Ok Sloomer! The Rise and Fall of Second Life Generations

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

Read up on the diffusion of innovations.

Thanks!  That looks interesting and I'll explore it.  Not sure where Robin's theory came from -- it was from a woman who was doing too much 'psycho-splaining', at least I thought at the time.  Could be I just didn't understand the premise 15 years ago, as I was not so familiar with group dynamics and knew more about Psychology. After witnessing many of my Psychology student peers misapply theories to people I'm very wary.

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I remember the first time someone showed me building in SL. He generated a simple prim, and, as I watched, manipulated and scripted it, over the course of a couple of minutes maybe, into a waterfall. It was . . . magic. I was totally blown away by it.

ha, that was one of my first experiences of creativity in SL. I met my neighbor and in a short time we had huge spinning waterfalls all over our mainland plots.  And it was, yes....magic!  Good thing we were on mainland as we'd have been evicted in Belli for sure..

[DilliDallagio]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

So often I've felt LL must want these 'Pioneers' to just die off or move on...lol.  Not sure if that's true, but is how I often feel these days.

I have felt that too. It is not just LL that may have that desire though.

Apple Inc. has long moved in that direction. When that company dropped their Apple // line of computers within months after proclaiming "Apple // Forever!" in marketing pieces, that created much angst amongst those consumers and employees and left those now "ostracized" people wondering what was next. Move on to the creation and sales windfall of the iPod/iPhone and the marginalizing of their Mac desktops, and another generation of Apple consumers (and employees) were left off the train. It is not just Apple and LL though... many other companies in many industries have changed focus and direction and probably also wish their "original" consumers (and employees) would just go away.

[Luna Bliss]

49 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

All communities and movements change over time, and usually not for the better (at least as far as I can understand the phenomenon presently). They seem to lose some of the 'heart' and enthusiasm that is much more present when anything is new, and turn into a formula. Enter the sheeple.

"Better" or "worse" are of course subjective judgements. For many of those who, to take a for instance, enjoy mostly the consumerist aspects of SL, and maybe most especially fashion and avatar customization, SL is unquestionably "better" now than it was in 2008, when I joined. Although I lament (mostly quietly) the way in which a lot of diversity in clothing seems to have been lost, there is absolutely no question that there is more really good looking clothing now -- even if it frequently is not to my personal taste. And Bento avatars are simply waaaaaaaay nicer looking than system ones. Speaking as a photographer, now, I can't imagine going back to the status quo in terms of avatar appearance ca. 2008.

YMMV, as they say. And it's a mixed bag. I do miss the heady days when SL seemed vastly more social and dynamic and creative than it does now, but there are other ways in which the platform has unquestionably improved. It depends upon what you are looking for. And, if one is willing to put the time and effort into it (and I don't necessarily have the time), it is still possible to be very creative here, if you wish.

Maybe one ends up with a better 'thing' as a consumer, but not a better experience. I don't like civilization and the specialization that ensues from it, because we become removed from, distant from, the heart -- direct experience. And I suppose this is what happened to SL -- it became a civilization with all the complexity and specialization that followed. Something is lost when one doesn't, as Rolig pointed out, experience the cow that provided your milk, or understand the experience of the seamstress that created your clothes.

In the beginning of SL, creativity was everything. There was little thought of 'me' or what an individual could 'get' out of it. The exchange between persons was about helping each other learn, learn to be more creative, and I consider that immensely better than consumerism or having the best 'things'.

I'm not knocking shopping for 'things' at all by saying the above. I'm a merchant selling my 'things' after all, and I love going shopping when I want to change from my cat avatar, into a wild thrashing tree with smoke that shoots out when I start to fly, or to one of Elvina's strange half-tree & half-woman avatar creations. But that is NOTHING, there is no comparison, to the experience of creativity and direct participation in life.

I'm open to you trying to convince me it is just as good though  

[Erwin Solo]

2 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Scripters are a slightly different breed, because we have always done our work out of view. Even when we script things in world, it doesn't look as if we are working until something suddenly moves or changes appearance. Still, scripting itself has become more arcane with the introduction of Experiences, animesh, pathfinding, and a tripling (quadrupling?) of the number of native functions in the LSL toolbox.  I think it's harder for a newbie scripter today than it was back in the day.

The advantage of scripting, as Rolig doubtless knows and now stated here for other readers, is that mono scripts are protected at the server level (non-mono scripts, not so much). Everything else can be copied off-world and uploaded anew. 

If your creation depends on your own scripts, you own it at the deepest level. 

