the age of the SL user - I wonder who are the oldest ?

[brodiac90]

I'm 32 and as a kid avi I feel young in both worlds lol!

[archangel969]

On 11/7/2022 at 3:29 PM, Sid Nagy said:

I always thought to never grow up entirely as well, and as long as I worked with children as a teacher, that worked pretty good. Never a dull moment and always in for the unexpected.
But since I'm unemployed/retired I notice that I get more and more and old grumpy fart.
That's life I guess.

Even though I still have 10 years until retirement, I do recognise that getting more grumpy. When I get the hang of it I always put this one on.

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by archangel969

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 11/5/2022 at 1:26 PM, tingelater said:

I know of two - whom i know for a fact are well over 80 years in Real Life. the eldest one turns 90 quite soon.

Wow! go them. My dad can barely manage a toaster. Too high tech. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

19 hours ago, Eddy Vortex said:

 

(Apparently people forgot about the generation who poked a hole in the ozone layer. But I ain't mad.)

It's not a hole really.

https://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/02_04_05.html

[Petronilla Whitfield]

I'm 59, and started SL in 2009.

I remember being in an SL 80's dance club several years ago when an avatar came to the door and said "I'm nineteen. Is there anyone my age or are you all old?"  By the conversations, I suspect we were (mostly) all "old" from the viewpoint of a teenager.

[BelindaN]

When I was 19, the guy at work who had his 30th birthday was ANCIENT. I could not comprehend being 30.

All I will add to this exposee thread is this. I have a daughter soon to be 40. And a grandson just 4. Oh and retirement is an illusion.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, BelindaN said:

When I was 19, the guy at work who had his 30th birthday was ANCIENT. I could not comprehend being 30.

Yeah, in my first job after college, when I was 21, I gave my co-worker an Over the Hill balloon on his 30th birthday.

My, how our perspectives change over time.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, BelindaN said:

When I was 19, the guy at work who had his 30th birthday was ANCIENT. I could not comprehend being 30.

All I will add to this exposee thread is this. I have a daughter soon to be 40. And a grandson just 4. Oh and retirement is an illusion.

Back in the day, 30 meant "un-dateable".  Your hopes at finding a mate after 30 were supposebly zero.

[Rolig Loon]

2 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

My, how our perspectives change over time.

Time itself seems to change pace. As a child, I remember counting my age in years. The years between my 11th and 12th birthdays, or between 15 and 16, seemed to take forever. At time sped up somewhere in my early professional years, however, I started to wish the birthdays would go back to that snail's pace. I started counting my age in decades to slow it down.  I was in my 20s or my 40s, and I stopped being specific about precisely where I was in my 20s or 40s. Somehow that kept me from aging quite so fast. A while back, I began to count my age in quarter century blocks, in a vain effort to slow time down even further. As I am now weeks from yet another birthday, I am beginning to realize that I have been making a terrible mistake, but it's too late to fix it. Some day I will actually succeed, and time will stop.

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Time itself seems to change pace. As a child, I remember counting my age in years. The years between my 11th and 12th birthdays, or between 15 and 16, seemed to take forever. At time sped up somewhere in my early professional years, however, I started to wish the birthdays would go back to that snail's pace. I started counting my age in decades to slow it down.  I was in my 20s or my 40s, and I stopped being specific about precisely where I was in my 20s or 40s. Somehow that kept me from aging quite so fast. A while back, I began to count my age in quarter century blocks, in a vain effort to slow time down even further. As I am now weeks from yet another birthday, I am beginning to realize that I have been making a terrible mistake, but it's too late to fix it. Some day I will actually succeed, and time will stop.

I have a theory about how the time-shift works.

When you are younger, each day-week-month-year-experience is a larger part of your total time or experiences so far.  So, each month "seems" longer and each experience "seems" more memorable since you have less time and experiences.  

But as you get older, each day-week-month-year-experience is a smaller and smaller proportion of your time up to this point.  So, each day-week-month-year seems "shorter", and each experience seems less memorable. 

 

[BelindaN]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I have a theory about how the time-shift works.

When you are younger, each day-week-month-year-experience is a larger part of your total time or experiences so far.  So, each month "seems" longer and each experience "seems" more memorable since you have less time and experiences.  

