Who are we?

I know I've seen discussions like this one before. However, with recent shifts in Second Life from "what you can do" to "how much can one make," I feel it's time for another look at ourselves as a community.


Who are we?


- We are creators.

This world exists only because we have created it. Two years since the release from beta, look at all that we have created. I mean, really look at it.

We have created cities. Towns. Worlds. Tiny details.

We have emulated reality. We have gone to great lengths to escape reality.

We have emulated art. We have emulated life. We have even tried to emulate sex.




- We are thinkers and innovators.

We continually rally about discussions of ideas. Despite our differences, we continually discuss the ideas and shortcomings of our world.

We discuss art. We discuss money. We discuss power. Yet, we still discuss simple pleasures and altruism.

We continue to shape our world in new ways through ideas.




- We are businesspeople.

We create to get paid.



- We are altruists.

We create at our own expense to help our fellow man.



- We are diverse.

We are newbies, taking their first steps in a new world.
We are veterans, coming from other virtual cultures with our own unique perspective.

We are Thereians.
We are gamers.
We are the technical newborn.
We are the common.
We are the elite.

We are the space captains - exploring worlds never known.
We are the simple reality enthusiasts - existing in a true Second Life.
We are the club-goers - virtual hedonists and socialites.
We are the isolationists - expanding virtual horizons from afar.
We are the furry - esoteric beings in a virtual world.
We are the mundane - existing only in the day to day.
We are the superheros - modelled after our childhood icons.
We are the daily man - the simplest of people.

We are the aliens, the animals, the mechs, the strange, the simply "not human," and the human beings.

We are many.



- We are all the same.

We all exist in the same world. We all share similar goals. We are 32,000 active residents.

We are few.



Who are you?
Why do you continue to exist in this "Second Life?"
What are your interests in this community and culture?

who is 'we'?

The Second Life community, of course.

I will admit this is somewhat self-indulgent, but I'm curious.

I dunno who we are, but I am me!

I like the nice idea of 'we' tho, shame there are some ppl that can't accept a community and help build it.

Oh. Well I don't believe there is one, so I'll stay quiet

p.s. shaddap Willow.

Five Stars, Jeffrey. Excellent, poignant summation and provocative questions.

Good landings, too

Seriously, I came to SL with only the germs of ideas on where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do here. I've been in so many other worlds where things started off so promising but ended up in disappointment for one reason or the other.

So I started out skeptical. Almost cynical. At first, all I saw were storefronts and commercialism -- being a stark, raving capitalist I didn't have a problem with that but I also knew that in itself, commercialism wouldn't sustain the world.

Then I saw Chosen's SciFi museum. The Ivory Tower. Spittoonie Island. The Braniac build (geeks are sexy!). Phobos. The Forest of Karhuvel. My mind began reeling -- it isn't the commercialism that makes SL go. It isn't the IP or the Tringo or the clubbing or the avie sex. It's the creativity. It's the sheer, unimaginable power of the human mind spawning ideas into tangible realities. THAT is why I fell in love with SL. THAT is why I'm here and plan to be here until it is superceded one day by something bigger, better, and more stable.

Well..you had me at hello, but lost me here:



That is one point that causes contention within the world. We don't all share the same goals, or even close to them. Many people have one goal in Second Life; To make RL money. Others want to socialize and chat. Others want to be left alone for the most part to build and/or script. Others want the politics, and still others to grief.

It is as varied, or close to it, as the RL. We are not the same at all, except there are humans behind the AVs.

But I do appreciate the sentiment of of the rest, and hope folks will read it and realize that though diverse, we can still all try to be accepting and kind.

Great post Gomez!

I was having a similar but different conversation the other day. It seems one of the major differences between the SL Community today, and the one from a year ago (when I started), is that there is a whole new class of citizens in our world.

There are a whole lot more players, using SL as a life sim these days (think The Sims). There are more people who have "families" and are content just "living" in this virtual world. In general I think this is a positive for SecondLife, as more people are willing to just drop money through GOM and less worried about "making money". This provides larger markets for our products, games, and art.

Isn't that diversity something to be expected though? Somewhere between the beginning and now, SL picked up a few thousand users (and I'll question the 30,000 number simply because I think many, if not most, are alts). Somewhere the community gained a critical mass that fractured it into hundreds of sub-particles. All still part of the SL community, but forever altering the definition of that community. Just because I don't like someone or don't agree with them doesn't mean we're not in the same community, does it?


What David said. Doubled.

I tried to touch on these with "simple reality enthusiasts." How would you prefer it phrased?

Thank you for the responses so far. Continue.

I am profoundly disturbed by the conspicuous absence of the word "fun" from Jeffrey's original post as well as the rest of the thread.
SL is all about having fun, for crying out loud!
We create because it's FUN.
We make money because it's FUN (or at least it enables us to have FUN in the real world)
We hang out and play tringo... because it's FUN!
We are furry gorean role players or whatever... because that's our way of having FUN!

Eggy Lippmann, you stand accused of not taking seriously the needs of people who use SL to make RL money. How do you plead?

Remember kids, Second Life is a serious business. You're not here to have fun!

