theif519

Alazarin Mondrian wrote: Post as much or as little RL information about yourself as you are comfortable with. Remember that SL, like the rest of the internet, is visited by scammers, stalkers, psychos, datascrapers and other ne'er-do-wells. Less or none is safest. There's no need to make your profile hostile and defensive. As a matter of fact some would regard that as a challenge. Furthermore do not, under any circumstances, ever give out any RL information about yourself to anyone in SL who demands it or attempts to trick it out of you by telling you a bit about their RL life as a quid-pro-quo for getting some information out of you. Chances are that they're just making up a fabrication about themselves. Well, that applies to any game really, but giving out key personal information and only putting out a picture is a bit different I'm sure it'd be hard as hell to dox someone without anything else though

I don't know, perhaps the whole point of Second Life is to live that new, second life, without any connection to your real life, but I've seen more empty profiles than real ones. Is there an unspoken rule against it? What am I supposed to place as my profile picture? I still have a default avatar too, since I just started yesterday... err, two days ago since it's 2:30 in the morning. Also, I've noticed that there's both a First Life picture and a Second Life picture in the the profile. If people use their Second Life avatar in the first life one, what do they put in their second life one? Perhaps it's different for others, since on SL Viewer i didn't notice the 2nd life one, but on Phoenix Firestorm there's the option for it. So, why is it that there's an abundant lack of real pictures? Is it to keep the guise of roleplay, or, which is most likely, wanting to keep their private life private, which I do understand, but on IMVU there were tons of real life ones compared to here, why is SL different?

Both you and the other guy have some really good replies, so is there a way to... upvote, like, or something like that?

I know there may be thousands of questions like these, and this one may be overlooked, but if I end up getting directed to a guide of some sort that helps answer my inquiries about this game, then so be it. First... making friends: If one has trouble making friends in the real world, is extremely shy, and has a rather... low self-esteem, how are they supposed to make friends any easier in Second Life? For me, it's mostly a self-esteem issue; what if I'm being too boring, I don't want to the other person to feel obliged to keep my company, or what I don't make a good first impression? Thinking negatively like this has prevented me from making friends in real life, and I don't see how Second Life could make it any easier, except that you're not conversing with them in person, just over the internet. I'm not particularly asking for a way to get over my self-esteem issues, but just how is it supposed to be easier? Second... attending events: I'm in college myself, and I've attended clubs, I even frequent one, but I haven't made any friends in there either, due to reasons stated above. What am I supposed to do at the events, if I manage to find out about and attend one? Where can I find out about events beforehand? Any events you recommend going to? How would you end up making friends in an event? Third... Creating, Building, and finding a hobby: What exactly can you build, and what is the purpose of doing so? Is it something like a CAD (Computer Assisted Design, used in engineering) drawing? I have some experience but not much, and if I was interested in it, what would I get out of it? I know it could be considered a hobby, but if engineering isn't my thing, how would I find a hobby? I started last night and found a friend... someone rather wealthy and possibly well known and she has taught me some of the basics, but I'm sure she wouldn't want her name to be disclosed like this, so for now she will remain anonymous. She suggested exploring second life, but explore what? Are all of the worlds connected to each other? Can I just walk from one place to another, like Morrowind, until I find something, and hopefully someone that interests me (or I interest them)? Also, how did you become acquainted with Second Life? How did you find your hobby, and what do you do for fun? Fourth... Relationships in Second Life: The same person I met last night went over a bit more than the basics, she did go on to... give examples when I inquired about people having sexual intercourse in the game... and I can see it is different from other games, and cybering in general... would all of that be the purpose of having a relationship with the opposite (or same) sex? Fifth... History of Second Life: It states in the "Goals of Second Life" that there are no NPCs in Second Life... at all, except for bots used for advertising. How did Second Life start out then? If there were a handful of people using it, how did the community bloom into what it is right now? Did it start out as a regular chat room and then become something more... 3D? How long ago was it that you started playing, and how much have things changed since then? Sixth and last... technical support: The graphics settings, opitimization of hardware, and there have been some glitches with the voice options and stuff... First, the graphics and optimization of hardware: The graphics of the game are rather poor for modern games, but it seems to be rather demanding for my hardware... I don't know if it's that it used OpenGL instead of DirectX, but my laptop can run Battlefield 3 at a rather high setting, and can max out Crysis 2, but Second Life runs like... well, like **bleep**. There's also the whole downloading of graphics thing, and everything, the map, characters, textures, is either non-existant or gray for around two to three minutes, and I blame my crappy university internet, but it is rather strange that it doesn't download it during the loading screen instead of allowing me to play while it downloads, don't get me wrong, it's a cool feature, but I'd like it if they had an option of having either a faster download or a slower one that allows you to play while it downloads. On to the glitches: every time I teleport somewhere, my mic apparently turns on, as was stated by the person I met last night who helped introduce me to the game, so I turned off voice communications entirely by selecting 'No Device' in the voice settings. Although I don't like talking... at all, I'd like to be able to have it readily available for the case that I do manage to use it. Has anyone else had problems with the mic turning on by itself? She said you can get "blocked" if you have it on all of the time in certain places. TL;DR: How does on make friends? What events events should I attend and why? What is creating and building, and why and how do I make a hobby? Why should I explore? What is the point of having relationships (besides sex)? What is the history of Second Life (Read the fifth section)? Why are the graphics so bad yet run so slowly on my gaming laptop? How do I stop my mic from activating everytime I teleport somewhere? Also, thanks in advance for taking the time to read and answer