Ren Toxx

Well, you see, it’s a bit like stating that the Sun comes out from the East, and inviting others to say what they think about it. You would get a vast majority who are, indeed, aware of it—plus, I imagine, a few who are either unaware of it, or even the odd ones believing it does not come out from the East. But by and large, and as Sid said, it’s a given fact. So it is that online stuff isn’t guaranteed eternal. Therefore, when one states a given fact like the Sun coming out from the East, or online things being ephemeral, usually what one is actually inviting is to draw further conclusions FROM that fact. Or, in your own words, “elements that need to be discussed about it”. Otherwise it merely is a technical exchange, and not really a matter of ‘opinion’, on the exact reliability of online servers, something we’re arguably hard-pressed to pontificate on since most of us aren’t the maintainers of those servers... or the long-term willingness of those same maintainers to keep maintaining them, which we’re equally hard-pressed to elaborate on, and for the same reason. That’s why I enjoined Sid’s question as to what was your conclusion FROM the above stated fact; all the more since it’s a great inspiration of yours, and therefore you surely have one conclusion or another to share with us, while you ask us to do the same. Cheers 🙂

Nevertheless, what is your conclusion to the circumstance you exposed in your original post?

What about what? He means what conclusion do you draw from the circumstance that online things are ephemeral.

One wonders... but it does happen. About a year ago, at an event, a guy faraway IMd me to ask if I needed help choosing stuff. Out of politeness I stifled my Aspie’s initial response (along the lines of “why on the seven hells of Earth would I need external help to know what stuff *I* like?”) and just didn’t answer; but the guy persisted a bit later when I approached a stall, telling me what colour of a certain item he liked for me. I do imagine they fish for people who actually lack the capacity to decide what they prefer, and the segue would be something like “that shirt would look good on you... and *I* would look good on you, too”. The fact that I can’t fathom that mentality is irrelevant—they want the easy type, and I guess that tactic is as good as any to find them: throw the hook, let those with a brain ignore you, and get the rest.

The future should be afraid of us...

Confirmed, too. I’d automatically think quite poorly of anyone assuming, just on the basis of gender, that I might be in need of financial support—let alone willing to accept it in exchange for affection, fake or otherwise. As for DJs, I’m merely indifferent. They’re no more interesting to me than soccer players are to anyone who’s not into soccer.

I usually go along with IMing where I hang out, but only because a lot of people seem to insist on talking privately—either for no discernible reason whatsoever, or because of the well-known one. Whenever I find this absurd to the point of annoying, I either compel them to switch to local, or disable my IMs completely. Few do continue in local, even after swearing on their mothers’ honour (😏) that they only meant polite, normal conversation. Go figure.

I could have a goodly number of imaginary friends if I accepted every blind friendship request come my way—some of them on the predictable, overused, silly tactic of “if you don’t accept, you’re unfriendly”. I wouldn’t know them, they wouldn’t know me, though a fair amount of them have more or less explicitly (usually less, owing to unshakeable disingenuity) said they’d gladly know me biblically. True friends, tho... that’s another story. Sometimes it feels like not many are into that.

Yus, I’ve been there several times when he visited. I think once I even spanked him 😂

London City.

What I do with these, is to start answering with just the first letter of each word, ”ftyijhoh” being “Fine, thank you, I’m just hanging out here”. They tend to catch up rather quickly—to the actual point, if not the acronyms themselves—and start writing better 😇

Thanks, Qie. I did suspect as much, but didn’t want to complicate my comment with technicalities; still, you’re right, of course 😉

