Hey hey I'm an avatar...

[Jessika Rang]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX6uLlWdxZo

This rings so true, for me when I started - this was every guy i met (at first - and still sometimes).  Started me wondering, what do we want from our sl, fame? fortune? friendship? love? games? ... Many or some of us have been (or wished to be) sl rockstars in whatever circle we travel in.

So my question is... how did you start?  What did/do you want?  Did you "rock it" - do you feel bigger and better in sl? Does sl give you more confidence in rl? Are you an sl rockstar...? SL made me way more comfortable talking to people in RL, I started to realize that everyone just wants to be acknowledged or just heard.  I think i am a rockstar in my own sl...i am not sl famous, i am not  all that talented but when i log in - there are those friends that are stoked to see me and I them = that is why I keep loggin in after 4 years, smiles.

I realize this a big topic, I know that sl has influenced my rl in both positive and negative ways so I mean no judgement in my questions or discussion

[Alazarin Mondrian]

OK, I'll bite... Being a musician in RL & SL I'm no stranger to the old 'So you wanna be a rockstar' meme. Strangely enough that's never really been my raison d'etre. To an extent one has to act out the role if only to draw attention to your product [music] so that you've got some bums on the seats at showtime and, hopefully, shift a few albums. Sure there's times when you feel like the centre of the universe, but it's illusory and never lasts long.

 

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

Hello Jessica. I am about 10 months in SL and i am online daily for many many hours. During my 10 months i have done everything you can imagine except of building and scripting. I started as everyone knowing nothing and my first goal was to understand what is SL and to learn to play. My previous experience for over than 3 years in another similar adult game (although we use to support that SL isn't a game) combined with my plenty RL free time,  helped me to comform very quickly.

What else i did as a newbie? I was loving to dawdle at the old Xstreet looking the products and desiring to purchase all of them. Very soon i realised how important and necessary are lindens in a virtual world like SL and that i need them. I could follow 2 paths: a)The easy path was to buy them using my credit card b)The difficult path was to try to earn them working. Being natually a person who like the difficulties i started to work. For months i was working every day but i never i felt that i work. Never i saw the job as a job. The job offered me a lot of lindens, fame, many new friends, adventures, experience and knowledge and the opportunity to meet some of the most important persons in SL. The job was fun for me. Jobs i have done in SL are: dancer, hostess, modeling, decorator, security, PR, Head PR, instructor for new staff, staffing, business consultant, assistant manager, manager, real estate.

SL time seemed to run so quickly for me. Sometimes it liked like fairy tale. SL didin't give me more confidence in RL. I knew who i am and what i can do long time before SL. Why i am in SL? Because i have fun and it 's a good way to cover some of my free RL. If i feel like a rockstar? Generally no. I am a simple person SL and RL, i could say the same exactly. Of course sometimes there were moments when i felt not only as Rockstar but as a queen. It was something temporaly and soon i knew how to land again in the reality. I don't think that SL affected my RL neighter that i am addicted with SL. . On the other side i admit that i am addicted with Internet. RL is always my priority and with it, i am absolut.

About the rumor now that everyone just wants to be acknowledged or just heard, i was the opposite exactly. While i was working (some periods in 2 jobs and i was running like a rabbit) i could say i was famous when i remember that every time i loged in i had unlimited im's by people who wanted to speak with or needed some help and support. Really i couldn't never to be alone. To spend some time for me. Very soon i realised that it was no the lifestyle i was dreaming. Personal time is very very important for me. To be able to relax when i need it. So i stopped to work and gradually i achieved to find again time for me.

This moment i live maybe in the most quiet sim in SL, sometimes alone, and some other time with my good friends, away from the spotlight always and i enjoy it. Now i spend most of my SL helping and sermonizing especially new users here in the community and in world also. I find it more substantial than to shake my puppies in the clubs. For me there is no past, there is no future. Everything is present. So i try to enjoy the present, every moment. Do the same. Yes we are avatars but behind the veil, there is a real person. Be real and sincere. Use what you were teached in RL in your SL and the opposite. SL is a big school for everyone.

