My first moments in Second Life. I remember it well. Do you?

[Kobuk Farshore]

I still feel like I missed out completely on my SL youth.

I'm very much a "Let's click it and see what happens!" sort of n00b rather than a studious, "Yes I'd love to read all these tutorial boxes," kind, so the first thing I clicked was Search. I TPed to the Lesbian Teahouse and met an elegant, gorgeous woman there who whisked me away and gave me a makeover. Hooray! She probably spent 3k on me (Bax boots?!) but I had no idea that SL money translated to real. I thought it was all just virtual, like how I used to use the money cheat in Sims to get billions of simoleons and buy the uber-ultra kitchen appliances. :smileyvery-happy:

She gave me about 1k inventory of trans clothes she didn't wear anymore (not freebies), and took me out to buy jewelry and fun HUDS. Within a week she was teaching me basic building, how to sail, and all these tricky strange things I had no real concept of, like how to find chat-loggers. I wasn't the most focused student since all I really wanted to do was go explore on my own, but at the same time it was all pretty interesting... and did I mention she was hot? :}

She asked me to partner her on about my 8th day in SL, and again-- I wasn't taking things very seriously (still thinking Sims, lol) so I said sure. I also let a friend turn me into a vampire the same day just for fun, and it led to my divorce. :smileywink:

Crash-course in SL if ever there was one!

[Hippie Bowman]

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16 wrote:

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Hippie Bowman

 

 

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STEVEN !!! is that u. it is u omg!

we went dancing at this club we did. me and him. was my first time i ever went anywhere after the orientation place. a lady there gave me some shoes as well bc i only had one on and i couldnt find the other one (: 

 

 

---

 Great story and picture 16.  Thanks for sharing!

 

Peace!

[Hippie Bowman]

---

Kobuk Farshore wrote:

I still feel like I missed out completely on my SL youth.

I'm very much a "Let's click it and see what happens!" sort of n00b rather than a studious, "Yes I'd love to read all these tutorial boxes," kind, so the first thing I clicked was Search. I TPed to the Lesbian Teahouse and met an elegant, gorgeous woman there who whisked me away and gave me a makeover. Hooray! She probably spent 3k on me (Bax boots?!) but I had no idea that SL money translated to real. I thought it was all just virtual, like how I used to use the money cheat in Sims to get billions of simoleons and buy the uber-ultra kitchen appliances. :smileyvery-happy:

She gave me about 1k inventory of trans clothes she didn't wear anymore (not freebies), and took me out to buy jewelry and fun HUDS. Within a week she was teaching me basic building, how to sail, and all these tricky strange things I had no real concept of, like how to find chat-loggers. I wasn't the most focused student since all I really wanted to do was go explore on my own, but at the same time it

was

all pretty interesting... and did I mention she was hot? :}

She asked me to partner her on about my 8th day in SL, and again-- I wasn't taking things very seriously (still thinking Sims, lol) so I said sure. I also let a friend turn me into a vampire the same day just for fun, and it led to my divorce. :smileywink:

Crash-course in SL if ever there was one!

---

A great and interesting Story Kobuk!  That you for shaing here!

 

Peace!

[Claireschen Hesten]

i remember just starting out in SL really well it was april '08 one of my favourite bands had just released a new album i'd decided to try SL after reading a magazine article. i remember trying to log in for the first time and being confronted by nothing but blue for the first few attempts. on my final attempt i was all but ready to give up all hope of playing SL then the world started to rezz, i have no idea where i landed but the ground did look like help island. some kind fella noticed i was new and IM'd me we chatted a little and he passed me a couple of LM's one for freebie dungeon one for freebie wearhouse.
i tp'd over to freebie dungeon it was a vast place i picked up boxes of clothes and shoes i never knew if you bought a box you got the entire contents so i got some boxes of stuff several times thinking you clicked what you wanted and got those items i managed to find my way out of freebie dungeon and in to a sim called deva loka and a mall called 'Kaimono Mall' i found somewhere quiet and set to work on my AV i put some different clothes on some jeans a t-shirt and a tartan jacket and a pair of red & white prim trainers. i adjusted my shape a bit to make it more me, made my skin paler, eyes blue, played around with make-up and tried to get my system hair as much like my RL hair as possible then i set to explore Deva Loka.
i remember seeing a sign for free money on a teleporter so i used it to tp i was a bit miffed when i arrived and couldn't see the money, so i kept tp-ing to the 'free money' in the sim and never saw any money but i did eventually notice one of those ATM's that were meant to reward you for completeing surveys, it never did but i did also discover a money tree and two floor mopping campers in the sim after wandering some more.
the next day i searched for free money and ended in a sim called Garnet initally at a zyngo place then i some how found myself in the next door swimming pool center i spent a few days there wandering around using the wonder chairs and the xploder till i got banned for rezzing stuff i ended up back at the zyngo place i saw it had camping and i thought you had to click on the camper then dance so i clicked the camper and spent 10 minutes pressing F9 F10 F11 F12 i did this several times and kept wondering why it was never paying it took me a while to realize you had to right click and sit on the thing to dance for money. when i built up some money i went back to Kaimono Mall and rented a booth and tried to make a bit of cash out of those BIAB's i acquired in freebie dungeon