Nice post Jeffrey. I'd have to say that the reasons I'm here are "all of the above." I'm definitely of the mind that we are all part of a single community in which there are many subcommunities. There are more things to bind us than seperate us. I consider those around me to be my peers, even though in RL we would probably be divided by age, sexuality, interests, and all the othery myriad ways humans like to form themselves into exclusive groups. One of the things I love best about SL is how it serves to break down barriers. It reminds me of how you can be on the subway with a bunch of total strangers but when it breaks down then suddenly everyone starts chatting with each other... we all become bonded by a shared experience. SL is kinda like that every day (the shared experience, not being broken down!).

Hmm.. Haven't met any Gorean furries yet eggy

Unless you plan on donning a fursuit and being a kajirus

Briana Dawson

I like it. I guess I would be a "simple reality enthusiast" since I do tend to immerse myself in the experience when I play, and enjoy most those things which are closest to reality - like Spitooney.

I'm also a "simple reality enthusiast" when I work, since I build things that are as close to a particular slice of reality as I can get them.

I believe it was Robin (Jeska?) who once made a list of what second life was to us, listing five or six topics (like "a platform" for something or other; a way to chat, stuff like that) but she glaringly left out fun, which I then inserted into my answer; I think I put it second to something.

In Jeffrey's well-written and surprisingly lyrical post, though, I think fun is more implicit in everything which he said and the way he said it; I didn't feel that fun was missing, like it obviously was in the shorter, more succinct list.

coco

And from that great, big, entire list of different but similar but similar but different things, what do you conclude?

btw, emulation is not creation.

And from that great, big, entire, boiled-down list of different but similar but similar but different things, what do you conclude?

SL challenges me - on so many different levels.

That's why I'm here

That we're not really a community at all but a lot of different people who happen to be using the same platform to do our own thing, some of which admittedly coincide with the efforts and interests of likeminded people.

Which is why I feel no more like a member of any community for SL'ers than I feel part of a community of, say, MS Word users or Dot.Net developers.

Damn it. I said I'd be quiet, didnt I?

Oh, I think it's definitely a community, all right.

And Kris - you are definitely a part of it!

Seems to me there are (at least) two kinds of communities: Those created when people physically live in close proximity (and we do that in SL), and those created when people come together for a special purpose, like to go to church, attend political rallys, put on a local play, or take a strong interest in a rather esoteric virtual world.

coco

I think the joy and wonder of Second Life is the ability for each person to find the niche that best suits them. Do they just want to always be socializing, out, not worrying about a "job" or "creating"? Fine, they have that ability. Do they want to design and be a loner except in terms of selling their designs and customer service? Fine, they can do that. Do they want to design but never sell? Sure, go right ahead.

I mean, that's the joy. It's not just all about being good at one thing, there is a place for everyone within Second Life. So, there's a lot of tringo games? You don't have to go to them. Find something else to do. *shrugs* Honestly that's what captivates me the most about the Second Life world. The diversity, the ability to discover things that you do well and then do them.

pfft. well, i think 'community' is used far too much to describe stuff anyway. e.g. the PC Community/Mac Community, the forum community, the Acme Widget Users Community etc.

I definitely think there are communities within Second Life, but I don't think that just being a resident of Second Life makes you a member of any community.

As you said, Coco, people who come together for a special purpose probably qualify as a community, but the scope of Second Life is no more 'special purpose' than say, 'all PC users'. Like I said, we're just users of the same platform.

But I digress; it's prolly just me! I feel the same way in real life; I don't consider myself a member of my 'local community' as they are fond of calling themselves. We're just strangers connected by geography. In SL, we're strangers connected by Linden Lab

I don't know about communities or like minded goals or whatever... but to put it simply u are a part of my little world because u left a major mark in it. I don't think we had anything at all in common except that we enjoyed each other's company. U were and still are an amazing builder, scriptor and the most fun person i ever met.

No labels just love here! SO THERE! OMG did I get ballzy or what?!? I just love you so MUCH!

I am a primoholic.

Jeffrey, great post. it's always nice to see the positive and to really sit and think about the wonders of SL.
-

for me SL is many things, from being a manifestation of a "game" i always dreamed of to a place where i can make other dreams a reality.

as far as "community" goes, i agree with both sides. granted it's not like how it was a year and a half ago, but still.. there's a sense of it. mid way through '04 is when we splintered from one big community to a bunch of smaller ones which constitute the whole. but even still, we are binded in another way.. the ways in which we'll help each other.. SLers we don't even know. i know i'm not the only one who will through a complete stranger a thousand L$, or help them learn about SL, building, scripting, knowledge.. whatever we can do, we do it. that's part of what gives us that sense of community.

but i digress..

i'm not sure of my role here, but my goal is to help make SL become more than it is.. to become more than we think it can be. i'm not here for the income or the politics.. i'm here for the creativity, for the biulding of a world.
SL is no mere platform with which to play around on; however, it can be used as such. this world is so much more.. unlike any other online world. whether you compare SL to The Sims, SWG, WoW, There.. anything.. no matter what the comparison, SL comes out as something extraordinarily distinct. we can build our world, script it.. we can force and guide the evolution of our parallel world.

that is why i'm here, to help further the evolution of a parallel world that has as much validity as an alternate Earth on a parallel plane of existance. instead of being on another physical plane, it's on a digital one.

my involvement may fluctuate from nil to over-active, but i'll be here as long as SL has growing to do.. and there's always somewhere to grow to.