Why be a friend collector?

[Cali Souther]

I clean out my "friends list" on a semi-regular basis.   

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Exocet Kungler said:

 

Half of these comments are why SL is the broken mess that it is today. No offense to any of you of course.

Why is it that my 11 yo son can make friends by adding them to a "Contact" list, "Friends List", or "Rolodex" depending on your current vernacular position, without even trying. With a friends list that has either been disabled, or is only full of 5 people and you don't add more, I won't even waste my time. Just like your new neighbor that moved in or that person across the table from you, you have to put yourself out there. Friendship takes work. They don't just appear. For those that think they will, well, there are reasons your "contact list" is so short. Friendship isnt a right, its an opportunity. An opportunity to express interest, and mutual desires, hobbies, or likenesses. Friends then come knocking at your door once you make yourself approachable, and available. Having an awesome personality goes a long way as well 😁

  Being on a list of 100s of people doesn't make anyone your friend.   I have 5 people on my list because that is the number of actual friends I have.  Friendships built over months and years.  I have to chat with someone numerous times before I'd even consider them a friend and not just an acquaitance.  There's a huge difference to me.

I have no problem meeting people and talking with them.  Sometimes, for hours.  If I see them regularly and we talk regularly, why would I even need them on a list?  They don't ask, I don't ask.  We're good.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Rowan Amore

[Gabriele Graves]

I've been thinking about the whole way the friends/contact lists are presented in Firestorm at least.  Currently there is a tab called "Contacts" presumably "Friends" on the official viewer though I haven't used that in a long time so I'm not sure.  That tab also has tabs called "Friends", "Groups" and "Contacts".

The "Contacts" sub-tab allows me to create lists of residents and name those list to whatever I want.  I can add people to it and have them coloured differently on the mini-map and for their tags.

If I could have SL and Firestorm changed to the way I want it would be like this:

1. The "Groups" sub-tab is moved out to it's own tab at the same level as the "Contacts" tab.
2. The "Friends" sub-tab is merged with the "Contacts" sub-tab and renamed "Resident Lists".
3. I can add any resident to any named list I create but in addition to colouring their tags/mini-map dot, etc. I could also assign the permissions that were in the "Friends" sub-tab.
4. My choice to add would stay private to me until I checked a permission to give to the resident in question and at that point it asks them "Gabriele Graves wants to give you permission to see their online status", etc.  If they chose to accept, they could select the list that they want me to appear on and then they could optionally give me permissions as well.

This introduces an asymmetry to this Friends/Contacts list that appeals to me hugely.  I should be able to add resident to any list I want without them knowing and they should be able to do likewise.  The only time we need to know that we are both on each other's lists is when we assign them permissions.

I think the "Friends" list as we have it is a false concept and is the source of much drama as it is today.  The above would help with all that in my opinion.
 

[Katherine Heartsong]

A reverse question ... when you remove a friend from your friends list, does that remove you from their list of friends?

[Gabriele Graves]

8 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

A reverse question ... when you remove a friend from your friends list, does that remove you from their list of friends?

Yes it does but it doesn't tell them.  It also doesn't tell you when your friends change their account name either.

[Coffee Pancake]

8 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

A reverse question ... when you remove a friend from your friends list, does that remove you from their list of friends?

Yes.

They can tell because your calling card will be in their trash folder.

[Katherine Heartsong]

1 minute ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Yes it does but it doesn't tell them.  It also doesn't tell you when your friends change their account name either.

Ah, sneaky. That explains a few things from my past when people simply "vanished" (maybe). Thanks for clarifying!

[Katherine Heartsong]

Just now, Coffee Pancake said:

Yes.

They can tell because your calling card will be in their trash folder.

Oh, that's a cool feature!

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Katherine Heartsong said:

Oh, that's a cool feature!

It's a side effect of friends being inventory based. So .. technically a bug.

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

It also doesn't tell you when your friends change their account name either.

So..if someone is a friend and changes their name, they will still be your friend.

"Who the heck is that person? I don't remember friending them!"

[Gabriele Graves]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It's a side effect of friends being inventory based. So .. technically a bug.

So extrapolating from this an inventory hiccup could end up with you losing friends?

Edited October 6, 2022 by Gabriele Graves

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

So..if someone is a friend and changes their name, they will still be your friend.

"Who the heck is that person? I don't remember friending them!"

Yes and exactly.

[Polenth Yue]

On 10/4/2022 at 3:59 PM, undevoted said:

Oh my sl is fine thank you for your concern. It just seems to be that everyone goes out to have a huge friends list and they barely talk to anyone on it. I was simply saying that I don't understand the appeal of that, but each to their own!

Who is the everyone that wants the huge friends list? Not you. Not me. Not many people in this thread. Not the majority of people I meet at events. There have always been some people who send random requests to as many people as possible, but most people use their friend list more selectively. This isn't really something that's changed.

[undevoted]

28 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

Who is the everyone that wants the huge friends list? Not you. Not me. Not many people in this thread. Not the majority of people I meet at events. There have always been some people who send random requests to as many people as possible, but most people use their friend list more selectively. This isn't really something that's changed.

The everyone is the people who i have met who boast about having a huge list, it was a simple thing that just made me curious as personally If i add people to my list they are friends, we talk and hang out etc. I do not see the point of having a list full of names who are just there and do not interact. 

[Coffee Pancake]

I have 203 friends on my list after almost 17 years here, no more than 25 are online at anyone time and mostly that's the same people. I regularly (more than once a week) talk to 5 of them. I am online a LOT.

