Amanda Crisp

Taking time to take stock of the good things in life is not of itself a date, it is a philosophy. In North America, at least two countries celebrate a day of Thanksgiving, the USA just markets the one it celebrates more loudly 🙂 The official day for Thanksgiving is what you make of it; just like any other "national" holiday. My spirituality is decidedly not-Christian - but I'm not above taking a day off and reminding myself to be grateful for the good things I have managed to sneak into my life. "Many paths to the Truth"... On the flipside - our Political & Corporate Overlords are probably waiting for the day we become so polarized and fragmented that celebrating *any* holiday becomes a political and emotional dumpster-fire. Thats they day they can claim that having National Holidays is just too dangerous and corporations will be telling us that; "If you want a day off - take a vacation day." Until that day, I plan to enjoy my holiday dinner with family and then spend an uninterrupted evening with my Partner in Second Life; being thankful that I still can 🙂

I think *people* have gotten somewhat limited in their expectations within SL 🙂 More and more, I hear from people who expect to come to SL and be entertained by someone else; which is a shift from ten+ years ago when higher numbers of people came to create content. SL seems to be mirroring RL in many ways; this is one.

Marx went after the wrong people. He focused on Capitalists when the people really pulling the “keep them divided” strings are whatever Ruling Group holds and intends to retain power. Thats not politics or wealth; its a Power thing.

As a point of fact - Slavery *violates* modern-day American Principles. We concluded a bloody civil war to end it in 1865 and the vast majority of the people who won the war to abolish that intolerable practice were not themselves of African descent.

**Story told in the key of ".gif"** I started off in my family business, but quit and actually joined the military to avoid life as a mortician. Perhaps not the greatest choice. The military found something fun for me to so... After that, and STILL not wanting to hang around creepy things - I went back to school (Business Management/Organizational Development) I then began herding the cats. I work for a company that makes petfood. My job is to "develop talent"..... and "mentor the unwilling" I'm close to early-retirement now, and it can't happen fast enough. A lot of Real Life People are just evil...

Methinks he toots too much

I’m an ENFJ (A) on the Meyers-Briggs scale actually. If you have any worthy SL causes that require a revolution, I’m the avatar.....

Somehow, childproofing the adult world just seems repressive.

Wait.....we’re treating pixel cigarettes like real cigarettes?

This kinda takes it for granted that the rest of SL is here to live-action-Roleplay the static we have to deal with in Real Life. Unless we’re in a Roleplay sim, I consider myself a Resident of Second Life - not a Player in a game. Upside; there are many Roleplay sims where you can go pick as many fights as you want; so feel free to have-at it.....

They totally miss the part where; “If you Roleplay well - sex -may- be involved if it fits the Story” I worry that those same folks miss the connection between being Social and having Adult Fun in Real Life as well.... ....either that or a LOT of money is changing hands....

“I’m new to RP - how do I get sex?”

How about a switched-up Forum section-title? ”Pissed-Off Connections”? There would probably be a thread running in that section called; “Looking for a Hit-Man”

Most of my GOOD “strange character” stories come from my time in roleplay sims, and cannot be repeated here because of (a) good taste and (b) forum maturity ratings.....

It was odd. Some years back I stopped clubbing and disappeared into a RP sim for a long time. The club’s I used to hang out in had all manner of people text chatting. When I surfaced from RP land, clubs nowadays are filled with silent dancers, gesture spammers or people Skyping. It’s really an art form to get many people to engage outside of random pickup lines. The ”Social” SL of the early days where most of us were Geeks and Geekettes seems to have shifted its social center of gravity. Either that, or we evolved beyond textual relations ?

There are plenty of places you can go to listen to music with a lot of other people around; Cay’s Club, the Factory, Club Retro, The River, Purple Gator & Wet Willies are just a few. Finding a place you can go to TALK and socialize - thats harder.

Still, if the question is “He-Man or Captain America” I have to vote for;

Luisa, my Boricua friend of about 30 years now would opine that Puerto Rican people graciously allow mainland Americans like me to associate with -them- ?

Thanks to this thread, I am activating Siri and Alexa and saying “By the power of grayskull”... some of the responses are charming ?

My Partner and I have rented Land together (under our Original Avatars) since 2005, first in a D’alliez sim, then in Geneva before Anshe whats-her-face stuck it to her tenants. For the last 10+ years we’ve owned a good chunk of a MadLand sim and mainly lived in Skybox land. My half of our Tier was $40 usd, and that went down to $35 based on all the changes. From *my* perspectives, LL lost money on me by upping the transaction fee. My monthly tier declined and I offset the increased transaction fee by purchasing one big chunk of Lindens a month as spending money (now that I don’t work inworld any more). LL lost monthly money on tier from me and effectivly lost on Transaction fees since I only pay those once a month now. This model may not fit everyone. I’m fortunate that in RL I’m a ‘senior worker” nearing retirement, (and therefore have had a chance to work my way up the heirarchy in my profession) my kids are grown and gone and the Cat is cheap company..... so I can afford to bulk-buy Linden $ for when Skye and I make our weekly runs on the shopping events. Its possible that the reduction in tier has me purchasing a few *more* Lindens than I used-to, but thats mainly because I no longer DJ in-world and I had to replace the shopping-cash I was previously collecting in the form of tips. Can the tier reduction be stimulating other segments of the inworld economy? Possibly, but virtual macro-economics is really not my thing so i can’t speak intelligently to the subject. What I can opine to is that this might be a move to retain more of the current tier-paying customer-base (the part of LL’s income which is steadier than transaction fees) and to encourage more Residents to buy Land and become part of the “steady, monthly income stream” for LL. My guess is that LL is looking at “long term survival strategy” and trying to normalize their revenue, which in turn would give them better access to expansion-credits from RL banks so that servers can be maintained and updated, staff can be paid and Sl can evolve. Again, I am a “cat-herder” and not a Finance nabob - so these are just subjective impressions based on hanging about a business for a few decades now....... free-input is usually worth what you pay for it.

I advocated for extending the respect of personal communication, not for toleration of the intolerable ? “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” -The Dalai Lama

One of my observations about Second Life since I landed here in 2005 is that; (a) People often complain about people-related subjects (can’t find friends, can’t find a Group, can’t find a Partner, nobody talks in social settings) because they themselves are waiting for the other person to initiate contact or they view the burden of communication as “not THEIR problem” (b) People frequently over-rely on the Lindens to intervene in situations where a polite word between Adults would obviate the need for mediation (simple misunderstandings fit this bill). Without a doubt, there -are- people whose idea of Performace Art is reallly just a troll on everyone else around them, or who come to SL specifically to be a bigger butt-head than they could survive being in RL - and those are the folks ARs were intended for; the willfully obnoxious. IMHO, as we are all human beings behind the keyboards, attempting the Polite Word before jumping to the AR is the best way to go. If it fails, the AR is ready to drop anyway. If it succeeds, it’s one less issue for overworked Admins to have to burn-out on ? This particular issue seems to have been heinous enough for LL to use the nuclear option. This does encourage me; maybe this is the precursor to doing something about my stalker from multiple years past ?

I can understand that AR-bombing people without talking to them is less-awkward......but is it proper just because we can? ?

I do get your point ? Personally, I like to think that taking the (sometimes uncomfortable) route of treating other people as People pays more karmic dividends. Even if the effort fails, you can always say; “I tried to do it the respectful way first”.