[Hippie Bowman]

What a cool story!  Thank you for sharing Claireschen!

 

Peace!

[Ceka Cianci]

i remember first getting here..landing in orientation island ..i remember feeling like i was in the movie the island or something or logans run or something..just hearing the media  and seeing people just wandering around..

i was like omg this feels creepy!! i came in with a few friends they were pretty much all guys  lol

the other girls didn't start to show up until a few days later..

anyways..i was trying to walk around while these voices from the stream were playing..

i ran down the hill and followed all those signs ..i think i was on that island for maybe 10 minutes before one of they guys said..hey we have a teleport to the main land...

i was so lost..

we ended up porting  to the mainland and the voices finally stopped..i guess one of them had been here before ..so they were kind of the leader at the time..

ok lets go here and get you guys some stuff..

box on head moment about to happen.. they showed me how to buy something to get it and then click on it ..box on head moment has arrived..

hey how the hell do i get this off my head!!! then it was like my first trouble shoot in the learning curve..

it took about 20 minutes but i finally figured out where detach was  in the menu..they gave up trying to tell me to click on the box to detach it..

plus i was already mad by this point so they knew just tell her menus..she knows menus..

anyways..to make a long story short..

i ended up getting pissed off at the controls and having to be a rocket scientist with every move i made the first few hours..so i left and didn't come back for like 3 days...

it was much better then..because they showed me real stores and where i could buy money to buy stuff..

but not before taking me to every freaking feebie place they could find ..where we just grabbed and grabbed and grabbed free stuff like it was going out of style..which later we leared was out of style LOL

thats about all i can remember right now from back then..

oh and also findign out that out of the 8 others than joined..i was the onyl one that went premium right away..the rest made free accounts..

i was like omg you Azzhats!! can't believe none of you went premium with meh!!!\o/

i know i sounded like a botch then..but these guys loved to get me mad..lol it was their goal until the other girls got there and we laid down the law.. hehehehe

[Hippie Bowman]

I love you story of your first moments in SL!  Whew It is hard to be new indeed!  Thank you for sharing Ceka!

 

Peace!

[Domitan Redenblack]

I lost my hair somehow on the second day in SL. By the time I figured out how to get new hair, everyone knew me as bald.

 

So... I still am today... :smileywink:

[Hippie Bowman]

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Domitan Redenblack wrote:

I lost my hair somehow on the second day in SL. By the time I figured out how to get new hair, everyone knew me as bald.

 

So... I still am today... :smileywink:

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LOL Dom!  Thanks for the reply!

 

 

Peace!

[Kelli May]

 I can't believe I didn't post on this when it came up last year. Maybe I missed it.

I don't have my own pictures from the time, so I'll borrow some of yours. I started in September 06, with a different account - Kelli is about 3 weeks younger - so most of these recollections belong to a different me.

I remember this view well. I think I got to the 'change your appearence' sign and spent at least an hour changing my av into something completely unrecognisable. I wandered down through the island, and flew about a bit, but before very long I moved on to SL proper. I remember finding a dance ball very early on... maybe on Orientation Island, maybe somewhere else, but I started dancing and encouraged a few more newbies around me to do the same. I remember we were all very impressed.

 

Before long, I found myself at Ahern, too.

 I hung around there for a while, making forays into the surrounding countryside.  During the first week or so I made dozens of avs, all using the basic shape & colour sliders... no skins, no prim hair. I must have looked a state, but I got lots of compliments. If they were sincere, they must have been from newbies more clueless than me. I experimented with male & female avs at this point, but soon settled on female.