Stop looking at the number of "friends" and just start adding people, don't stop once you find your bestie partner in crime.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 10/4/2022 at 3:04 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

Much like newbies bump into everyone they meet till they learn to give up attempting to be active and forever stand ghosted in place, there is an initial urge and desire to get some people on the "friend-list", make connections, that then crashes out after a few years and as we all adopt hermit mode.

16 years in this gods-forsaken world and counting. 😩

I don't clean out my contacts, and the few people I regularly interact with have me added on other platforms. SL is purely a creative outlet for me at this point, not a social one (unless I create alt #6426 and pretend to be young again).

[Istelathis]

On 10/3/2022 at 3:28 AM, undevoted said:

The ones who believe that friendship is a two way street and like any relationship it takes effort from both sides?

I think it comes down to age, you have people who have gotten older, have families and other responsibilities, they may have health concerns, and be filled to the brim with stress and maintaining friendships just becomes more difficult.  The desire to have superficial connections remains strong, as people are in general social but the energy to maintain strong friendships is just gone.

I don't collect friends, or contacts, so this is mostly just a guess.  I do know that it takes effort to maintain a friendship, just as it does for any relationship, and as I get older I find that my loved ones need more of my time, it is too much to juggle friendships into the equation - so I make an actual effort not to get people's hopes up that I can be a committed friend.  I don't mind superficial chat, something that simply has no further obligations is great.  I imagine I can't be the only one, and one tool people probably use to maintain superficial communication with others is just the friends list.  

[HeathcliffMontague]

How cynical we have become.  As long as I can stand up to pee and hold my booze I'll stand with the young ones here. But seriously, SL suffers from gentrification. Let's please counteract that? Be welcoming in some shape or form?

 

[Love Zhaoying]

6 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

16 years in this gods-forsaken world and counting. 😩

I don't clean out my contacts, and the few people I regularly interact with have me added on other platforms. SL is purely a creative outlet for me at this point, not a social one (unless I create alt #6426 and pretend to be young again).

Maybe we need to elect new SL "gods" (little-'g')!

Like SL "president" but more fun. 

I assume it would be some combination of Dominatrix, Alpha, and Gor-head.  "Bow before me, tiny avatar!"  "Where is my tribute?"

[SeattleChris]

I think I have five people on my friends list, and two of them are my alts.

I like people, just in small doses. And I think I went about trying to be "social" in Second Life the wrong way, in that I went about trying to be social. I should have concentrated on doing stuff I was interested in doing, then meeting other people interested in doing the same thing. Are Blender classes like RL cooking classes? A glass of wine while the chicken simmers, and skim the crowd for signs of other people there alone?

I admit the whole pandemic was hard, as I don't really know anybody in real life, so more and more, I turned to online platforms for socializing. I generally avoiding gaming forums like the plague, but Second Life isn't really a game, so I'm not surprised to find the forums much different than others.

I guess after I moved from salty noob to seasoned veteran, I've become neither JOMO or FOMO when it comes to meeting new people. Sure, it would be nice, but I'm not worried about it as a goal of continued participation. All the pixels make me happy, so with or without other people to share them with, I'm good. Which makes me mostly just ... MO, I guess. That's cool. I make my own fun

[Gabriele Graves]

To the people in this topic who seem to be quite judgemental of others about the way they use/don't use their contacts/friends list and making some leaps in assumptions about their approach to friendship, I say this.

It would be nice if you just stuck to giving your own experiences and ideas rather than comment on how others are doing it wrong.  Second Life is what it's users want it to be.  For some that is a social escape, for others not so much or even at all.  All use cases are equally valid and SL somehow, miraculously, manages to scratch an itch for everyone who has stayed over the years.  If some are made to feel as though their ways of using the platform are invalid then ultimately we all lose even if you never meet these people to find out that their approach to friendship is different to yours.

Edited October 8, 2022 by Gabriele Graves

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

It would be nice if you just stuck to giving your own experiences and ideas rather than comment on how others are doing it wrong.

They just can't help it. I have compassion for them. Thank you so much for pointing it out! 

[Foxx Ghoststar]

19 hours ago, Istelathis said:

I think it comes down to age, you have people who have gotten older, have families and other responsibilities, they may have health concerns, and be filled to the brim with stress and maintaining friendships just becomes more difficult.  The desire to have superficial connections remains strong, as people are in general social but the energy to maintain strong friendships is just gone.

I don't collect friends, or contacts, so this is mostly just a guess.  I do know that it takes effort to maintain a friendship, just as it does for any relationship, and as I get older I find that my loved ones need more of my time, it is too much to juggle friendships into the equation - so I make an actual effort not to get people's hopes up that I can be a committed friend.  I don't mind superficial chat, something that simply has no further obligations is great.  I imagine I can't be the only one, and one tool people probably use to maintain superficial communication with others is just the friends list.  

I feel like you just wrote my bio! lol

I rarely add people to contact list and I rarely get asked. I think I give off that natural leave me be vibe 😂

[BillFletcher]

On 10/3/2022 at 10:20 AM, Orwar said:

Putting someone on your contact list is not the same thing as 'making a friend'

Think of you SL contact list like you do the contact list on your RL phone, are all those people in your phone your friends? I know i have a lot of numbers of people I may need to talk to who I am not calling up to invite to my parties. 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Re: "It's actually called a contact list."

• When you go to add someone, the option is called "Add Friend"
• The default message sent with the invite is "Would you like to be friends?"
• The prompt in general is labeled "friendship offer", for the sender and receiver.
• The actual list of people in the Contacts tab is labeled "Friends" and the total is shown as "Friends: 99"

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator