What places in real life does your Second Life feel like?

[Bree Giffen]

I know everyone hasn't travelled the world but we have seen places in media and seen how people are in those places. I've never been to Paris but I think I can form a half-baked idea of what it would be like to go there. 

With that in mind, do you ever get the feeling that you are in a real life place and where would that be?

When I wander around Second Life I see a lot of people who look out of the ordinary standing around with casually dressed folks. It feels like an anime convention which I've been to a few times. You could walk into a bathroom and be confronted by someone dressed like a princess. There are also times when SL feels like Las Vegas. I've been there once but didn't see much but from youtube videos I know that city is filled with outlandish places where you could be walking down the street and see a pirate ship in a lagoon. 

SL also feels like a place where you could bump into a person from anywhere so SL would be like a tourist trap. I guess that could also be Las Vegas but it could be anywhere you don't run into locals but see mostly visitors. 

[JeromFranzic]

Ummm... The New York City areas feel realistic to me, even if they aren't carbon copies of the areas they represent. I like the Chelsea and Times Square sims.

As far as other places, Teranga is great... and of course the vastness of Mount Campion. Speaking of anime, I love a lot of the anime themed areas in SL! I know other virtual worlds like VRChat render those areas to a better degree but the SL folks in the anime spots are far friendlier to me. They don't gatekeep and tell me I have to look 100% anime.

[Persephone Emerald]

In general Second Life is like Disney World. Both places are impossibly clean, free of RL, have an incongruous mixture of styles, and are primarily focused on entertainment and play.

Specific places in SL remind me of specific places in RL, but only because they trigger RL memories. 

The Log Home regions remind me of the residential areas in South Lake Tahoe, California.

My home in SL is perhaps most like a dollhouse, but not like a specific one I had in RL.

 

Edited August 6 by Persephone Emerald

[ananoelle]

Feel like real life? 

My childhood neighbours have either died or moved away and my new neighbours aren't so neighbourly so I guess Belli. 

[Luna Bliss]

I'm working on a desert home atm, and it will probably be my main home for at least a few months. I've always loved the Southwest due to the amazing terrain and wide open spaces, and spent many vacations there, so this adobe style house reminds me of the area.

My parents ashes are scattered in the Southwest.

Edited August 6 by Luna Bliss

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

Time Square in New York City, at night, feels like everything has full bright turned on, and somebody turned on set time of day to noon.

Edited August 6 by Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

[Bree Giffen]

1 hour ago, Persephone Emerald said:

In general Second Life is like Disney World. Both places are impossibly clean, free of RL, have an incongruous mixture of styles, and are primarily focused on entertainment and play.

 

I was thinking about SL being like a theme amusement park. It's filled with characters and you know the places you visit aren't completely real.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

Depends on the sim.

Sometimes it feels like the Southbank/Crown Entertainment Complex area of Melbourne, Australia. Sometimes the beaches of Puerto Rico. Some events feel like Carnival. Sometimes that gross, sweaty London club filled with pervs drunkenly swaying to bad music that my roommates and I found ourselves in, regretting every decision we ever made that led us to that very place.

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

I would currently compare my recent SL experiences with visiting a once popular comedy club which feels neglected, tired and has declined, one where the comedians aren't funny and most of the audience seats are left unsold and empty. Speaking to the management about making constructive changes or introducing fresh new acts doesn't help as they don't want to listen to their patrons, who they merely regard as customers.

Edited August 7 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Ceka Cianci]

SL feels pretty SL'y to me and too cartoony to really make me feel like I was anywhere but in SL.

The closest I ever came to it really , would probably have been in the Old Radio scenes that were made years ago.. I don't know if they are still around.. But they had a pretty real feeling back then.

[WeFlossDaily]

People say they want more realism but they really don't. The current trifecta of evil (PBR, gfTL, and 2k-textures) that the cult of progress demands we adopt and praise and sacrifice our aging potato machines unto under threat of inquisition can't save us from the fact that at least half the ppl in SL have long since forgot what simple things like the beach sloping gently into the ocean and a blade of grass looked like years ago. This is most evident in the distortion of our self-image as a collective, which can be best observed in the malformed and hideous proportions that have been applied the average human shape in SL. Please look at the nearest centaur-woman. Her upper body is that of a petite female. But below her narrow-narrow waist is the body of a much larger woman with a very large booty (nobody told me there was a grid-wide big butt contest), now complete with terrifying anti-gravity physics that allow it to float and wobble freely in the air like some kind of bizarre paranormal encounter typically confined to in the deepest and weirdest material of the nightmare realm. People are imitating AI-generated art and claiming that it is their idea of beauty. But in reality they have already fallen victim to a mindless algorithm, a dead thing which broadcasts dead thoughts into a digital pit at the bottom of the cloud ruled by hideous self-appointed gods which think empty thoughts in the language of the machines and whose guttural utterance is the sound of the cooling fans of new machines cranking up and sucking in tiny fly-bugs and orange chip-dust. Machines to make machines. Insects eating insects. Pick your symbol. It doesn't matter. All of these things fighting to control of the spider perched on your pre-frontal cortex, the one pulling the tiny, invisible threads of your thoughts.

The really sad part of all of this is that SL could be so much more than a crappy shopping simulator and a scattering of furniture-littered beaches but we have allowed ourselves to be pushed in directions that don't make any rational sense for the sake of imagined progress. We have been duped and fooled and derailed and then duped and fooled om och om igen, over and over--we don't even feel the wool anymore. None of these advancements will usher in the age the of incredible magical realism. The Magical PBR Future is all just another deception, lie, fabled paradise, and false utopia. It will bring us nothing.

/me casts a spell of protection around myself and says 'I rebuke all attacks upon this line of reasoning in the name of common sense and illogical certainty.'

Short answer: No, I've never felt like I was in a real place in SL. Sorry about the weird rant. I get bored sometimes. =]

Edited August 7 by WeFlossDaily

[InnerCity Elf]

An interesting question. 

During times when I'm in SL often, everywhere feels like SL. Maybe it is, one of the abundant matrix theories might be true, after all. 

Having to choose one place in particular, then 90's Tokyo.

[rasterscan]

The many old ruins we see watching Dave and Logan on their walkies have inspired us to recreate them in SL many times

Edited August 7 by rasterscan

[Rufferta Mainlander]

I haven't been there recently, but I felt that Mont Saint Michel was a good replica.

[HeathcliffMontague]

On 8/8/2024 at 1:53 AM, Rufferta Mainlander said:

I haven't been there recently, but I felt that Mont Saint Michel was a good replica.

Yeah, I was half expecting  the nuns to suddenly come out of nowhere, close the doors behind us and not open them until the service was over (happened to me in RL).

[Jennifer Boyle]

My house feels like it's on the coast in Croatia.

[Simo Vodopan]

Theres this one shady alley way I hang at in SL and it reminds me so much of the area my place of work is at. A condom box in a parking stall? Yeah, thats the sum of it.

Edited August 10 by Simo Vodopan

[Lysistrata Szapira]

I always try to make my Belli homes (Victorians) look like Mackinac Island. 

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

Great Twitter thread of places that I'm pretty sure I've seen in SL.  Maripissa reminds me of an area in Calas, near the submarine tour.

 

[SlammedSam]

I generally make my SL home in a mid-century style. So, my grandparent's house?