What are some of your earliest memories from Second Life?

[Ivy Mysterious]

A few days ago me and my SL mother and friend were talking about our early days on on the platform, and we both had some pretty insane stories that gave us a good laugh

 

What are some of your all's earliest memories on SL?

 

One of mine was, I used to hang out at this adult sim called Tropicana quite a bit back about 8 or so years ago, I used to pretty much stay there and just cause general chaos lol. I'll spare the details because this is a general rated forum, but one time I got a pop notifying me that my avatar had became pregnant. Keep in mind I had only been about a month or so into SL at the time and knew next to nothing in general lol. I literally thought at the time what I had in my inventory was all I was allowed to have. It goes without saying, I absolutely freaked out and lost my mind when I got that notification. I remember IMing a friend of mine at the time absolutely losing it like 'What am I gonna do?! I'm gonna have to create a new account! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!"

.....It wasn't one of my finer moments.

But what are some of y'alls???

[Claireschen Hesten]

Going back close to 11 years having ventured away from freebie dungeon/Deva Loka I managed to come across a gaming place and next door was a place that sold pools that i somehow managed to get banned from for a time. I'm a total noob still not sure how things, work didn't have a single L$ to my name and at this game place i spy two dance pads that paid L$1/10 mins. Not knowing i had to right click > sit i clicked a dace pad and it said something along the lines of click me dance for 10 minutes to earn L$1. I clicked it several times hoping it tell me what to do to dance and get the L$1, before thinking i had to click it then frantically press the F numbers that had dances for 10 minutes. When doing that didn't pay me L$1 the first time i did it several more times trying to make sure the dance animations never stopped, and gave up when i realized i wasn't going to be getting any L$ it wasn't long after that i figured out how to actually use the dance pad

[Dolly Waifu]

I remember my very first day on SL. Waaay back on TG, I stopped into a city sim called Eutopia. I wandered around for a bit before running into some girl with really pretty white angel wings on. I asked where she got them, and she said they were a freebie. She passed them to me and I was so excited to have them! They were the first item I'd gotten beyond the default outfits. I wore them with my awful noob avatar and felt like a million bucks. Then, while flying around with my new set of wings (it really didn't feel right to fly without them!) I ran into a group of people sitting on a rooftop. We got to talking, and they were really nice people! We ended up being fast friends, and stayed friends until the grid merge separated us. We danced in the little club there that day, hung out on the beach, laughed and joked around, and in the days that followed, they showed me all their favorite places to hang out. SL back then really was just a different experience. It seems like, nowadays, you're lucky if someone even acknowledges your presence when you say hello.

[Zeta Vandyke]

During one of my first days I was exploring a cyberpunkish city, Nexus Prime. Was one of the first places I found in SL. Was awestruck. Exploring several levels of buildings, sub levels, and when exploring the sewer tunnels with hidden rooms, I met a guy also recently in game and exploring there. We became close friends, exploring SL together, learning building and stuff. Doing tons of silly stuff, meeting new people. Shame he left SL years ago.

Back then it was such a journey of exploration. I mean, nowadays stuff looks so amazing, much better. But its now "normal" (few exceptions, like Drune!). My biggest advise for new people wil always be to explore as many places as possible. You find the most amazing stuff out there and never know what interesting people you will meet during those travels.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Zeta Vandyke

[Cindy Evanier]

Funnily enough, 10 years ago today this noob walked past me. (me a month old super experienced I know it all noob too)  I had never felt confident to IM anyone first before but I was dancing by myself on the beach alone, profile perving.  This brand new that day, noob walked past me and he had actually bothered to fill out little bits of his profile and it said he lived near me.  I took the plunge and said Hi in IM.  15 minutes later he worked out where to reply to an IM.  So we talked and talked and talked.  I told him all the best freebie places to shop because I was SO experienced in this in my first month 🙄   We hung out every day until after 2 weeks he said, I am going on holiday for a week and off he went.  After a couple of days I realised there was a big hole missing from my SL.  Nobody held my attention like this guy.  Exploring wasn't as much fun. I missed him!  I told myself I was silly, he probably didn't feel the same and just went off and made a new account or something to get away from me.  Then just over a week later he logged in.  Intake of breath, ok do I message him or wait or.... panic.. then ping ping, he messaged me, he had a great holiday but.... he missed me! 

