Ren Toxx

Yes and no. Some people have a sense of humour. Just sayin’

No, persevere. There’s something to be said for people who aren’t afraid to speak up in local, and it broadens the possibility of anyone answering, without sending the same IM to everyone 😉

I would say “playing SL is hard”, period. I would also say, do you want it to be easy? Tic-tac-toe easy, that you can manage it all in a couple hours and then there’s nothing else new to learn, no new challenge to master, nothing to make you feel like you’re still going ahead and not be bored?  First, you don’t “need” a nicer avatar. If you feel your avatar has to do the talking for you, you’re doing it wrong. SL is a bit more than a fashion model runway. I’m not saying there’s no people and places where that happens... I’m saying you don’t have to automatically enslave yourself to those, and do everything they expect or ask of you. Second, 10% of a huge Marketplace is still a lot. It’s only really insuficcient if you don’t even look at it because you’re somehow protesting that it should be 50% and you won’t look at any of it until it reaches that percentage. May I suggest a possible way to succeed more than you apparently have so far? Drop the defeatist, self-victimist, “born-to-be-shunned” attitude already. One instance of it may elicit an “aww” or two, perhaps a couple pats in the back... but if you’re like that all the time, there’s only so much anyone can take of it, especially those who come to SL with their own baggage, and the last thing they need is more downers. Let me put it another way. Regardless of those apparent‘difficulties’, many males succeed wildly in SL—some actually welcome the challenge, if any. Some make incredibly good avatars for themselves. Some gather a huge list of friends—of both genders—whom they have a lot of fun with. Quite a few do both things. And no, these aren’t rocket scientists I’m talking about. They’re just people who try. And if they can, so can you.

More places dedicated to kill and/or f**k everything that moves, and half of the things that don’t?

Where is @Love Zhaoying with his popcorn just when you need him? Tsk, tsk.

I didn’t know you were this mean! 😯 😭 P.S: What humiliation techniques do you use? Asking for a friend...

Whoever goes postal on you for a “hi”, you’re entitled to think she’s not just judgmental but quite possibly paranoid, and no one would blame you for disliking those. But out of such extremes, you also say that some just seem ‘reluctant’ to answer your “hi”... and you all but assume that that’s their thinking. Well, there you go: you’re assuming things, too. It’s a generalization, which is why you’re getting the equivalent generalization for an answer: “experience”. Of course not all (or even most) women assume that. Some could be simply half-AFK, busy, not good conversationalists... or merely waiting to see what’s the actual purpose of the conversation, if any at all—there’s ongoing threads on the issue of people opening with a “hi” and leaving it almost exactly there, or at any rate charging the other with almost the entire weight of the conversation. Sex isn’t all that often mentioned, and believe me: in some cases, I almost ended up wishing they did ask for it, because then at least I’d know, after half an hour of inanities, what in the name of all bleeping hells they wanted. My point being: many of those conversations lasted that much, precisely because I did not assume it was about that. I wouldn’t have even responded to the initial “hi”, otherwise.

If I had to pay that to get a lover, a friend or a loyal host, I’d have bigger problems to worry about.

Most answers have been about clothing, quite correctly. However, and in my experience, another thing many new players have trouble getting is the nature of socializing in SL. Even those past sending friendship requests left & right, still think it’s a question of asking every stranger. Insofar as they see it as a virtual world, they think that different (looser) rules apply.

FIFY. To answer the question: both. Less the former, not because I believe it should be up to others, but because too many come awfully close to saying “hi” and considering that they’ve already done their part, now it completely falls on the other to carry the weight of the conversation and the burden to make it interesting. Saying “hello” only signals your intent to start a conversation, and polite though it may be, in itself it invites or facilitates no deeper response than merely repeating back the word. That’s not a conversation, that’s just the human equivalent of a protocol handshake to open an electronic communication; and in the cases we’re mainly discussing in this thread, it too often ends up being performing the handshake, and then sending absolutely nothing—except perhaps more protocol messages intended to keep the channel open... just to keep it open. It’s not about who starts it, or with what exact token, any more than it is about gender, Lureo. It’s about content.

Not necessarily. I’ve had people entirely skipping all canned conversation starters and going straight to the point. And a lot who didn’t, would’ve been surprised just how well that went with me; the very rarity of it already piques my interest. Even those who didn’t have a point other than conversation itself, found me interesting to talk to, if and when they contributed to it being something that actually excites the mind—be it discussion, banter, etc. “Hi” and “how are you?” and “I’m from <insert nation>” are, dare I say, not terribly exciting. I can give as good as I take, if not better; but I have to be given something other than thin air. Depending on the case, I might do my part to hold the conversation for a while, even throw something of my own to spice it up; but I sure as heck ain’t going to be the only one trying to make it more than what mere chatterbots could do.

I’m neither. I just suck at socializing.

Or “this place is dead”, or “full of bots”, or “how boring!”, or... yeah. I actively refrain from engaging all the whiners who basically expect the rest of SL to be there for the sole purpose of entertainment, and on keen watch to start talking—no matter what about—the very second they arrive... lest we disappoint them! (Funnily enough, a lot of them remain exactly as silent and as unwilling to start a conversation themselves, and only usually drop a disparaging comment right before a ragequit).

Bleh. A lemon daddy, on the other hand...

Yes, I balance it. If a hair is too render-costly but I like it, I’ll usually pick lighter items for other parts of my outfit.