Preferred methods of communication in Second Life?

[Gopi Passiflora]

For me, my preferred channels of communication in Second Life are in this order, from most preferred to least: Local Text Chat, Voice Chat, then IM chat.

What can I say, I like multi-person conversations. More fun.

I only use IMs if another person IMed me first or if I'm friends with the person and have a specific request (which I make clear in my opening message).

[Sid Nagy]

Local chat, group chat, IM, notecards. I don't care.
Only thing I hate is voice chat, especially in a group. All these hard to follow accents and most people have no great mic technique or no technique at all.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Nick0678]

1) Voice chat (IM/Group/Local) with people from my country.  No text other than a few lines.

2) When in English then IM Text chat for 10-15 minutes maximum. *For cybersex/watching movies/more chat/troubleshooting computers/ASMR/marriage problems/politics/health issues/the Hubble telescope/etc only with Voice over Skype.

3) Local chat/Group chat and all Non English: Too lazy.

[Gwin LeShelle]

With my japanese friends from RL it's voice chat (but usually we sit in the same room in RL when we all play SL together so then we not use it)...makes it easier to laugh and explore (we always go on weird adventures when we meet in SL) or build together. But other than that I despise voice chat with strangers. So for me any text form is fine but I prefer local or group chat I think... ヘ(￣ω￣ヘ) 

I don't like IM I am like a squirrel and get distracted too easily with RL stuff so I wander off often or get bored too fast ...and in a group chat that's harder to notice haha 

Edited February 23, 2022 by Gwin LeShelle

[Ayashe Ninetails]

IMs one on one. Local chat with friends in private. Group IM conversations with friends or people we've just met in public.

I never use voice chat in SL. I'll listen in if friends force me to, but I respond in local. I have music or Twitch on in the background 99.999999% of the time, so I'm just not a fan.

[Orwar]

   1: IM - I seldom pay attention to nearby chat, especially when out an about.

   2: Nearby chat - when at home or visiting friends and there aren't a bunch of gesturbating tools clogging up the chat with nonsense.

   3: Voice - I don't even like speaking in Swedish when face to face with someone, not seeing the person(s) I speak to is worse (I hate telephones), and even though I'm fluent in English I get stressed out about my pronunciations (and occasionally I börk mid-sentence because English pronunciations don't make sense!). 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1) None - I'm not really into socializing..... or even talking most of the time

2) IM - sometimes for very, very, very brief conversations.

I tend to not pay much attention to IM or Chat, as I am often just off in my own little world.

Edited February 23, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Rolig Loon]

Local chat most of the time, IM with friends every once in a while. I never voice but on very rare occasions I will listen if I really have to.  Mostly, I find voice annoying.  Fortunately, I don't know many people who use it.

[Istelathis]

The forums   I like having the ability to edit my posts multiple times as I tend to make a lot of mistakes when replying to others, and I have a difficult time trying to keep up with what is being said.  Chatting makes me feel anxious which only makes it worst. Plus, I like to read what a person has written a few times before I respond so I will typically take forever to write a reply.  I'm always worried I am going to say the wrong thing and offend someone, or they will see how poorly I perform while replying and find I am a good candidate to make into a center piece for their humor.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Istelathis

[Stephanie Misfit]

IMs. I don't pay much attention to local chat. Never use SL voice.

[Pamela Galli]

IM. Because I can read and respond offline. And because I have a record of the convo.

My user name is No Notecards Please. Still get ‘em tho.

 

[Rowan Amore]

38 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Local chat most of the time, IM with friends every once in a while. I never voice but on very rare occasions I will listen if I really have to.  Mostly, I find voice annoying.  Fortunately, I don't know many people who use it.

I find voice annoying as well.  I've listened now and then at some voice enabled places and yikes!  No, I don't care to hear about some random person's life or hear them chewing while eating lunch.  I've used voice exactly 3 times.

I prefer IM since I'm usually at home or in a busy place.  Local if someone stops by my house or I stop by theirs.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

My "favourite" depends very much upon context.

Probably 3/4s of the time I'm in-world, I'm in IM with at least one person, and not infrequently two or three at the same time. I'm sort of @LittleMe Jewell's worst nightmare: I'm very very chatty (which is why, good citizen that I am, I never IM her even though she's on my friend's list). Fortunately, I'm a pretty fast typist, and good at multitasking. I also don't seem to run out of things to say . . .

BUT I really really enjoy open chat in places that encourage or foster that sort of thing, and I contribute a lot to open discussions. Like most people, I hate gesturbating, but the clubs I go to almost never feature that -- which is one of the reasons I go to them. Another reason is that I really only like clubs and venues where there is an active community in open: I get exceptionally bored in clubs that are silent as the tomb, and, moreover, I don't enjoy the fact that such places also tend to be pick-up joints, with the conversation mostly happening in IM.

Group chat can also be fun, but generally only in "social" groups, not those associated with stores or products or even particular sims.

I can't stand voice, and haven't done it (except once or twice accidentally!) since early 2009.

