RL and SL

Many people think that a game like Second Life is better than real life. They are wrong and right at the same time.

They are right, because you just can go away if someone bothers you.

But they are also wrong, because people are people and ever the same. And in SL many people are on a even more rude behaviour than in RL because of the (false) anonymity  an avatar gives you. Many are trying to do things in SL, which they would never do in RL. This is part of the charms of the game and of course not bad, but there always some people who cross the line, then. And this is bad.

Food for thought

Well, since SL was down over half the day (or even more…) and there was no possibility to login, what’s the addicts second best choice? Right: reading some posts in the blogosphere about Second Life and thinking about it.

So I here now present in no particular order my todays choice of articles about SL and stuff:

  • SL History Wiki entry about Aimee Weber. Very interesting read about one of the leading content builders in here.
  • Amy Weebler’s 2007 Second Life Predictions. A very fun read, for example:

    Linden Lab will be sold to Google, who will ALSO be unable to get search to work properly.

  • Wall o’Residents. Jeska Linden’s photo stream on Flickr with some very interesting photos of LL employees.
  • Aimee Weber and the AvaStar: „Corporate Love“. An interview with Aimee Weber, who was one of the chief builders of the AvaStar island in Sl. It was a very interesting read for me in the Metaverse Messenger. The AvaStar is a tabloid, made by the German Axel Springer Verlag, who also publishs the famous Bild-Zeitung in Germany, Europe’s biggest yellow press paper. Aimee Weber gives us some piece of her mind and thinks that the Second Life Herald only always mocks on SL and celebrates griefers. Well, I guess not all people are going to be with her opinion on this point.
  • Prokofy Neva’s blog with an article named „The REAL Awful Stuff“. It is a very important read for anybody, mainly because it shows how leaving and saying too much stuff in SL can ruin your privacy in RL. Prokofy Neva writes about how a well known griefer named Plastic Duck aka Gene Replacement (here’s an interview with him) was able to pinpoint the real life persona of Prokofy Neva and how the avatar Prokofy Neva is being harassed in SL on and on. If these accusations are not false, we talk about some heavy stuff here, including identity theft and cyberstalking. I guess if Prokofy Neva is able to pinpoint Plastic Duck down in RL he for sure is going to sue him. This is also a very important read for everybody to understand that you cannot care too much about your own privacy! Sooner or later it can for sure backfire on you, you never know who’s out there.

And of course the obligatory link of the day about the downtime of SL: „Second Life vorübergehend geschlossen“, courtesy of Heise Newsticker (German). Second Life is called a „internet playground“ in the article – well, this for sure fits!

Another unplanned downtime… again.

Well, another downtime of the server, again. What should have been only a small downtime turns out to be a major downtime – again. They are updating the central storage hardware – oh well. Since more and more business keeps getting into SL and is made in SL it is for sure time that LL thinks about some efforts to achieve a better availibility, since these downtimes lately simply said tend to piss off many residents.

Blog opened!

Greetings, traveler! I am your humble host on this side, please let me introduce myself, my name is Bartholomew Gallacher.

I am a male avatar in the game called Second Life and exploring this player made universe day by day. I was born on the 25th of September in 2006, although I really began to play in the middle of November. Since then I’ve been online more or less from day to day, explored many different locations, found some favorite spots for myself and made some wonderful friends through my journeys. They know who they are, a big thanks for your wonderful friendship!

Why this blog? Because I want to say something about this game in the WWW and it is always nice to have some feedback, more or less. I don’t know who is going to read this blog, perhaps many, perhaps only some, but that doesn’t matter to me really. This blog is going to be my main diary about my journeys, adventures and experiences in SL.

Since I, the player behind the avatar, live in Europe (GMT+1), but the majority of the SL player originates from North America, it is not always easy to get to know some people from the other continents or keep in touch. Well, at least I try and somehow I managed to be able to keep in touch with some, though. To keep things simple, I’ve enabled PST (which in fact is also SLT) for all blog entries and comments. Just bear in your mind, when you see very strange times for your taste, that 8 hours are quite a difference!

What I am surely not going to do in this blog is to post anything about my real life. I am a firm believer that SL is not RL and RL should not be mixed quickly or at all with SL – in most cases it only brings trouble to you. I may reveal parts about my real life to some people I trust, but surely not on a blog, since I believe that this is very important to keep my privacy intact. This also means no RL pics of me in the game or this blog. Sorry.

I’ve been a well known wizard in a big MUD for about five years and have enough knowledge and experience to judge on this and act accordingly. Believe me, it is very important to keep your privacy intact and not to treat this lightly. Just remember, SL is not only a game, for many it also means a very hard business, and if you want to hire in a real life company somewhere your game play could backfire on yourself! This also means, that I dislike many so called Web 2.0 sites, since many people tend to disclose too much about their real life there, too. For further reading about the pitfalls of disclosing too much about your RL I recommend the article  „Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever.“

I am also in the lucky position to have my own root server somewhere else, but using it would also reveal too much about my real life persona, so it is now wordpress.com for me, which is a very good free hoster of blogs!

Having said this, what do I do mostly in SL? I hang out with my friends, play a part time greeter for Intimate Moments, like to dance in Phat Cat’s or explore new locations. I still don’t own land or have a place of my own, since I simply have no need for this at the moment. Period.

I am also a firm believer in good conversation, manners and intelligence in SL. There is no fun for me in running around naked everywhere or use speech such as „lol“, „rofl“, „wanna fuck“, „i like u“ and so on. You have the words, you have a keyboard, so better type it in accordingly. It may be a little more work, but it is worth it! Believe me. And if you are not a fast typer, well, better take some typing lessons. It is also much better to talk English in populated places, since it is the lingua franca in SL and rude if other people cannot understand your native tongue.

So, welcome, and I hope you are going to have fun in reading about my experiences!