I found places like Luskwood, a big shopping area with stores like Chip Midnight, a beach party area (both in Aqua; some of the stores are there to this day) and a nearby sandbox (probably Plum). I spent (probably unwisely) most of my sign-up bonus L$.

I eventually met up with some sympatico fellow newbies. One of them had found or been shown a freebie area (up near the Great Wall) and that became our centre of operations for a while. A lot of time was spent dancing and camping. When we camped, we didn't go afk, but chatted while our avatars made pennies. Our opinions was that if we'd be dancing anyway, we might as well be paid for it. 

 Around this point, I discovered the seamier side of SL, and started living something of a double (triple?) life. That's when I created Kelli. I didn't abandon my friends, but my closest friend in SL quit, and I lost track of the rest. So Kelli became my main av... which is a whole other story.

[Isabelli Anatine]

Everything were grey, was a hard time to things loads and my pc melt.

 

After many crashes, I manage to edit my skin and hair (yes system skin and hair).

 

I grabed the torch and learned how to tp using the search.

 

But I were too damm uggly in my system skin and hair, so a nice guy helped me to look for skin, clothes, hair and such.

 

He guided me to Sarah Nerd's freebie place... I had a duck walk for a long, long time.

[Hippie Bowman]

---

Kelli May wrote:

 

I can't believe I didn't post on this when it came up last year. Maybe I missed it.

I don't have my own pictures from the time, so I'll borrow some of yours. I started in September 06, with a different account - Kelli is about 3 weeks younger - so most of these recollections belong to a different me.

I remember this view well. I think I got to the 'change your appearence' sign and spent at least an hour changing my av into something completely unrecognisable. I wandered down through the island, and flew about a bit, but before very long I moved on to SL proper. I remember finding a dance ball very early on... maybe on Orientation Island, maybe somewhere else, but I started dancing and encouraged a few more newbies around me to do the same. I remember we were all very impressed.

 

Before long, I found myself at Ahern, too.

 I hung around there for a while, making forays into the surrounding countryside. 

 During the first week or so I made dozens of avs, all using the basic shape & colour sliders... no skins, no prim hair. I must have looked a state, but I got lots of compliments. If they were sincere, they must have been from newbies more clueless than me. I experimented with male & female avs at this point, but soon settled on female.

I found places like Luskwood, a big shopping area with stores like Chip Midnight, a beach party area (both in Aqua; some of the stores are there to this day) and a nearby sandbox (probably Plum). I spent (probably unwisely) most of my sign-up bonus L$.

I eventually met up with some sympatico fellow newbies. One of them had found or been shown a freebie area (up near the Great Wall) and that became our centre of operations for a while. A lot of time was spent dancing and camping. When we camped, we didn't go afk, but chatted while our avatars made pennies. Our opinions was that if we'd be dancing anyway, we might as well be paid for it. 

 Around this point, I discovered the seamier side of SL, and started living something of a double (triple?) life. That's when I created Kelli. I didn't abandon my friends, but my closest friend in SL quit, and I lost track of the rest. So Kelli became my main av... which is a whole other story.

---

 

Oh so good Kelli!  Thank you for sharing here!

 

 

Peace!

[Hippie Bowman]

---

Isabelli Anatine wrote:

Everything were grey, was a hard time to things loads and my pc melt.

 

After many crashes, I manage to edit my skin and hair (yes system skin and hair).

 

I grabed the torch and learned how to tp using the search.

 

But I were too damm uggly in my system skin and hair, so a nice guy helped me to look for skin, clothes, hair and such.

 

He guided me to Sarah Nerd's freebie place... I had a duck walk for a long, long time.

---

Oh yes the duck walk Isabelli!  HEHE!  I wonder why LL did not make another walk for noobs!  Thanks for sharing!

 

 

Peace!

[Czari Zenovka]

I arrived in SL on May 1, 2007.  Orientation Island had apparently changed a bit since Hippie's experience in 2006.  I was sent on a "quest" of sorts.  There was a path that wound up a mountain with an NPC at various spots.  The NPC taught some aspect of SL and, after successfully completing the task given, I was sent to the next NPC and given instructions to say something particular to it, which triggered the next lesson.  The final lesson and end of the "quest" had something to do with a volcano, but I can't recall what it was.

Anyone recall this noobie avatar from those days?