Most mesh clothing and fashion accessories are made by relatively few full-perm sellers, most of whom provide off-world uploadable versions for a price. The value-added in the selling of clothing and fashion accessories is mostly a matter of marketing and merchandising, which are important skills that make the SL world enjoyable, but are distinct from creation. 

At it's best, SL creation is a hobby and an art like, say painting or gardening, but one where the paint does not dry nor the plants wither if real life calls one away for a time. 

[Selene Gregoire]

If only more people would...

Quote

“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
― Jean-Luc Picard

 

[Luna Bliss]

10 minutes ago, DilliDallagio said:

I have felt that too. It is not just LL that may have that desire though.

Apple Inc. has long moved in that direction. When that company dropped their Apple // line of computers within months after proclaiming "Apple // Forever!" in marketing pieces, that created much angst amongst those consumers and employees and left those now "ostracized" people wondering what was next. Move on to the creation and sales windfall of the iPod/iPhone and the marginalizing of their Mac desktops, and another generation of Apple consumers (and employees) were left off the train. It is not just Apple and LL though... many other companies in many industries have changed focus and direction and probably also wish their "original" consumers (and employees) would just go away.

Why do you think they are that way?  I can't quite formulate my thoughts about it, other than to imagine it has to do with the myth of progress.   Lately I've been studying a bit about what 'technology' appears to want from us, and so much of it seems very unrealistic and even harmful.

[DilliDallagio]

13 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Why do you think they are that way?  I can't quite formulate my thoughts about it, other than to imagine it has to do with the myth of progress.   Lately I've been studying a bit about what 'technology' appears to want from us, and so much of it seems very unrealistic and even harmful.

Much of that is simple business economics. A product life-cycle chart was posted earlier and when such products mature or have no real future in innovation, companies are loathe to spend money on such products that will only cost more and more in long-term support. It would be much cheaper, for the company, to try to shuffle those consumers onto the new shiny, where the company can justify spending resources (as the new shiny can continue to grow and innovate).

As products get dropped a niche hobbyist market gets created where people have to (sometimes) fabricate their own parts just to keep their beloved products functional. Others in that niche will figure out ways of "backporting" (if you will) modern features into them. Why? Mostly because they love the design elements of the older pieces and have (maybe) created an emotional attachment to then. No bigger example of this than classic/vintage automobiles.

As far as LL is concerned, I do not think they are trying to push out the oldbies. LL has not killed off the ability to create prim-based objects at all. If one chooses, they can still create the very same prim structures and objects now as they could back when SL first started. In this case, I think it is the general population of users/creators in SL who are hoping that oldbies would just go away. If for no other reason than they would no longer need to hear the "you know... back in my day..." type of stories. LOL

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

My real concern, therefore isn't about SL or society in RL becoming less innovative but about the fact that so much creation is invisible to the general public. We lose something as children grow up not knowing that milk comes from dairy farms and never seeing people sewing the clothes that they wear.  I feel more than nostalgia when I contemplate worlds in which creation isn't seen as a daily experience.

I'm seeing this too. In the past, everyone I knew seemed to know at least the very basics of prim editing. But more and more I find I'm needing to explain where to find the edit function or how to drop a texture on something. I'm also running into people who just don't want to know. They'd rather go buy it, even when it takes ages to find something and it's not really what they're after.

When mesh came along, I already I had it in my head that I could make things so the big obstacle was learning the new tools. Nowadays it seems that there's also this obstacle of thinking it's only something other people can do. Which is pants. Utter pants. I would happily trade all the current fancy air-brushed consumerist prettiness for the DIY and collaborative ramshackle vibrancy, diversity and creative exuberance we used to see regularly across the grid. We have lost something very very precious.

[Beth Macbain]

On 11/29/2019 at 2:32 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I'd be interested to hear what some of the women who engage in this kind of RP have to say about it . . . we have a few here.

I'm late to this since I took a day away, but here's my attempt at a take on this. 

As I'm wandering the grid looking for quality men to have sex with, I often trip over the words "role play". To me, RP is just writing a story, and when I'm looking for a lay, I don't want to write a story, and it turns me off as soon as I see those words in someone's profile. I've argued this many times but to me simply logging into SL doesn't mean I'm entering a world of RP, but some do define it that way. 

When I see anything about RP in someone's profile, I'm never certain what they mean unless they have character bios in their picks. I want to deal with real people, real men, and not characters, especially when it comes to sex. Yes, we may be thousands of miles apart, but when I look at the screen I see me, albeit a younger, pretty, and infinitely more wealthy version of myself, but it's still essentially me. I'm not playing at being anyone other than Beth, which is why I stuck with my real first name when I joined SL. It's still me. My original avatar had a version of my middle name as her first name, and I just never felt comfortable with it so I tossed her and started over again with my real first name. 