Here we are 10 years later, his rez day and our anniversary of the day we met.  Later today we will do what we always do on this day and visit the places we used to go back then.  So few now but Inspire Space, Garden of Dreams, Tempura are still around.  

[Garnet Psaltery]

On the 11th April 2005 I logged in for the first time on Orientation Island.  I had fun learning a few basics like chatting with the kissing parrot, and tweaking Ruth, until I got to the Getting a Closer Look station.  Being too impatient to learn how to cam behind the poster, I walked round it instead, clicked the back and got my congratulations.  What a cheat

Edited March 9, 2019 by Garnet Psaltery
Typo.

[Resi Pfeffer]

Its not my first memory at all, but a few weeks after my first login i attended a party in a crowded club, and i think i paid about 5 Lindens to the "sploder" above my head, while all the others went crazy, stuffing tens and hundrets of lindens into, until it exploded. The biggest chunk felt on me. About 600 Lindens. I still remember, how happy and lucky i felt. That was a huge amount of money for me in these early days.

[Cindy Evanier]

10 hours ago, IvyLarae said:

one time I got a pop notifying me that my avatar had became pregnant.

Seriously that exact same story happened to me and I avoided logging in on the expected date because I expected to find my avi writhing around in pain popping out a baby!

[sirhc DeSantis]

Earliest? Wandering away from Hanja and being in a panic as I thought I would never find it again.

Then wondering if I would ever see all that was possible.  That one still applies.

[Marianne Little]

Ooh, I remember when I found the really well built places. The garden I found, and now I can't remember its name. The dancing place where it was round dance floors with bridges that built then together.

The free red gown one of the dance places had. Could it be a place that is still around?

And Thassa, the gorean-but-not-roleplay island. How amazing it was to get there, first on a ship, then a canoe that you had to paddle in. How people could make all that.

Edit: I found a video of Thassa.

Amazed by scripters and what they made. Still is.

And how intimidated I was with roleplay. Still is.

Finding the blog FabFree and getting lots of stuff. Not so much now...

Going to Caledon and be complimented on my gown "lots of prims" and I didn't know what a prim was. 😄

And the Wastelands. How amazing is that place. I had found the minimap so I could teleport out if someone moved towards me. Scared what would happen if someone came close. They were so amazing, I felt like they were smaller gods. They knew everything.

The careful research I did in weeks to find the skin I was sure to use the rest of my SL. And shoes without bling. I bought 2000 L and that was the start to my shopping obsession.

The first goodlooking male I saw. I had no idea avatars, male avatars in particular, could look so good.

Shopping at Bare Rose. I got lost again and again.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Marianne Little
video

[Kotelle]

I don't remember that much because I didn't stay that long in SL with my first avi. That was in 2007, I remember having long, looooong flexi hair which looked amazing in motion, big shopping malls and a club Odds & Ends where I used to hang out and found some friends. They had dance pads which paid avatars for dancing on them and there was always a fight for the blue pad which paid like 50 or 60 lindens per hour

funny coincidence is that my first avi and current avi were rezzed the same month, almost the same day (15th and 16th of Jan)

[Phil Deakins]

My early days were pretty average and nothing worth mentioning, but the couple of mentions of dancepad camping reminded of something that happened back then.

I went to a club with a friend. It had camping pads to dance on, so I used them a few times. On one occasion I got on one for a while, and it paid me every 5 minutes while I was on it. Then I went home but soon found that the pad was still paying me. So I went back to get on and off it it again to try and stop it, but couldn't get in the place. It appeared to be faulty. I logged out and back in, but the thing wouldn't stop paying me. Eventually I logged out for the night and went to bed. When I got up the next day, and logged in, I found that it had continued to pay me all through the night, and it was still doing it.

