One Year Malaise

I find myself re-inspired when I collaborate with new people. Even better is when I collaborate with old friends and new ones... It's also re-inspiring to bring a RL friend into SL and show them around...

Enabran,


I too find it hard to currently be excited about SL. I thought opening Gold Coast and having one of my visions in SL become a reality would help, but it really hasn't. I have become a bit of recluse in SL and that is not how my Second Life has turned out. I originally was drawn to SL, like some other communities I have been involved with online, because I hoped to network, socialize and collaborate with other like minded intelligent technology savvy adults. It caused me to createthis thread over the weekend, which while I think interested some people, could never compete with forum drama. Which in the same way, a lot of decent event with people socializing or discussing issues can't compete with Sexy Thong Contests and 10K a day giveaways. I was looking for an intellectual haven and instead found strip mall hell.

Also, SL used to provide an odd bit on continuity in my chaotic travel life. I used to often be in a different state or at a minimum different city everyday for weeks at a time and SL was a constant every evening in an unstable world. Now that I no longer have that job, I don’t need SL to fill that void.

I still think SL has an amazing potential and I won’t bail but I feel right now the majority of my free time is better spent elsewhere.

I guess it's not the same thing, because I am only 6 months and have yet to make a dime in this place but I have been feeling the same over the last week or two. Having never missed a single day for 6 months, I find myself not even feeling like loggin on (I havent hardly at all for a week).

If it helps anyone to make the comparison, I feel the "6 month blues" (for me), are simply a matter of intense dissapointment. I came here with high ideals and certain goals, and while I have gone after and achieved those goals, they have all turned out to be something *less* than I initially imagined. People I thought to be towering genius types have often turned out to be fools. The effusivenes and friendship I received from complete strangers when I started has disspeared completely and the last time I was nice to a noobie, they were surprised. As if no-one else had been nice to them before that.

The possibilities of creation are stymied at every turn by mindless censorship or plain bad design. Everytime I get an idea for something lately I get about halfway through before some insoluable problem with the interface or the scripting comes up and I have to start over with something else.

Friends turn out to be liars or at least not what you think they are, deceptions abound. Great community projects turn out to be folly, and the social environment has deteriorated even over this short period to the point that, well... do we even have a social environment anymore?

I realise this is just a big negative rant, but sometimes I wish we could just kick out all the teenagers and business people and go back to the "old days." What's wrong with a small community of intellectuals and artists?

Very incisive. I have indeed graduated and started my career. I am mentally exhausted by the time I get home and find very little creative juice is available to me. Even so, though, during the period of unemployment immediately following graduation, I was feeling feeling the first glimmers of my... disappointment. Now, added to the malaise is a creative exhaustion that has caused quite a draught in my production.

Interestingly, though, when I came to SL, I never expected to start a business, though I admired those who did. The business aspect ended up being a big surprise, but one that I enjoyed a great deal.



An excellent idea! I am very much reminded of the B5 episode "Walkabout."



Heh, maybe. But it's a little more than that. I'm still wildly devoted to the idea of a "metaverse."



Haha, not sure how well my cyberpunk presence would fit in among your quaint little village. I don't think I could get the zoning permits for my 150m skyscraper.



I've always been a bit of recluse myself and find that mirrored in SL sometimes. Not always, though, and I always enjoy socializing with the intelligent folk I find there. The finding isn't always easy, though.



I agree with most of what you said in your "rant" -- but as for the "old days," well... Can't put the toothpaste back once it's squeezed, y'know?

actually, there's an entire area of the sim zoned specifically for modern builds.

Yeah. But no one can beat my Prime... Nexus Prime real estate within shouting distance of the Welcome Area.

What "old days"?

I hate this whole sort of "let's kick out whoever we don't agree with" thinking.

What's wrong with a small community of intellectuals and artists? The fact that it's exclusive and snobby.

If you are an artist or intellectual is a land of thong wearing Paris Hilton wannabes, a small community of like minded people can be inclusive, refreshing and welcoming. The best thing about SL is that you can isolate yourself from all the other trash if you want to and have a community or circle with the kind of people you like. We all see these groups everyday in SL.

I was just speaking to someone else recently about this and we both saying how difficult it is to feel productive in SL when you work full time. I rarely get anything done during the work week in SL. I'm up at 6 AM and my mind usually goes on autopilot at around 3 pm. By the time I log into SL in the evening I'm pretty much useless. I just don't worry about it anymore. I Live Help or visit people and see what they are up to. I tackle stuff on the weekends when I feel more mellow.

As far as I am concerned, this post is what SL is all about. Mad props to Bra!

Yeah that WAS pretty brilliant.

It gave me post envy.

I am sure there is some picture somewhere that can make you feel back on the top. There has to be a picture out there with the right girth for you.