[Conifer Dada]

I came to Second Life in 2006 purely by chance, after seeing a feature about it on BBC TV news.  I like the social side but what's really kept me here is the creativity - I learned building and texturing early on and have made most of my own stuff - never having tried any 3D stuff beforehand.  I'm quite artistic in real life so I sort of took to SL like a duck to water. Sometimes I think I spend too long on SL, but then at other times I go for several days without logging in, so I think I've found the balance.  

The test question I ask myself is what would I be doing if I wasn't on SL.  Usually that would be watching TV, reading or just doing something else on the net.  I have plenty of other activities in RL, a good social life and I get lots of exercise so SL has never really taken over my life.  I would have liked to have made a bit more money in SL though!   

I don't think I'll ever become an SL celebrity but the Grid does offer a lot of small ponds for people to become [virtual] big fish in, if they want that.

[Wildcat Furse]

I just copy and paste what I posted in another thread;

"my rl/sl partner (reuler) and me are living/working most of the time away from each other, second life as a platform offers us that little bit more than just a phone, webcam, messenger, ..... we can virtually touch each other here, fun isn't it!! 

I spend much more time here than Reuler, because I like the creative side of second life; photography, fashion, project design .... it is really nice to have fun activities accessible 24/7 with only a laptop and an internet connection and way more fun than facebook, twitter or other online activities."

*meows*



[Jessika Rang]

---

Alazarin Mondrian wrote:

....but it's illusory and never lasts long.

 

---

So true... something usually comes along to knock us off our personal pedestals!

[Jessika Rang]

---

LoveAngeL Lyre wrote:

Hello Jessica. I am about 10 months in SL and i am online daily for many many hours. During my 10 months i have done everything you can imagine except of building and scripting. I started as everyone knowing nothing and my first goal was to understand what is SL and to learn to play. My previous experience for over than 3 years in another similar adult game (although we use to support that SL isn't a game) combined with my plenty RL free time,  helped me to comform very quickly.

What else i did as a newbie? I was loving to dawdle at the old Xstreet looking the products and desiring to purchase all of them. Very soon i realised how important and necessary are lindens in a virtual world like SL and that i need them. I could follow 2 paths: a)The easy path was to buy them using my credit card b)The difficult path was to try to earn them working. Being natually a person who like the difficulties i started to work. For months i was working every day but i never i felt that i work. Never i saw the job as a job. The job offered me a lot of lindens, fame, many new friends, adventures, experience and knowledge and the opportunity to meet some of the most important persons in SL. The job was fun for me. Jobs i have done in SL are: dancer, hostess, modeling, decorator, security, PR, Head PR, instructor for new staff, staffing, business consultant, assistant manager, manager, real estate.

SL time seemed to run so quickly for me. Sometimes it liked like fairy tale. SL didin't give me more confidence in RL. I knew who i am and what i can do long time before SL. Why i am in SL? Because i have fun and it 's a good way to cover some of my free RL. If i feel like a rockstar? Generally no. I am a simple person SL and RL, i could say the same exactly. Of course sometimes there were moments when i felt not only as Rockstar but as a queen. It was something temporaly and soon i knew how to land again in the reality. I don't think that SL affected my RL neighter that i am addicted with SL. . On the other side i admit that i am addicted with Internet. RL is always my priority and with it, i am absolut.

About the rumor now that everyone just wants to be acknowledged or just heard, i was the opposite exactly. While i was working (some periods in 2 jobs and i was running like a rabbit) i could say i was famous when i remember that every time i loged in i had unlimited im's by people who wanted to speak with or needed some help and support. Really i couldn't never to be alone. To spend some time for me. Very soon i realised that it was no the lifestyle i was dreaming. Personal time is very very important for me. To be able to relax when i need it. So i stopped to work and gradually i achieved to find again time for me.

This moment i live maybe in the most quiet sim in SL, sometimes alone, and some other time with my good friends, away from the spotlight always and i enjoy it. Now i spend most of my SL helping and

sermonizing especially new users here in the community and in world also. I find it more

substantial than to shake my puppies in the clubs. For me there is no past, there is no future. Everything is present. So i try to enjoy the present, every moment. Do the same. Yes we are avatars but behind the veil, there is a real person. Be real and sincere. Use what you were teached in RL in your SL and the opposite. SL is a big school for everyone.

---

I live rather quietly in sl as well... and I like it that way.  You have had a very full secondlife considering how relatively new you are! 

[Jessika Rang]

I think this is one of the best ways to use and enjoy sl, spending time with a loved one (rl, sl or both). Congrats to you!

[Jessika Rang]

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Conifer Dada wrote: 

I don't think I'll ever become an SL celebrity but the Grid does offer a lot of small ponds for people to become [virtual] big fish in, if they want that.

---

It appears many people do seek to be the big fish - but thats really nothing new is it?!

[Wildcat Furse]

ty Jessika :smileywink: *meows*

[Jessika Rang]

yvw Wildcat - i love your pics/avi... very creative and fun

[Poenald Palen]

Um, I guess the shortest answer is...."I have no life" and "I have no money, SL is free" and "I like virtual reality, SL is sort of like that (sans helmets and such)" and "I used to always want to make or mod video games" and..or....well, basically. "I have no life, SL is free to try out, virtual reality is interesting, I need money and skills to make more, and I like the idea of making video games way back and it still makes me smile to think of the zaney games I could make" Instead, I make sort of boring normal stuff that is much less zaney than I would like. Yeah, I should have been the guy making Angry Birds or something. Heck, even teh farmville game was one of those games I would have liked to make because I like simulated endevour based games AND farming is sort of neat to think about. But, nah....I sat around here and suffer insanity alone with no money and no life....so...I guess the real answer was "I have no life" because if I DID have one or a chanve of one I would have made zaney games and you might have all been chuckling at my games right now on your small computing devices. 

To think far back to the day I sat and gave up c-64 programming because I always coudl learn it when I was older....I kick myself. Now I have to much going on. Back then I could have made the sci fi game I wanted to, the extreme sports game. But today it takes me like 10 times as long as anyone AND I am still a quiter....not a good combo at all. But I still go back and try, which is how I have over a gig of files of 3d objects, textures made from scratch or render, bits of sculpted objects, even almost 3-4 compolete vehicles all not complete....now mesh arrives HA....ha....h...ah, I can't really laugh much at it right now as it is sort of rather sad to think back at myself trying to understand BASIC. With LSL, I can't remember the functions and need to keep looking up the wiki and "know" I can use this one set of functions with some thing and BAM I hit a road block or don't get why the operator wont work the way I thought it would (logic stuff) and blah blah blah. It is just sad.  

[Lexie Linden]

Interesting topic so I made a sticky so more people see it!  :smileyhappy:

[Alicia Chenaux]

I originally started because it was something to do with a friend who didn't live near me.  We could "hang out" in world without one of us driving for hours to see the other.  But that was a long long time ago.  Now I am in SL because I love the artistry of it.  I love the people I have met who have allowed me to share in their lives.  I appreciate that writing about it and taking photographs have given me a creative outlet.  I use it as a sort of therapy for my real world body issues and shyness.  I allow myself to be an introvert in SL in a way that I never could be in RL.  I feel more like myself in SL than I do anywhere else at the moment.

And that's why I'm an avatar. :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2:

[Quinn Morani]

I joined SL because I had heard of it through a professional trade association and wanted to explore some of its possibilities related to my field of work. At the time, I didn't want anything from SL other than to learn whether or not it had applications as a platform for training in my industry.

I still don't know the answer to that question, and we've mostly given up any discussion about it in my office. But I was interested enough in the environment and the creativity I saw here that I created a new avatar (Quinn) separate from my work presence and stayed to explore. I wasn't seeking friends, fortune, fame, or love. For a long time I was a wanderer with very few friends on my list, and I was okay with that. I liked the solitary existence.

It was making friends here in the forum that got me logging in more regularly, and it's really those friends who are the pull for keeping me there these days. I have grandiose ideas that someday I'll get serious about learning to build, but I don't know if I'll ever really follow through with that. My time inworld is fairly limited and I like to share what little time I do have with friends.

I know what you mean about friends who are happy to see you when you log in. I recall one instance a couple of months ago when I logged in after having been away on vacation for a week, and instantly was barraged with multiple TP requests to a friend's party that was going on at the time. I felt missed, and loved, and very much part of a circle of friends.