It eventually stopped. It seems that the sim went faulty in some way. They don't make camping pads like that any more lol.

[Alyona Su]

My favorites are:

• Wait, we can build in the SKY!?
• Gray Goo Grid Crashing
• Wednesday Updates; Grid Shutdown from 7AM to Noon.
• Not knowing that you can cam, then sit to get out of the building you're trapped in because LL shut off all scripts because griefers trying to crash the grid and therefore window-shopping (because vendors didn't work) for a few hours.
• ZOMG! FLEXI HAIR!!!!
• Flip-a-coin: Shoes or Hair up your butt after a TP?
• Wearing something sexy while cuddling on a poseball, remove a clothing item = popping OFF the poseball.
• Gray Goo Grid Crashing (worth a second mention because it was THAT bad)
• Resident-run banks you could deposit all your L$ into! So coll! What could go wrong?
• Gambling Casinos *EVERYWHERE* that were scripted by other residents (unchecked for validity. Lagging so many sim to an utter crawl. But losing money was FUN!
• Forum hysteria because the Grid CANNOT HOLD CONCURRENT 10,000 USERS; IT WILL CRASH!!!

Lots more, but those are some highlights that come to mind.

Edited March 8, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Eva Knoller]

4 hours ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

During one of my first days I was exploring a cyberpunkish city, Nexus Prime. Was one of the first places I found in SL. Was awestruck.

I had forgotten about Nexus Prime! I spent so much time there in the beginning... what a great memory.  

I can remember as a noob not knowing about camera controls. I had to sit down every time I wanted to see the front of my avi. I also remember the nice fellow who kindly informed me that I needed to wear a shoe base with the blingy heels that my feet were half falling out of. 😂

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

My first memory of SL is Orientation Island. I remember being instructed how to lift a beach ball and put it on a table and click on a parrot to let it say my name. And then fly over a chasm in order to get to a teleporting device that would plunge me into the real SL world.

I remember landing in the Hobo Infohub in the Calleta region. There lived Arcadia Asylum, whom later taught me how to determine proper llSitTarget settings, and the people from Rezzable, who later made the Greenies and Carnival of Doom sims. I remember changing my avatar in Edit Appearance, by sliding all the sliders to either 0 or 100. I was very pleased with the result.

I kept a few records of those days.

Talking to little green men who told me that slavery was still a thing in SL, befriending a tall woman who gave me the cigar that I wore for years to come... I found out that land was pretty expensive in SL, so I decided to squat and picked a nice big castle for that. It was a nice place and the owner tolerated me, until I started to complain about the hot water boiler that needed fixing. They also had these really weird crosses. Cults and occult rituals aren't really my thing, so I didn't stay long. (Yeah, ok, I got kicked out over the hot water thing.) But I always frequented Calleta and later Hobo Island in the years after. That couch in front of the TV was the center of SL for me.

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Ceka Cianci]

I remember after getting out of orientation island..My friends took me to these places where everything was free..

I was like a kid in a candy store just grabbing everything just in case I would need it for later..Mainly because I didn't know what I was going to need later..

It ends up I didn't need any of it and it took like 3 years to finally get all that stuff out of my inventory..

I think I still have my worlds largest flying pancake though..Just because it's such a crazy thing to have..It reminds me of how silly and wild and how just about anything can exist in second life..So I hang on to it.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Using the remove clothing button then realizing there was no put clothes back on button

having someone tell me to touch the ball to dance and me replying i cant jump high enough

randomly tping to sims when i hit to home, because i had never set a home point

im sure ill think of more

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Someone in the library at Caledon gave me a library card with my name on it which was utterly magic cause I had no idea about uploading textures or even how to put one on a prim

Discovering that the poofy skirt I'd found at Caledon was the bomb for parachuting at Zoha Island.

Choosing all further skirts by how well they poofed whilst falling.

Discovering that the odd thing sticking out from my hips was the skirt from the pink polka dot dress.