The other channel which should maybe be mentioned is Discord. I know it's not part of the platform, as such, but I connect a great deal with SL friends on Discord, in part because so many of them are in different time zones, and we aren't in-world at the same times. I see Discord as a sort of extension of SL, myself.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[StarlanderGoods]

IM since Im either moving really fast sailing, or Im in my plataform buidling, so Im not usually face to face with whomever I am speaking.  I also find voice annoying and I only use it if I definitely need both my hands (or keyboard) free, for example when driving/sailing/flying.  Local chat is usually just an "AHOY!!" or a "sorry!" if I cut someone off or crash into someone. Most of the times I will just drop a o/  in local chat as a hi and then move to IMs.

[Rolig Loon]

I'm not sure that it's necessary to say much more about why I have always avoided voice and strongly prefer typed chat, but I will anyway.  I have heard people who use voice talk about how slow typed chat is, as if that's a bad thing. Quite the opposite, in my mind. Typing helps keep me from being wordy -- a natural tendency -- and gives me a few extra seconds to think about what I'm saying before I hit the SEND button. I can't begin to count the number of times typed text has saved me from blurting out something thoughtless.  Not only that, but typed conversation gives me time to think about what other people are typing before I jump in with something totally off point. 

I am far from SL's best typist, so I tend to chat with short words and partial sentences and I make a lot of typos.  Those are the equivalent of mumbling in voice, I suppose, but they often serve to lighten the mood of conversation by sprinkling it with bits of accidental humor at my expense.  And, of course, a mistyped word -- deliberate or accidental -- can be taken as a clever bit of word play, which makes me seem a lot smarter than I really am. I have to get points where I can in this life.

[Saskia Rieko]

What Scylla said - Discord is my primary method of communication when it comes to my closest friends. We often chat even when we are not in SL in the same time which works much better for us than looking for an opportunity to meet and chat. Different countries, different time zones - hard to meet.

Then IM - if I talk to one person and general chat if more are involved. I don't like those chats with three or more (conference chats?) because they tend to get very slow. Also group chats are useless to me, not only because they are so broken but also I find them annoying.

Voice? No, never. I don't like unnecessary noises and many people don't live alone so we get them with all their background sounds and that has nothing to do with SL and breaks the immersion. Last but not least there are days when I spend a lot of time in calls so I really don't want to listen to more people talking

Edited February 23, 2022 by Saskia Rieko

[Maitimo]

I love local chat in clubs etc, because I like how it can involve everyone who is present.  

IM second, primarily for when the person I'm talking to isn't present in the same place, or if I want to say something that I don't want anyone else to overhear. (No, not necessarily nawty stuff, also things like "what on earth does she think she's wearing??")

Never voice. I hate it, mainly because I hate the way my voice sounds. I'm frequently misgendered on the phone in RL and my gender identity is already confusing enough without adding my very ambiguous voice into the mix. I don't mind listening, usually, but I will always type my responses.

[Persephone Emerald]

1. Group chat, so I can ignore it while I'm doing other stuff and then chime in when something catches my interest

2. IMs, but not more than 2 widows of these open at a time

3. Private Voice, with friends and when I don't think it may bother my RL roommates

4. Local Chat, which I will often miss if I'm IMing with someone

5. Notecards when contacting creators or others about issues

[Paul Hexem]

My preferred way to communicate with people in real time in SL is to use Discord. Alt tabbing between software, moving around, driving... You can't type and do any of these things at the same time.

When your communication options are "stuff that's been buggy for 20 years" or anything else, I pick anything else.

[tomm55]

When I started SL I was doing only text conversations - local chat and IM, with no preference.

After some time of making excuses (like that I don't have a microphone, or that the microphone driver is not working  ) I decided to give voice a try and eventually started to enjoy it. Now I use both, voice and text. Voice with close people and text with everyone else. I find voice very convenient for example when I want to say or explain something more complex. Saves a lot of typing. But since SL voice doesn't always work the best for me, I call via another platform sometimes.

Edited February 24, 2022 by tomm55

[Bree Giffen]

My favorite communications in SL are telepathy, morse code and smoke signals.

[Robberinthemuseum]

Local chat and IM only. Voice ruins the immersion for me 🤷‍♂️. I know some people love voice so I just turn mine off haha. For me, SL is like a massive interactive piece of art though. I know it's something different for everyone ^^. But just imagine people trying to talk during a movie. My RL is so demanding! SL is for fantasy and escape for me ^^. 

[Ajay McDowwll]

I love local; IMs are fine too.  I voice with a few friends when we're running amok shopping and so forth, but we usually use Discord's voice because the group calls on IMs are iffy, and voicing in local when there are other folks around can get a little rough.

[Talon Brown]

I prefer IM in general.  Local in a group environment.  I despise voice and have it disabled.  The few times I've enabled it have indicated that I have zero interest in listening to the people that love to use it.

[Freddie Venus]

IM and local chat is all I use.

I don't voice and never have and don't have it switched on to listen because I find it annoying as hell.