Yeah, I joined in 2008 and SL was super cool back then. I remember meeting so many awesome people whom I ended up meeting in RL and we are still good friends today. I recently introduced 3-4 friends to SL and they find it to be horrible, boring and laggy. I wish they could have seen it in 2008/2009 when it was super cool. But yeah, the lag probably doesn't help new users to stick with it. It's pretty bad.