Cyberpunks welcome Kendra built me a great Steampunk Fachtwerk. Sure it's not 150 stories but it still feels like home. Besides us Cyberpunks feel the impending doom of humanity, might as well participate in shaping cooperation in the metaverse. No one in the city seems to mind the presence of an alien from the year 3050 milling around the city.

Prime does rock btw

I never gave up my place in Sistiana.

hehe.. Just throwing ideas out of course Enabran. You know I like you and just want to help you have fun if I can!

Sorry Lo.
Kinda negative lately

Such a community needn't be snobby though (at least that's not what I was thinking of when I said it), and as an artist/intellectual yourself that's a rather strange comment to make.

Actually, as a true intellectual, there was nothing odd about Lo making that comment.

Could it possibly in part have something to do with the dissapointment I get sometimes when in SL?

Because SL is the land of opportunity, where you can do anything, be anything, etcetera. We all know the spin. But is that really true? How many projects can't be done because the scripting issues are insurmountable or they just cause too much load so any self respecting builder won't make them?

And while it's true you can do a lot of things, a TON of things even, are they all stimulating? Do most people find it fun to drive vehicles around when the controls and physics are so shaky and crossing sim boundries can make things get all weird and buggy sometimes?

I may just not have found the right things to do for myself, but recently I strayed onto the Bedazzled site, I saw all these awesome things, all this awesome potential, and then learned that most of them were short lived, and gone before my time. Things like I saw on there such as Winter Ice Castle, Chinatown, Sim Horror. They're not here now anymore, as far as I know, and I've yet to find anything like them.

And even then from what I could figure out many of the greatest and finest projects in SL suffered from massive lag due to load and servers simply not coping or griefing or a whole slough of other problems.

I dunno, seeing all that great stuff, and then figuring out it "wasn't meant to be" in SL as it currently is and knowing it was once there, and no longer is, makes me sad. I'd take projects like that over a mall shopping spree any day. (not that I'm saying I don't like shopping )

But maybe I'm completely wrong here.

Well, yeah

Anyway, Eboni's right too; and none of us are Paris Hilton wannabes -- it just really gets my goat when ... folks make "us vs. them"-type statements.

So true. By the time I get home, I usually don't have it in me to do anything. I need a nap right now

Yeah. I know I do that a bit too, but it's just because everyone is against me.

(edit - wrote this after Emma's post)

They are short-lived because it costs a lot to maintain the Sims they sit on.

I was so happy with my little roster of places like Spitooney and Backstage and Phobos Trailer Park as places to take new people to. (And those weren't so populated as to suffer from lag.)

Then I realized that all those places were sort of an act of charity, provided by people who might no longer want to spend their money maintaining them (with tier), but maybe try something new, or just save the money. That is completely understandable.

That's when I became clued into the fact that many good things in SL will disappear, and you just have to get the good out of them while they are there. And unfortunately, I don't have the time to spend (or the draw distance) to go out and find much of the new stuff for myself, but wait till others discover it.

Massive lag - yeah. That's why I don't attend a large gathering or event unless it is really important to me. Once I get there, I sit down and focus on something in the distance, like the ocean, and have the ocean fill my screen. That helps.

As for the technical limitations, yes, I run into plenty when I'm building. But still, it's so MUCH more than I've been able to do anywhere else (I have been in TSO for 3 years), that I can easily endure it - at least at this point - and it provides a greater challenge, in a way.

It takes a while to figure out what you want to do in SL, or indeed, if there is anything you want to do. I was going to do Game Show Channel like I did in TSO until I realized that events get no support. But that was okay, as there was still the whole building thing, and that just doesn't STOP being oodles of fun for me. And very satisfying when people buy and enjoy using my things.

Then there are also things happening all the time that might pique your interest. I remember I really enjoyed the Touchstone Fair. And then there was a Trailer Park contest. I didn't know about it or enter, but a friend did, and I saw his place. (Unfortunately I didn't get back in time to see it all till it was all over.)

Plus - there's always Bingo! I love Bingo.

coco

This is also a function of what this thread is discussing. People look to new and different challenges, leaving their previous work behind and, often, a fan club of SLers missing a favorite build or activity.

My problem is that I've gotten to the point in building where my ideas are larger than the sims or technical capacity of sims to contain them. I tried building small and dense, I overwhelm the client with the object rezzed in an empty sim. I build large, but I can't afford to own a sim outright. I really need two things to happen - limitations expanded/improved, and the costs of sims to come WAY down.

Early adopters pay a lot, I just can't do that right now. It really should get to the point like the web is now, pay under $100 USD a year for gigs of space and bandwidth for hosting...you know, non-crazy prices. Then you'll see some really cool stuff, I'm sure. And it will STAY around.

A lot of things come down too early because of costs.