There are entirely different case uses for tracking other’s LookAt. Years ago I helped my photographer partner at events, as his backup, shooting along in case his PC mangled a critical moment’s capture; but since he had a far better photographic eye, I’d rely on his framing—and for that, we used a HUD that sync’d my cam to his. That’s just one example. At a newcomer’s help area I hang out, it’s often useful to view newbies’ LookAts to see if they’re truly looking at something you’re pointing them to—or if they suddenly go AFK while you help them, as often happens. Either way, you wouldn’t believe the number of them who practically assume you have to know what they’re looking at. Regarding what we’re actually talking about here, the entire ‘perving’ thing is highly debatable. Even setting aside the examples above, there just happens to be a significant (if not vocal) number of users who just aren’t drama queens about it. Also, let’s be cynical honest for a moment: a fair number of those drama queens actually love to complain; you take away their LookAt tracking, you take away one of their venues for complaining. Me, I couldn’t care less if I’m looked at, but if some people enjoy making a fuss about it, hey, maybe they should be indulged, too 😜 Point being, it’d be excessive to eliminate LookAt sharing altogether, denying all those fair uses. At most, I’d go along making it easier for new users to be aware of it and how to disable it if they want; even set it to disabled by default.

“If you saw what I wrote in your profile, you’d write even worse in mine!”

By far my favourite is the “oops, I didn’t meant to hit the X at the corner”. Oddly, it tends to happen while at parties I’m kinda dragged in to, or whilst suffering holding IM conversations that bore the living daylights out of me. It’s the damnedest thing, I think my mouse sort of shimmies up & right to the screen corner, and then... bam!, unexpected crash. Also, I tend to recover extremely slowly from those. Like, hours, ya know.

“Yeah, she was nice, and... what was her name, again?”

There’s ways, if you need. Empty places, IMs off, alts... Nah, I always interpret in proportion to what the other explains 😉

At times, but not often; I’ve gotten to just log off, whenever. What I do like to have, if only for mostly practical purposes, is either privacy (to build, dress or whatever), or just turning off IMs to avoid distractions while shopping—I’m like a shark, focusing on one thing, and the rest doesn’t exist till I get my thing.

Science fiction and techno-prophesizing aside (because otherwise I honestly don’t know how SL has any particular bearing to all this), it partly depends on how you define the ‘Second Life experience’. There’s been quite a few mobile viewers which, expectedly, were built on the central idea of just enabling in-world chat, easy enough to do on limited hardware once you get the specific SL connection protocols. But then always comes the ‘feature creep’—or, rather, ‘request creep’: “hey, besides IMs, could we do group chat, too? And while we’re at it, would it be too difficult to add local chat, with a basic ability to TP/move the agent to a specific spot?” “And while we’re at it...”, someone always asks if it’d be way too difficult to add some basic rendering, “just to be able to click this or that”... and then... and then... and then. And before you know, all but a full-fledged viewer is demanded, gleefully ignoring that mobile hardware specs can’t possibly handle the stuff that even desktop rigs don’t necessarily run all too well—never mind the nightmare of funnelling all complex inputs to just touchscreen. Lumiya tried this, and it was rather clunky & way behind even while it was maintained. If this isn’t really about SL, then yes, mobiles are obviously a temporary hub of a connectivity solution until we can all rewire our cerebral cortexes and whatnot. Not that mine would do much good—it’d probably go about as far as a ZX Spectrum; but hey, dreaming is free, and Big Brother wouldn’t have to spend much time downloading my thoughts.

Tons. Myself, I prefer to do it sitting.

Depends whom you ask. I don’t take my embarrassment cues from Google.

How to make friends, and how to keep them... two entirely different questions. There’s a lot of threads about how to make them and, as Orwar said, they cover many different expectations. Me, I’m all about natural friendship, which means letting things happen at their own rhythm, never forcing, pushing or rushing for anything—which means NO friendship requests... if you start with that and then obsess with that, to the point of not wanting to interact with me unless I accept the request first, then we’re most likely never going to be friends, mostly because you’re worrying more about the ‘badge’ of friendship than the friendship itself. It’s about what happens while each do our own thing: if we keep meeting, talking often and even doing things together, spontaneously and for the pleasure of it, then a friendship is developing. And since it’s an organic, natural thing, it needn’t be declared, formalized, sealed, etc. It doesn’t mean I’m against ever adding to each other’s list... it only means not to lose sight of what actually matters. Keeping a friendship, though, is more about what good friendship means. For me, it’s caring about each other, which means that if your friend honestly needs your help, you give it. I talk to my friends most days, and if they ever need an ear, a hug and some company, I give it.

Good humour.