I took this photo a year later for a class I was teaching at a SL school on the topic of customizing one's avatar because I didn't know how to take pictures in SL when I started. :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2:

After exiting OI somehow I landed on Help Island which had various areas to practice the SL skills we learned on OI as well as a huge freebie area.  At the time I didn't have any idea there were items that could be purchased within SL since the only other 3D type program I'd used was EverQuest.  Based on that game, at least when I played, I thought whatever changes I made to my avatar on Help Island were going to be what my avatar looked like forever. I got busy on the sliders and figuring out how to make system clothing which was how I spent day 2 in SL.

I heard about SL on IRC where I had been in a rp channel for close to 15 years.  Someone from SL had come to IRC to help a friend and ended up in my home channel as it was the same rp niche of the visitor.  He invited our group to SL and provided contact info so that *if* we did (the leader of our group said we had been together for 15 years on IRC, were perfectly content there, thank you very much, and would not be going to SL *chuckles*) he would be happy to bring us to the rp sim in SL that he was from and help us to become acclimated to SL.  A month later I was the first of our group to check out SL.

So there I was working the sliders.  The rp group of which I was a part had strict clothing requirements for women, which was the hardest part of my getting ready to enter SL proper, especially thinking the look I created on Help Island was the look I was going to be stuck with.  This is my recreation (again done a year later) of how I looked after spending a day with the sliders:

I thought I looked pretty good.  Somehow, between the time I left Help Island and was teleported out by the person who had invited us to SL, I ended up with a Swiss Chalet, that I had acquired from the freebie shop, on my head.  Some people wore boxes, I sported an entire chalet!!!  Try as I might, I could not figure out how to remove the chalet so I sent a Yahoo IM to my SL contact (also didn't know how to IM within SL yet) and waited until he arrived and sent a teleport to me.

My thoughts of how good my avatar looked quickly faded as I saw other women in gorgeous gowns with beautiful hair and seeming to glide on air as they walked instead of the awakard herky-jerky my avatar was doing.  The friend, SZ, introduced me to another man who was standing by.  In excellent rp style this man said, "A pleasure to meet you M'Lady.  I must ask, though, you are wearing a quite unusual hat.  Is this the custom of your lands?"  I was so grateful for the way my faux-pas was handled but simultaneously absolutely mortified.  The men helped me extricate the chalet from my head and then summoned a few female friends to take me shopping.  I was amazed by the kindness shown by this group to basically a complete stranger.  I was teleported from place to place.  I did not know how to buy or acquire lindens yet.  One person purchased a gown for me and another provided a very expensive (as I found out later) AO.

The rest is history.....

I was blessed to have been introduced to SL by a group of friendly people who took me in hand and showed me the ropes.  If I'd entered SL alone, my journey would likely have been very different; who knows how long I'd have been stuck with a Swiss Chalet on my head!!

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

wiked Anton wrote:

I first learned of SL in a CSI episode, wondered about it, and after a year decided ti check it out, unfortunately my graphics card wasnt up to it and it took my another few months to get around to urgrading it. I have upgraded it a couple of times since then.

---

Ooooo...I remember when that CSI episode came out (I never saw it) but the forums were buzzing with predictions of how many new people would come to SL based on that episode, etc.

ETA: I just saw the date of the OP.  Oh well, better late than never....lol.

 

[Maryanne Solo]

I was merrily minding my own business in RL and someone told me there is this Virtual World...

and I'm like "a what" o.0? where you can fly and play games and make clothes...

"WAIT! you can make clothes?" yuss..

"O M G can you! what and you wear them too?!?!"  yuss and you can also sell them..

"Sell them?" yup "but how?" well people pay money for them.. "*faints - you can't be serious" :smileysurprised:

I was a regular visitor to Green Island in North Queensland where they had funny money for the tourists so the linden thing made perfect sense and that was it for me. I joined on dial-up lol.

Can't remember much about my beginning other than at that time, most Australians were introduced to SL via our national telco where you could play & join for free as part of your contract but you were restricted to only those sims owned by the Telco. I wasn't with them for my internet so I was alone and didn't meet another Aussie apart from my friend for at least 6 months.

The best thing to this day is to "pay forward" and pass on the goodwill of others as was the case with myself. Even if you never see the noobs again it's still great fun to share in their excitement at joining SL.