Since I joined SL primarily for sex, and that was 12 years ago, I do think I've seen a change. In the early days, in my experience, men were more likely to be themselves with me. Now it feels like most every man I meet is playing a character, or if he isn't, he's got an avatar that hasn't been updated since 2010, and yes, when it comes to sex, I do expect my partners to look like a million dollars. 

Finding sex partners who fit the criteria for me has become increasingly difficult. If they look good, they're playing a character; if they're just being themselves, they don't make the effort to be mesh/Bento/unique, etc. 

So while I'm in SL primarily for the adult side, if it's called RP I don't want any part of it. When I'm doing the, er... thing in SL, I'm also doing it in RL, whether it's on voice or through the mastery of typing while, er... thinging. And when I'm thinging in RL, I expect my partner to be doing the same, otherwise I don't see the point in doing it. I don't want someone faking it with me since I'm not faking it, if that makes sense. And when I see someone who calls sex RPing, I assume they're just writing a story and faking it and I immediately write them off as a potential sexual partner. 

This is also why, though I'm fine with people presenting as whatever gender they want to be, when it comes to sex with me, I expect them to be the RL gender their presenting as. If I want to have sex with a man, I want it to be a man and if I'm going to have sex with a woman, I want it to be a woman. If it's someone who is trans, I expect to know that up front as well. I understand that there are many in SL who are unable to live their RLs as openly and freely and use SL as a means to be able to be who they are, and I think it's wonderful that they are able to do that. I just want to know before we engage in sex. 

I guess it boils down to that I expect some degree of honesty in my sexual partners, and that has become much more difficult to find over the years. 

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

... The more people there are who cannot make things themselves, the more society depends on those who can create things -- artists, engineers, designers, farmers.  My only cry of alarm is that the bar for entry into that cadre of creators keeps getting higher, and the community of creators is less visible than it was in the past.  

Yes, but there are an amazing number of people willing to scale that bar, and not all of them are formally educated.  I am continually amazed by what I see "makers" do.  Their YouTube videos are an endless source of fascination.  And a great way to waste time instead of having to trudge into the lab and actually make something myself.  I recently watched a video of a guy who made a two-axis computer-driven laser engraver using the guts from a couple of old CD-ROM drives.  Others make fantastic rings out of coins, or LED backlights for their TVs, or a home hydroelectric generating plant, or 100 mph go-karts.  The people who are using Raspberry Pi tiny computers and a few other inexpensive digital breadboard devices are digging deep into the guts of hardware and software and creating things that even McGyver would scratch his head over.

[Rolig Loon]

4 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

2 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

... The more people there are who cannot make things themselves, the more society depends on those who can create things -- artists, engineers, designers, farmers.  My only cry of alarm is that the bar for entry into that cadre of creators keeps getting higher, and the community of creators is less visible than it was in the past.  

Yes, but there are an amazing number of people willing to scale that bar, and not all of them are formally educated.  I am continually amazed by what I see "makers" do. 

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.  That's why I said that on the whole I am optimistic.  I know many of those people in SL, just as I know many in RL.  Perhaps I should have inverted the order of those two concerns in the sentence you just quoted.  The reason that the increasing bar for entry concerns me is because I see a greater separation between creators and consumers in everyday life than I did a half-century ago.  You and I became engineers and scientists in part because we saw people around us tinkering with things as we were growing up. We had a sense that building stuff is "normal". It's what people like us do, and what we can do, even if it's hard. 

I raise a flag of caution when I realize that my granddaughters won't think of sewing as a "normal" thing to do because they don't know anyone who even owns a sewing machine, much less uses it.  I remember reading Grapes of Wrath and being impressed that the Joad family, on their way to California, could rebuild their car's transmission on the side of the road.  That was my parents' generation, when real people did things like that.  I know that those people are around today -- I spent my career among them and I do creative things in SL now -- but they aren't right next door where they can inspire kids like you and me to leap the high bar and do difficult, creative things ourselves.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

2 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

When I see anything about RP in someone's profile, I'm never certain what they mean unless they have character bios in their picks.

RP meaning sexual activity became a red flag for me because of the percentage of men who used it as a way of pretending they weren't actually cheating on their wives.

Which gets into the honesty thing too...

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 11/28/2019 at 8:04 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

1) SLoldbies -- Time Range: 23 June, 2003 (the public opening of Second Life) to 14 March, 2008, the day that Philip Rosedale stepped down as LL CEO.

