Best friends!!
Spot on Ceri!
I have spent my weekend thinking about what Second Life really is. I have been talking to many ppl about their experiences. I can’t really get it out of my system. I mean all this pain and anxieties that I see in here. I had to go see what Linden Lab say about it. If you go to http://secondlife.com/whatis/ to see what SL is you find the following text…
“Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.”
They are right! It’s us residents that create it all. All from the virtual environment to how we treat one another… But they don’t mention anything about what this world can do to you. Good and bad! It’s maybe not in their interest or not even their responsibility. I don’t know could have been me that didn’t find it. I don’t even think that anyone can understand what it’s like if you never have been interacting in SL.
Still ppl get hurt badly in here. Is it that we all don’t speak the same language? Projections? Can it be that some of us are training on skills we don’t own in RL? I am straight forward in RL and have no fear of conflicts there. In SL I could definitely be harder and not so damn polite and kind all the time. But do I train on others in here? Sure I do! Do I have the right? Yes I’d like to think so as long as I don’t hurt anyone else.
So why do we get hurt in here? Are we too sensitive? Ppl tell me that they separate SL and RL and when they turn off the computer the feelings stay in there. Hmmm… is that possible? For some but not for me. I myself have been here for about 20 months now and think I have done it all too. All phases and even been hurt. Some of my best friends in RL are from here. Have I met them? Nooooo not all of them but I love them deeply! Now is that possible? Yes thanks to voice, MSN, webcam, phones and SMS.
A very wise person told me... "SL is not a game to me, I always know there's a human heart behind every avatar I interact with in here, and I interact with that - the avatar is a house for it, just like the flesh body in RL is."
I will probably think about this some more and I hope to speak to more ppl about it cos it interest me a great deal.
So to all my friends out there and to the rest of you…
Take care of each other! Be nice and leave the drama at the door… or off the keyboard!
From a sunny Sweden. //Yeti