But as you get older, each day-week-month-year-experience is a smaller and smaller proportion of your time up to this point.  So, each day-week-month-year seems "shorter", and each experience seems less memorable. 

 

This. When you're five, a year is one fifth of your life.

When you're 50, it's a fiftieth. So ten times faster.

[Rolig Loon]

39 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I have a theory about how the time-shift works.

When you are younger, each day-week-month-year-experience is a larger part of your total time or experiences so far.  So, each month "seems" longer and each experience "seems" more memorable since you have less time and experiences.  

But as you get older, each day-week-month-year-experience is a smaller and smaller proportion of your time up to this point.  So, each day-week-month-year seems "shorter", and each experience seems less memorable. 

That's true, and it's also true that your midlife years are jammed full of way more serious decisions and life-changing events than they were when you were younger. Things seem to come at you faster than you can absorb them, and the years seem to go by faster. As you get even older, you have a growing sense that there's not enough time left for all the truly important things -- trips to take, grandchildren to see becoming adults, long-term projects to complete. That sense of growing responsibility over time magnifies the effect you have identified just now. It all amounts to one combined truth:  Time accellerates.

[Silent Mistwalker]

10 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Yeah, in my first job after college, when I was 21, I gave my co-worker an Over the Hill balloon on his 30th birthday.

My, how our perspectives change over time.

Yep. Now we know we had it backwards when we were young. Once you hit 30, then you realize it's the ones under 30 that can't be trusted! 😁

[Silent Mistwalker]

10 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

Time itself seems to change pace. As a child, I remember counting my age in years. The years between my 11th and 12th birthdays, or between 15 and 16, seemed to take forever. At time sped up somewhere in my early professional years, however, I started to wish the birthdays would go back to that snail's pace. I started counting my age in decades to slow it down.  I was in my 20s or my 40s, and I stopped being specific about precisely where I was in my 20s or 40s. Somehow that kept me from aging quite so fast. A while back, I began to count my age in quarter century blocks, in a vain effort to slow time down even further. As I am now weeks from yet another birthday, I am beginning to realize that I have been making a terrible mistake, but it's too late to fix it. Some day I will actually succeed, and time will stop.

I just finished reading this. If you like scifi, I'm recommending it because you mentioned stopping time. It's a pretty wild ride.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VQ8ZHBC/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i38

[Mystic Flower]

Old, hmm, I guess it depends on who is asking. In RL I am 52. I started SL in 2003. I always say that SL keeps me young! I'll never be ashamed of my age, many people don't make it this far. I'd have to say most of my friends are around my age or older. But a few are quite a bit younger. To me it doesn't matter as long as they are good people.

 

I have a few avatars I have made over the years. Recently I decided to make this one look 'old' as nearly every time i log in someone comments on how old I am lol. So why not make her look old.   I have my other avatars that look young and beautiful, that's easy to do. This look was more challenging.

 

SL is fun, I love meeting people of all ages, and there is always something new to learn! 

[PheebyKatz]

On 11/8/2022 at 1:38 PM, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Wow! go them. My dad can barely manage a toaster. Too high tech. 

It's better a toaster than, "Why is my computer so slow? I have every toolbar!"

[Phil Deakins]

16 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

As you get even older, you have a growing sense that there's not enough time left for all the truly important things -- trips to take, grandchildren to see becoming adults, long-term projects to complete.

... and how many more World Cups will you be able to see 

[Katherine Heartsong]

On 11/9/2022 at 11:38 AM, Love Zhaoying said:

I have a theory about how the time-shift works.

When you are younger, each day-week-month-year-experience is a larger part of your total time or experiences so far.  So, each month "seems" longer and each experience "seems" more memorable since you have less time and experiences.  

But as you get older, each day-week-month-year-experience is a smaller and smaller proportion of your time up to this point.  So, each day-week-month-year seems "shorter", and each experience seems less memorable. 

 

Part of the neuroscience behind how we perceive time has suggested that it's also a product of how much information our brains absorb to construct models of how the world works and how to interact (safely) with it during the various stages of our life.

