Requiem for a stranger

[kali Wylder]

Requiem for an imaginary man.  So, what is real anyway?  I just learned that someone I was involved with for a time may have been the alt of another person I know who died recently.  I had no clue for the duration of our time together and it ended badly and took a long time for me to move on.  Now I understand a little bit better why it was never going to work out. 

I don’t know how I feel any more.  Am I upset about the big lie?  Not that much.  This was not my first rodeo.  I’ve gone through mourning the loss of a partner before and learning that I didn’t know the whole truth about him either.  After much agonizing and floundering around trying to learn what I could I finally decided to cherish the happy memories and let go of all the rest.

He was just somebody that I used to know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY

[Madelaine McMasters]

32 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

Cherish the happy memories and let go of all the rest.

That's what I try to do, kali. I start with the premise that all good things must come to an end, and enjoy what I have while I have it.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters

[belladonna Wexhome]

I always think back to that scene from Madea - where she says some people are tree people - who set roots and grow in your life with you and their are leaves people - people who are with you for a season and then they go.  It does suck what you've gone through - and I find that the people who pose questions and posts like you do feel that way cause you are the honest people in RL and you wouldn't play around on alts and stuff with people.  I never understood how people do that - just pretend to be someone else with people you already know.  That lasts about 4 seconds with me and my avi.  It sucks and the only thing that helps is time to move through it.  *HUGS*

[Panteleeva]

 

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I start with the premise that all good things must come to an end

I learned that after ending friendships after almost 4 years of it. I have good memories with them , but once i realized they don t listen anymore and only saying things to let me go down.  And i refused to believe it all happends after i shared some painful experience from my RL .I gave us time to cool down, but it got even worse. so i relized this is the end. And only thing i can do is keep good memories. 

[Panteleeva]

i feel you here Kali, only difference that in my case i found out the truth (patrly ) before he died. He just admitted things i found out after he dissapeared .Also was friends with his wife on his other avi,she told me he had 3 more alts and we both knew he probably had much more...But it s been almost 3 years after he passed away and all the pain faded away,good memories are saved. 

*HUGS Kali*

[Autodiabolic]

I'm very sorry for your loss.

[kali Wylder]

I kind of understand the temptation to be somebody new.  And I can understand that once you've deceived people you care about, you have to keep doing it because you don't want them to know what you've done.  This man continued his lies for over ten years. 

His partner of ten years never knew until after he died and she tried to contact the man she thought was his best friend who could never respond because, well, he was dead too.  In a way I feel like I was lucky I only was involved with the alt and for less than a year and it ended over 3 years ago.  I've already grieved the death of the relationship and moved on with my life.  And I mourned the loss of the friend a few months ago when I first learned that he died. 

Now I mostly just feel bad for my friend, the woman who was deceived for over ten years by her partner. They had a good long lasting relationship in SL, one I envied more than once.  They were both good friends of mine.  It boggles my mind trying to wrap my head around it.

[Bree Giffen]

Perhaps it is time for Linden Lab to end the secrecy and make everyone’s alts be discoverable. Maybe if you looked at an avatar’s profile it would have all associated accounts by IP or a special code embedded into avatars by the client viewer. It could bring about an end to heartbreak and griefing.

[Yukiko Yeshto]

@Bree GiffenI really hope you aren't serious. 

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

Perhaps it is time for Linden Lab to end the secrecy and make everyone’s alts be discoverable. Maybe if you looked at an avatar’s profile it would have all associated accounts by IP or a special code embedded into avatars by the client viewer. It could bring about an end to heartbreak and griefing.

OR ...

remove usernames from SL entirely. Display-names only with the option to pick from a list of profiles and display names on login. A character selector and a shared inventory, what's not to love. No one will ever need an alt ever again.

Should LL enact this, July 16th shall forever be known as Pancake day in SL.

[Sammy Huntsman]

5 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

Perhaps it is time for Linden Lab to end the secrecy and make everyone’s alts be discoverable. Maybe if you looked at an avatar’s profile it would have all associated accounts by IP or a special code embedded into avatars by the client viewer. It could bring about an end to heartbreak and griefing.

Isn't that breaking some laws if you were to do that. I mean that and people could reverse engineer that and basically have all your info. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

6 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

Perhaps it is time for Linden Lab to end the secrecy and make everyone’s alts be discoverable. Maybe if you looked at an avatar’s profile it would have all associated accounts by IP or a special code embedded into avatars by the client viewer. It could bring about an end to heartbreak and griefing.

That and not everyone uses alts for malicious purposes. I have alts I never use, as I forgot their login info, and I have another alt that is literally my storage unit for full perm stuff and my virtual camera. I really can't stand this generalization or this ideologue that alts are bad. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

24 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

OR ...

remove usernames from SL entirely. Display-names only with the option to pick from a list of profiles and display names on login. A character selector and a shared inventory, what's not to love. No one will ever need an alt ever again.

Should LL enact this, July 16th shall forever be known as Pancake day in SL.

I need at least one other alt for my land group.

And I need 2 or 3 or .... so more alts for different types of Linden Homes -- they only let me have one per account. 

[Rowan Amore]

[kali Wylder]

15 minutes ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

That and not everyone uses alts for malicious purposes. I have alts I never use, as I forgot their login info, and I have another alt that is literally my storage unit for full perm stuff and my virtual camera. I really can't stand this generalization or this ideologue that alts are bad. 

I'm an alt myself.  My original av retired and I took over.  I don't think that alts are inherently evil. I certainly do not want to give up my privacy and I don't want anyone to have to give up theirs. 

People are complex.  Do I want them to be less so? Hell no!   It is the journey of a lifetime to know and understand yourself, and no two journeys are the same.  I think that when people are able to know each other, it's always an incomplete thing.  You may think you know someone, but how well?  In Second life, the possibilities to partially know others are endless and amazing and sometimes more intimate than RL  And sometimes it's painful.  Life is like that.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

I'm an alt myself.  My original av retired and I took over. 

My original has a silly name, because I payed to join and didn't get how SL names worked. I thought I was just picking a login / account name, not the actual name I would have in world.

I was tempted to move back with name changes just for the oldbie birthdate, but that would have meant buying literally everything from scratch again again. The $40 name fee made that a very expensive proposition. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

21 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

My original has a silly name, because I payed to join and didn't get how SL names worked. I thought I was just picking a login / account name, not the actual name I would have in world.

This is my original, and after about a week I logged off and didn't log back on. I didn't remember any of my login info, until one day I figured it out on my own. I just typed in an email I never use in 2015, and voila I got this account back. For the longest time, I was using an alt, due to me forgetting the name of this original account. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, kali Wylder said:

I'm an alt myself.  My original av retired and I took over. 

Pretty much the same here.  Lil was originally created to explore and RP in a different direction than my original account.  In less than a year, Lil had fully taken over and the original account is just a money holder now.

[SlammedSam]

I am also part of the "Alt promoted to main" crowd. Ironically, it took another alt cosplaying that reminded me of an old comic/story that I wrote and drew many years ago, and I was inspired to bring a character to life in SL. My other toons are still arund, though nowhere near as active as I now. One even still carries all my building materials!

That being said, I am saddened and angry when people do use other toons for nefarious purposes, such as having affairs, griefing and so on, especially when there are legitimate uses for alts.

To the OP, you have my condolences on your loss. =( I'm also sorry that you had to find things out about him after the fact. With that, do keep close to you all the good memories.

 

3 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Pretty much the same here.  Lil was originally created to explore and RP in a different direction than my original account.  In less than a year, Lil had fully taken over and the original account is just a money holder now.

Exactly! =D

[Gwin LeShelle]

A friend of mine once said as a joke that he thinks that SL is just the same 5 people and all their alts! XD

Really people keep saying th SL is dying since I started in 2006, it never happened so far but I am pretty sure that revealing everyones alts in their profiles would do the kill job in less than half a year! And also I know a lot of people that have many alts and many of those are premiums, so its not only bad things that happen with people and their alts, its also helping keeping SL alive ❤️

[Bridget Leavitt]

On 7/16/2021 at 1:05 PM, Bree Giffen said:

Perhaps it is time for Linden Lab to end the secrecy and make everyone’s alts be discoverable. Maybe if you looked at an avatar’s profile it would have all associated accounts by IP or a special code embedded into avatars by the client viewer. It could bring about an end to heartbreak and griefing.

No offence Bree, but this would be a terrible thing to implement. What about people who have been stalked in SL and have needed to make an alt to escape that abuse? With that idea you propose, they would never be able obtain their privacy again.

[Bree Giffen]

1 hour ago, Bridget Leavitt said:

No offence Bree, but this would be a terrible thing to implement. What about people who have been stalked in SL and have needed to make an alt to escape that abuse? With that idea you propose, they would never be able obtain their privacy again.

The abuser would also be unable to hide and when they are punished by LL they can't log in with an alt because all accounts could be banned. Another good thing! If you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't be afraid. 

[Amanda Crisp]

Speaking as one of those people who was hounded, harassed and bullied into abandoning my 2005 avatar and creating Amanda, I am not on-board with Bree’s suggestion.

Besides, the proposal is for the same Linden Lab that was unable to so anything for me to now violate everyone’s privacy ?

The list of “unintended consequences” for doing this would be vast.

I’m sympathetic to the emotion driving this, but not the proposed fix.

 

[Yukiko Yeshto]

3 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

The abuser would also be unable to hide and when they are punished by LL they can't log in with an alt because all accounts could be banned. Another good thing! If you have nothing to hide then you shouldn't be afraid. 

Again, I hope you aren't serious.

• It is not LL's job to take care of potential criminals, that's the job of judiciary, executive and legislative authorities.
• SL is neither an unlegislated area for potential lynchings outlaws. That also means that victims and (possible) abusers alike have a right of privacy, because first of: in dubio pro reo.
• If there is a will, there is a way. Not even in RL did any sort of ban ever hold an obsessed stalker back from trying to get their way. If being stalked, get in touch with authorities as well as support groups. 
• Everyone has something to hide; it could be a simple, harmless thing they just find too intimate to share with others, and it is their right to feel like that about it. You, I, and everyone else have no right to judge if they should or should not feel afraid about sharing it. 

[Nova Convair]

People always try to solve problems with technical solutions. That does not work with mental problems.
SL is not RL! Some people don't get that quite. When people that see SL on completely different ways connect - that will end bad in some cases. There is no way around.

I see altophobists 😁 There are phobists in all kind of lifes aspects and it never does anything good.