 

 

Virtual life for SLoldbies must have been wild and exciting. Many of the most important features -- the Linden dollar, direct teleports, and Windlight were, for instance, introduced. The creators and coders of this generation lay the groundwork for literally everything that followed. My own sense of the SLoldbies is that they are, as a species, relatively open-minded. And they tend, I think, to subscribe to what now feels like an older version of digital libertarianism. They aren't 4Chan or Something Awful (most of them) -- but that's the culture from which they come. I really value and like SLoldbies: I find them sceptical, but always helpful. 

This whole thread got thrown for a loop for me by the mention of 4Chan. I know 8Chan is an active hub for organizing White Supremacist terror attacks (manifestos are posted there by terrorists before they attack, and their live-streams often get supportively reposted there after police kill them), and 4Chan has long struck me as the 'political wing' of the movement... To use an analogy from Northern Ireland... maybe that was not so... back then... groups don't always start where they end up after all... but noting them in seeming admiration is not something I'm used to seeing...

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

5 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

The more people there are who cannot make things themselves, the more society depends on those who can create things -- artists, engineers, designers, farmers.  My only cry of alarm is that the bar for entry into that cadre of creators keeps getting higher, and the community of creators is less visible than it was in the past.  

Was watching a video last night with someone making that complaint about electric cars and Tesla...

Basically a 'we need to stop technology because a homeboy in his garage can't rebuild or repair these things' argument.

I don't think civilization should want to put the breaks on things because technology is getting more complex than 'some bloke in overalls with a wrench'...

As time moves on... pieces of technology require more experts to be able to do less overall

There was a time with one bloke could make a fire, skin a gazelle to feed and cloth the family,  and use some mud and grass to make a hut to live in...

- Over time each task was divvied out to different individuals, then teams of people, then specialists... now rather than one bloke making a fire - we have whole industries of people from power plants to making your furnace to repairing it to... countless other steps in between...

 

I think we're better off overall for no longer needing to live in a mud hit wearing a gazelle skin and rubbing sticks together for warmth.

 

I work in tech though... I am used to the notion that I cannot understand 100% of the process, and as my career has gone on... I have understood more about less of it... because the tech has gotten more advanced. A task I myself could do in 96 now takes a whole team of engineers - but we achieve so much more.

 

Sadly for what I think you're getting at though... it does mean that a platform that was started as a 'sandbox to make weird stuff' is no longer that - the level of expertise and specialization needed in SL has gone up a LOT. We get more for it... but the 'sandbox' is basically gone now. And I do get why that is a loss... I grew up playing with Legos... at some level we do NEED that ability to make mud huts and rub sticks together as a part of our development process.

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

This whole thread got thrown for a loop for me by the mention of 4Chan. I know 8Chan is an active hub for organizing White Supremacist terror attacks (manifestos are posted there by terrorists before they attack, and their live-streams often get supportively reposted there after police kill them), and 4Chan has long struck me as the 'political wing' of the movement... To use an analogy from Northern Ireland... maybe that was not so... back then... groups don't always start where they end up after all... but noting them in seeming admiration is not something I'm used to seeing...

 

I certainly wasn't citing them with admiration. 4chan is one of the birthplaces of the Alt Right and the Incel movements. And don't even get me started on /pol/.  In SL, they were associated with Woodbury U, a group I also disliked a great deal.

What I was suggesting was that, while most SLoldbies weren't literally coming from 4Chan (although, frankly, I have known a few who did, as probably do you), many were associated with the broader online libertarian and "hacktivist" culture. Unsurprisingly, it's the same culture also studied and celebrated by Peter Ludlow. I think they're appalling. (And Ludlow can rot in Miami, or wherever he's hiding these days, as far as I'm concerned.)

[Adam Spark]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

But mostly? Yeah, we're in our own little Cloudcuckooland here.

No wonder I feel so comfortable here.

Cuckooland.

😂

[Rolig Loon]

23 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I think we're better off overall for no longer needing to live in a mud hit wearing a gazelle skin and rubbing sticks together for warmth.

You'll get no argument from me.  Again, though, my point was not about technology at all (or only marginally about it).  It was about the distance between creators and consumers, and it's hardly an original thought.  Commentators point out that since the draft was discontinued, Americans have been further and further out of touch with the military.  Agricultural observers lament that there are fewer family farms every year, and that the average grocery shopper has little feel for where food comes from.  When communities lose touch with each other, they lose a sense of shared destiny and they feel fewer incentives to share experiences.  Creators/innovators depend on an appreciative consuming public as more than just a market, and the general public needs creators for more than a new toaster or another sofa-sized painting.  The communities enrich and inspire each other.  When "we" become "they", everyone loses something.