Finding a very large furniture store that was so interesting I decided I lived there. It was also the start of a SLife-long fascination with SL bathtubs and showers which, when combined with my tendency to fall off of things, led to a fascination with anything underwater and the way SL clothes don't get wet even when fully immersed. Because that it just cool.

RL friend inviting me to live on the land he'd just gotten in the house he'd just built. Feeling so touched that he was giving me a home and conflicted because I also wanted to continue living in my furniture store.

Logging in one day to find a Bitsy-sized bath that he'd quietly bought for me during an afternoon's exploring because it was just my size.

Pulling a diving board out of my inventory (from that day thence known as the TARDIS) to put on the roof of the house to fall off of.

Finding a sofa floating without any means of support in the sky near the house and of course falling off of it, which turned out to be most agreeable as it was an excellent height and Stand was an excellent means of starting the fall.

Tucking Bitsy into bed every night before logging out and then on my return finding her standing on the bed, bright and eager to start a brand noob day.

Very random exploring, poofy Victorian skirts and ballgowns, falling off of things intentionally or not, water, freebies and hanging out with Morgan comprise at least 90% of my early SL memories The downside of all the random exploring is that the places are mostly a jumble in my mind and I'm finding it difficult to assemble the pieces into anything coherent. I wish I'd taken more pictures to help me remember them all properly. But my goodness it was all so amazing.

[Bree Giffen]

I remember my very first time logging into SL and all I saw was a badly formed ruth shape and flickering triangles. There was some despair at finding the poorly rendered world but coming from a gaming background I installed new drivers and checked display settings until I could get my purple shirted avatar up and running. I switched to the goth girl system avatar and was asked to leave the newbie area by a resident helper who thought I was an older resident! I had to explain that new avatars were available. After that I spent days in the "T" pose adjusting my avatar and hunting down all the freebie shops. 

[Janet Voxel]

I joined in 2009/early 2010. 

Orientation island: I blew through that and ended up at that freebie pyramid place. I decked myself out with all the freebie noob stuff I wanted.

I asked a couple of people where to go. Tp’d to Redgrave and realized I looked like crap.

I figured out I needed new skin and hair and AO and had no idea where to go. So I stayed in Redgrave just asking people for help. Eventually a group gave me a folder full of skins, shapes and hair and told me to play with that until I found myself.

Next best memory from back then: I discovered Greedy and gambling sims. First game of greedy ever, no idea what I was doing, won 12,000L$. Bought a skin that cost, 2500Ls that looked worse than even the starter skins because the ad had a picture of Beyoncé on it. The skin looked nothing like Beyoncé.

Next favorite memory, getting told I still looked like crap. Getting a makeover to look “right”, given more free stuff and a collar. “All the girls wear them.” Promptly got owned, literally...took me a while to figure out how to get out of the collar.

Used to hang out at a club called Bootylicious where we used to crack jokes on each other on mic all day.

It was something magical about those times.

Edited March 8, 2019 by janetosilio
Forgot the Beyoncé skin

[BelindaN]

I don't have any "good old days" stories. It's only ten months ago!

I was intimidated by the whole thing, and scared of IMing anybody. When I could eventually explore the adult sims, that was scary for a while.

It wasn't long before I got the incessant requests for sex and the occasional RL photo.............

Slowly I got used to it here. Now I chat to anyone. That leads to some interesting experiences!!!

Hardest thing was understanding how to fit clothes to my system avi!!

I made huge mistakes in the beginning........

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

I started out SL on a different account, but she is only about 6 months older than Lil.  My first couple of months were spent popping around to many different money trees so that I could get a few L$ to buy some cheapie stuff - some days I could nab up to L$50, which was a fortune to a newbie.  Also spent lots of time TPing to all my favorite Lucky Chair locations - places back then would have dozens of the chairs - and I sometimes managed to nab a camping chair or a dancing camp pad.  One of my favorite activities was doing the only grid wide hunt there was back then - Treasure Quest - which was far different than it is today (and may not even be the same group of people).  Back then, it was like the other hunts are today - you went from place to place and figured out clues, looking for the gold coin that would give you some sort of prize.  I'm a puzzle lover and the clues back then were almost always really difficult, so it was an actual challenge to get all the prizes.

