves. It is the proverbial river, which you enter again and again from the same spot on the bank, yet you are never stepping into the same water.

Yes, this continual change can be frustrating, even maddening, but it is seldom dull. And when it is, you go away for a bit, even leave the world for a bit...it will be doing something different when you come back.

Sometimes. I've met a lot of people who seemed to have lost their humanity when they hit the 'Connect' button. Then again, maybe they never had any. Anonymity brings the good and the bad, only difference is the good can flourish with or without it.