Edited November 30, 2019 by Rolig Loon

[Selene Gregoire]

11 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

You'll get no argument from me.  Again, though, my point was not about technology at all (or only marginally about it).  It was about the distance between creators and consumers, and it's hardly an original thought.  Commentators point out that since the draft was discontinued, Americans have been further and further out of touch with the military.  Agricultural observers lament that there are fewer family farms every year, and that the average grocery shopper has little feel for where food comes from.  When communities lose touch with each other, they lose a sense of shared destiny and they feel fewer incentives to share experiences.  Creators/innovators depend on an appreciative consuming public as more than just a market, and the general public needs creators for more than a new toaster or another sofa-sized painting.  The communities enrich and inspire each other.  When "we" become "they", everyone loses something.

This is why we moved from a city pushing 100k population to a town that had a population of less then 25k in 2017. I grew up in a place where the population never went over 50k even with an air force base right outside of town. I'll take a lesser populated town with lots of mom and pop shops over big city box stores any day. I don't think I need explain why.

[Erwin Solo]

On 11/30/2019 at 2:04 PM, Beth Macbain said:

So while I'm in SL primarily for the adult side, if it's called RP I don't want any part of it. When I'm doing the, er... thing in SL, I'm also doing it in RL, whether it's on voice or through the mastery of typing while, er... thinging. And when I'm thinging in RL, I expect my partner to be doing the same, otherwise I don't see the point in doing it. I don't want someone faking it with me since I'm not faking it, if that makes sense. And when I see someone who calls sex RPing, I assume they're just writing a story and faking it and I immediately write them off as a potential sexual partner.

While I'm in SL primarily for the creative side, and while creating usually means mesh, textures, or scripts, sometimes creating means forming stories with words.  In roleplay, the stories and actions are complex enough that one needs one's hands for the keyboard.  What one does with the fantasy later is one's own business.  Some females report back the next day that they "saved it up for later."  I have no idea what that means 😎.  

Edited December 2, 2019 by Erwin Solo
deleted superfluous instances of the word "usually"

[TexangelNoel]

On 11/28/2019 at 10:59 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And there are some amazing stories from the early days of SL. Who doesn't thrill to the chronicles of the Jessie War? Or the long sagas of Woodbury U and Redzone? What about Nipplegate? For god's sake, Belinda, think of the children!!!

Please, please tell the stories!!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 minutes ago, TexangelNoel said:

Please, please tell the stories!!

There are some rather interesting stories, actually. Some of the most interesting predate my arrival here, though.

This is really a rather good idea for a thread . . .

Hmmmm . . .

[Janet Voxel]

On 11/30/2019 at 1:59 PM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

When mesh came along, I already I had it in my head that I could make things so the big obstacle was learning the new tools. Nowadays it seems that there's also this obstacle of thinking it's only something other people can do. Which is pants. Utter pants. I would happily trade all the current fancy air-brushed consumerist prettiness for the DIY and collaborative ramshackle vibrancy, diversity and creative exuberance we used to see regularly across the grid. We have lost something very very precious.

I’m glad somebody else is saying this. A lot of people just don’t know where to start or how to start or what part to start on. There are so many people that are really creative that just won’t attempt it.

[Tolya Ugajin]

Meh, in my 12 years, I haven't noticed much essential change, and not much difference between the "generations".  Mesh, bento, etc. are nothing more than new styles of clothing for the paper dolls we make online.  SL is really about people, not technology.  The people are still mostly drama, the teenage boys are still obvious, the clubs are still mostly lame, "mainland" is still a mess, SL Secrets is still a bunch of nasty useless ***** (I was helpful and self-censored), and most of the problems people whine about are still mostly self inflicted.

I guess the biggest change is how much it costs to build a good avatar compared to everyone else (I never updated Tolya to mesh), along with no longer running into Brazillians asking random female avatars "du u like teh buttseks?"

I did get bento balls (because, as those who know me from the old days know, I'm serious about having awesome balls) and my reaction was "seriously, someone felt the need to create this?".

[Tolya Ugajin]

5 hours ago, janetosilio said:

I’m glad somebody else is saying this. A lot of people just don’t know where to start or how to start or what part to start on. There are so many people that are really creative that just won’t attempt it.

I concur.  I used to enjoy building with nothing but plain old prims and whatever the heck "convex hull" was all about.  I stopped building anything myself after sculpties became widely available - too much work and too easy to buy what others make.