I also wandered aimlessly a lot until I discovered the Forums - right at the same time they bought the current land and started to build the Hangout.  That was also around the time that Lil was born.  As Lil, I found my home at the Hangout and became quite the Hangout social butterfly for the next few years (which was a far cry from my normal not-at-all-social personality).

Edited March 9, 2019 by LittleMe Jewell

[Sasy Scarborough]

17 hours ago, Kotelle said:

big shopping malls and a club Odds & Ends where I used to hang out and found some friends.

I was reading through and had literally had a lovely memory about the same place It was one of the best locations in 2006, the flying pigs the huge mall space that looked like an open fronted doll house. The club that had dance balls for tinies as well as regular sized people, which I thought was the most considerate thing ever. The trivia games, and there was an outdoor chapel area for weddings and a dungeon for sex. It was so everything. I was once having a time to myself day after working, and was sitting on the seats in the chapel, and I got an IM from the owner of the Sim asking if I was ok, she was concerned, I was fine and I told her thank you for caring enough to IM... she was really lovely and I often think of that sim no longer being around as being a loss for newer Residents in the years after that. 

[kali Wylder]

I heard about SL when I was watching a video and it sounded like something I would like. I remember I googled a lot to find out how SL worked before I joined.  Little did I know that things in SL were constantly changing.  I read this article about how to make a bracelet that would change the duck walk to something a bit less silly looking. So there i am one day old and very busy trying to follow the instructions when I slammed against the wall of what I did not know about manipulating prims.  So i googled for how to find help in world and discovered New Citiizens Inc. I went to NCI with all my questions about how to rotate this torus i was playing with trying to get it to fit to my hand.  And I met this nice helper person who first explained to me that I didn't have to make this thing myself and took me to Abranimations to get the freebie AO, then back to NCI  where I was told to start with the basics.  How to see, How to move, How to get help.  Well I already knew how to get help, that was how i came to be at NCI.  But I did not know how to see or move very well.  I hung out at NCI for my first 3 months and learned so much just sitting there listening to helpers answering questions and watching people build things.

[Blush Bravin]

The year was 2003 when I discovered a whole new world online. The discovery began in the Sims Online in December 25, 2002. I then discovered another spot to explore online, There. I spent a lot of time in that world and even worked as an official greeter for a short period of time. While there friends kept telling me about this new thing that was in beta and I should give it a try, but I was busy in There so put it off. By October 2003, after SL had gone live, and friends just kept bugging me to make an account, I decided to give it a try. I made Debi and did a little bit of exploring. I really didn't like the looks of the avatars specially when compared with TSO and There, but I hung around a little bit. I remember flying around this little area where a bunch of people were standing around a table and making things. I watched for a little bit.  I didn't see the value of turning little boxes of wood into odd shapes at the time so quickly moved on to another area. I found a little shop where a person was selling hats, but I didn't have any money and wasn't going to buy any because honestly, I hated the look of the avatar. I logged Debi on occasionally to explore new builds. I started playing Star Wars Galaxies and then moved onto World of Warcraft. I had became a gamer of all things! I had become so addicted to WoW that I stopped logging into SL and eventually Debi's account went dormant. So that's the story for my very early life in SL and my discovery of online gaming/worlds.

 Speed forward  to 2008, one of my oldest friends from my TSO days, kept telling me to come back to SL. So I decided to give it a try again. I made a new account because I thought Debi was long dead and that I wouldn't be able to get her account back. So Blush was born. And I've been addicted ever since. I don't think a day has gone by when I have not logged into SL for at least a few minutes, except for a two week period when recovering from a hurricane RL. And even during that period I managed to log in on my phone to at least check messages a few times. 

I apologize for being too wordy, but I couldn't relate my early SL without adding the rest of the story. For me SL is all entwined with my other online discoveries. What an amazing world I have online!