[Hippie Bowman]

---

Czari Zenovka wrote:

I arrived in SL on May 1, 2007.  Orientation Island had apparently changed a bit since Hippie's experience in 2006.  I was sent on a "quest" of sorts.  There was a path that wound up a mountain with an NPC at various spots.  The NPC taught some aspect of SL and, after successfully completing the task given, I was sent to the next NPC and given instructions to say something particular to it, which triggered the next lesson.  The final lesson and end of the "quest" had something to do with a volcano, but I can't recall what it was.

Anyone recall this noobie avatar from those days?

I took this photo a year later for a class I was teaching at a SL school on the topic of customizing one's avatar because I didn't know how to take pictures in SL when I started. :matte-motes-bashful-cute-2:

After exiting OI somehow I landed on Help Island which had various areas to practice the SL skills we learned on OI as well as a huge freebie area.  At the time I didn't have any idea there were items that could be purchased within SL since the only other 3D type program I'd used was EverQuest.  Based on that game, at least when I played, I thought whatever changes I made to my avatar on Help Island were going to be what my avatar looked like forever. I got busy on the sliders and figuring out how to make system clothing which was how I spent day 2 in SL.

I heard about SL on IRC where I had been in a rp channel for close to 15 years.  Someone from SL had come to IRC to help a friend and ended up in my home channel as it was the same rp niche of the visitor.  He invited our group to SL and provided contact info so that *if* we did (the leader of our group said we had been together for 15 years on IRC, were perfectly content there, thank you very much, and would not be going to SL *chuckles*) he would be happy to bring us to the rp sim in SL that he was from and help us to become acclimated to SL.  A month later I was the first of our group to check out SL.

So there I was working the sliders.  The rp group of which I was a part had strict clothing requirements for women, which was the hardest part of my getting ready to enter SL proper, especially thinking the look I created on Help Island was the look I was going to be stuck with.  This is my recreation (again done a year later) of how I looked after spending a day with the sliders:

I thought I looked pretty good.  Somehow, between the time I left Help Island and was teleported out by the person who had invited us to SL, I ended up with a Swiss Chalet, that I had acquired from the freebie shop, on my head.  Some people wore boxes, I sported an entire chalet!!!  Try as I might, I could not figure out how to remove the chalet so I sent a Yahoo IM to my SL contact (also didn't know how to IM within SL yet) and waited until he arrived and sent a teleport to me.

My thoughts of how good my avatar looked quickly faded as I saw other women in gorgeous gowns with beautiful hair and seeming to glide on air as they walked instead of the awakard herky-jerky my avatar was doing.  The friend, SZ, introduced me to another man who was standing by.  In excellent rp style this man said, "A pleasure to meet you M'Lady.  I must ask, though, you are wearing a quite unusual hat.  Is this the custom of your lands?"  I was so grateful for the way my faux-pas was handled but simultaneously absolutely mortified.  The men helped me extricate the chalet from my head and then summoned a few female friends to take me shopping.  I was amazed by the kindness shown by this group to basically a complete stranger.  I was teleported from place to place.  I did not know how to buy or acquire lindens yet.  One person purchased a gown for me and another provided a very expensive (as I found out later) AO.

The rest is history.....

I was blessed to have been introduced to SL by a group of friendly people who took me in hand and showed me the ropes.  If I'd entered SL alone, my journey would likely have been very different; who knows how long I'd have been stuck with a Swiss Chalet on my head!!

 

---

 

Very interesting Czari!  Thank you for sharing here!

 

 

Peace!

[Hippie Bowman]

---

Maryanne Solo wrote:

I was merrily minding my own business in RL and someone told me there is this Virtual World...

and I'm like "a what" o.0? where you can fly and play games and make clothes...

"WAIT! you can make clothes?"

yuss..

"O M G can you! what and you wear them too?!?!"  yuss and you can also sell them..

"Sell them?" yup "but how?" well people pay money for them.. "*faints - you can't be serious" :smileysurprised:

I was a regular visitor to Green Island in North Queensland where they had funny money for the tourists so the linden thing made perfect sense and that was it for me. I joined on dial-up lol.

Can't remember much about my beginning other than at that time, most Australians were introduced to SL via our national telco where you could play & join for free as part of your contract but you were restricted to only those sims owned by the Telco. I wasn't with them for my internet so I was alone and didn't meet another Aussie apart from my friend for at least 6 months.

The best thing to this day is to "pay forward" and pass on the goodwill of others as was the case with myself. Even if you never see the noobs again it's still great fun to share in their excitement at joining SL.

---

 

YAY Maryanne!  Thanks for sharing!

 

 

 

Peace!