As an infant and then child, we are literally sponges, as our brain processes vast amounts of new data to form our world models so that we can navigate the world. Everything from learning how to be mobile, to abstract concepts like mathematics, and physical objects in the world. It's partly also why dreams are more vivid in children, as part of the subconscious processing.

As we age, we encounter fewer and fewer new experiences that we need our brains to really focus directly on and categorize and process (which makes time seem to slow down), so time seems to slip away a bit. We let the things we accept and have already categorized and and familiar with in our world model, and have experienced thousands or millions of times, pass by as unimportant, this giving the sense that nothing really happened and therefore time seems to have slipped by unnoticed.

Fascinating subject!

60 in just a bit more than a month, where'd those years go?

Edited November 10, 2022 by Katherine Heartsong

[Love Zhaoying]

10 minutes ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

As we age, we encounter fewer and fewer new experiences that we need our brains to really focus directly on and categorize and process (which makes time seem to slow down), so time seems to slip away a bit. We let the things we accept and have already categorized and and familiar with in our world model, and have experienced thousands or millions of times, pass by as unimportant, this giving the sense that nothing really happened and therefore time seems to have slipped by unnoticed.

And...IMHO...if you do your Second Life "Right", you will always have "New" experiences..or create "New" experiences for "your own bad self" (yourself)!

[cunomar]

I was talking on the phone yesterday to a 25 year old when he found something thought lost forever and his excitement gave me reason for sad reflection that i can't remember ever getting that excited about anything at all .

The thrill of older girls who used to practise on me when i was in my early teens . The thrill of knowing I escaped death by a millisecond while doing something daft on a motorbike . Both very personal excitement not jump for joy and shout about it .

I met my great grandfather only once and he said i was an old head on young shoulders , perhaps thats why if asked to list notable life events in my last 20 years then i would have to try and remember foreign holidays and being specific would be difficult because to me we got on a plane to some place where you can buy beer by the pool about sums up all of them .

If i could go back in time and chat to my 25 year old self I think we would agree on just about everything, so my world view born of experience was already formed .

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 11/10/2022 at 1:25 AM, PheebyKatz said:

It's better a toaster than, "Why is my computer so slow? I have every toolbar!"

OMG LOL

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

What's interesting is how some people are able to manage pretty complex tech as they get older and some can't. Case in point, my mom who seems to be able to pick up anything and use it and she's almost 80. She's on whatsapp with us, she's posting on facebook, she's breaking in new phones and laptops. My dad is the same age and can't do any of that. He literally threatened to throw out the laptop and get a typewriter recently. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Ingrid Ingersoll

[DeepBlueJoy]

I'm over 60.  Mum was 88 her last birthday (she's less active now, but she loves SL, especially the picturesque sims).

I've had quite a few friends in their seventies... including upper 70s and many (most of my closest) friends in SL are 50s or 60s - so that's a lot of us.  Other than people I've helped with learning SL, few of my friends are younger than their 40s.

One of the people who taught me the most about SL in my early days was in her seventies.  When she died (COVID) SL lost a huge resource and a lot of us lost a very good friend.  She helped a lot of newcomers.  She'd worked in the computer industry back when computers were much bigger and much less powerful and she was very computer savvy and extremely knowledgeable about doing and making things in second life.  I got the feeling she understood how the technical underbelly of SL worked better than most.

Some older folks I know in SL  are intimidated by the learning curve, but others are very comfortable.  In other words, they're just like everyone else.

[DeepBlueJoy]

On 11/7/2022 at 8:59 AM, Phil Deakins said:

When I was in my 40s, someone described me as being like Peter Pan - not growing up lol. Like you, I have no intention of fully growing up either 

 

growing is wonderful.  Growing up is overrated.

[Phil Deakins]

11 hours ago, cunomar said:

[...] if asked to list notable life events in my last 20 years [...]

Quick digression here, but, imo, it's important for those of us who are in later life. Write your life story, with details of how it was back then for you. When you're gone, nobody can ask you about it.

I learned that after my mother died, and I suddenly wanted to know how her father being killed in a mining disaster affected her, but it was too late to ask, and there was nobody else from that generation to ask.

I've done it at the request of a daughter, and I add to it as I remember interesting bits. I'm not planning on leaving yet for a while, but it's all there for when I do

<end of digression>
 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Phil Deakins