Orwar

The first introduction is important, they say you only have about half a minute the first time you meet someone for them to make up their mind about how to perceive you; in SL it works a bit differently, as time flows at a different pace. Your first message is those 30 seconds - unless you make it so long that it takes more than 30 seconds to read, which I really wouldn't consider a good start. What to include depends on context, but if you're at a club and see someone who you think is attractive, 'Hi' isn't going to cut it, it invites to no other response than 'Um, hi?'. Express your reason for contacting them, although not as in 'I think you're attractive, I want to chat you up'; make an informed approach by using the resources available. Check their profile, see whether they're talking in local and if so what they're saying and what kind of mood they appear to be in. It's much better to approach with 'Hello there, I read in your profile that you're interested in sailing, I'd love to try that sometime - have you got any tips for a beginner?'. This is also why I keep telling people that writing 'I like shopping and walking on the beach' on your profile makes you appear like a one-dimensional bore. I'd change that to 'Make interesting conversation'. That doesn't mean that 'if you aren't interesting, you shouldn't speak', but rather avoid the generic chitchat that people tend to resort to, to speak for the sake of speaking. Whilst discussing the weather can be a little bit interesting if you're talking with someone who lives in a very different climate, it's hardly a constructive topic for building friendships. Take chances, don't be afraid of going out of your comfort zone - talk about things that actually interest you; being passionate about just about anything is an attractive conversationalist trait. The worst that can happen is that the other party finds you boring or tells you off, at which point the decent thing to do is to apologise and back off; don't push yourself on people who don't want to talk. There are plenty of other people who might! Or just, you know, pixelbump them and be on your way. Jokes aside, a friendship is a commitment, and whilst there's no harm done in adding people and later finding out that you either don't find them as interesting as you thought, having a person on your contacts list adds a level of expectation - what that expectation is, is very much individual. I've got people on my list that I haven't spoken to for years, or who I will exchange a few lines with over the course of a year; but if a new person wants to add me and then make no effort whatsoever, I'm likely to remove them quite quickly. Some people thinks that this means 'I never want to talk to you again'; it doesn't, you're free to try again down the line, if I absolutely wanted to never hear from you again, I'd block you. You have my calling card by default after having added me, so I'm not difficult to find. Whilst a person on your contact list can be someone you actively talk to on a daily basis, or a friend that you only speak to once in a while, it's important that both parties are comfortable with it, and know both what expectations to have and what expectations they're held to. This is why 'make conversation' isn't sufficient, you must also actually communicate.

No, but I don't let that stop me. Female: Tarja Turunen. Male: Till Lindemann.

Honestly, I very much doubt Jordan was putting any gender perspective on that. To say that it was 'a vicious man attacking a poor woman' is an awful exaggeration of a common scenario of two random people on the Internet disagreeing with each other.

Unlike every other meme fad on the Internet . . .

No. You can take a picture of the relevant chatlog and submit it with your report.

None yet. I think I'll just go sit in a corner and play with Lego. Maybe I can build a massive 'Dethmaschine-X5,000B' and unleash it on silly people.

I usually try to keep my inventory at around 8,000-10,000 objects, if it spikes beyond that I'll purge it of old stuff. I recently decided that keeping a backup registry of boxed items in my inventory was a bit of a waste of space, and plan on putting them in a single prim for future use, sorted by brand, rather than having endless folders of backups spread out throughout my inventory, but I've yet to implement it. I also go through the folders I get when I unbox things, delete all the landmarks and notecards (unless the instructions are vital), as well as any 'sizes' for other bodies that I don't own or use. For furniture and such I never really had a system, but I'll be purging that folder soon and start sorting things by type rather than brand (i.e. 'chairs', 'decor', etc) to get a better overview of what I have, than my current system of scrolling until I come across a chair (which doesn't necessarily even have 'chair' in the object name) that I'd forgotten about. As for organizer tools .. Meh, I feel skeptical of them as well, and I don't know that I'd trust a script to mess around with my inventory in that way.

So it has been quite the awkward atmosphere on the forums over the past few weeks, and whilst the moderators used to be quite quick with putting down derailed threads or putting meanies on the bench, things right now just seem to keep on going. Are the moderators okay? We miss you. Please come back - we'll behave (occasionally, at least)! In all seriousness though, plenty of people I've spoken to are taking a sabbatical from the forums, or minimize their presence due to being ran off by being flamed. We really could use someone to pinch our ears every now and then - myself included - to get the forums back to its usual self again. One would think that with the pandemic going on, we'd see an increase of active participants, instead we appear to see an increase of activity from certain participants, and fewer people actually wanting to participate. Everything gets derailed and set on fire, even threads meant for people to share their feelings get so out of hand that they get closed, and the picture threads I've almost stopped looking at or participating in because of the annoying spamming of re-posts and selectively sycophantic behaviour which has already merited warning of closure of those threads, is now rampant. Also, overtly sexualised, apparently under-aged avatars appearing in photos. That used to be frowned upon. And politics. There's been a lot of that lately, and the personal attacks that come with it. Please come back. I may even bake you some cookies if you do!* *or, you know, steal them from a girl scout and present them to you - but still, cookies!

Maybe they meant to add another t?

Oh, oh, zombies please!

Oh, okay. . . . So, pet peeve: cats. I mean come on, how could anyone ever form an emotional connection with those repulsive, pointless little fur-balls? And attribute them with characteristics!? They have three modes; 'I want attention either because I'm hungry or because I threw up a mouse in your bed and I need to distract you until I've forgotten I'm in trouble', 'I'm asleep, leave me alone' or 'just leave me alone, I'm going to pace around as if I were up to something - but obviously I'm not as I stop at every turn to try figuring out where I'm going'. And the argument that 'Oh but you know, even the Egyptians knew to worship cats'? That statement is A) factually wrong and B) the Egyptians also thought that corpses should be scooped out clean, salted and wrapped in perfumed cloth interleaved with 'magical amulets', pfft! But the one thing more annoying than cats themselves is, of course, the 'cat people'. As in, people who like cats, not people who think that they are cats - they're a whole 'nother chapter of their own - but they just can't give any rational argument ever, no matter how many times you point out that dogs are superior they just won't see reason! Disclaimer: this post is sarcastic. In the event of there being any discomfort in the readers' posterior section, please refer to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, page 42.

Have you considered renting out the vacant space? I keep losing track of where I put my sunglasses, and could really use a good, memorable spot to put them when I don't use them.

Did I make the list? 🤔

... Oh, that reminds me I was thinking of re-doing my Scissorhands shoot at some poi-- Looks around all innocent like. Then prods the door shut.

Meh. I did try to be reasonable and stay on topic. Oh well. 𝕴 𝕭 𝕿 𝕷

To whoever tipped the A on its head: thanks for everything.

Si?

This is going to be a rather cynical opinion, and it's not an opinion that I have because I want to, but because it's an opinion I base on reason rather than desire. Racism in mankind is unlikely to ever entirely disappear within this century, and it is unlikely that if it were to disappear, it would be permanently gone. Prejudice is deeply rooted in human nature, and it is perpetuated in ways beyond any law. Prejudice is older than our understanding of it, and even things that might appear insignificant today has been important tools of self preservation - we are wired to be less trusting of people whose accents differ from ours, because an accent is part of a communal identity; it hasn't been until the 20th century and the advent of radios, televisions and telephones that we even fully realized that it was a 'thing', and whilst we now compartmentalise people by nationality such as 'Oh the Canadians are all nice people' or 'Ah the Aussies are fun-loving and adventurous', it remains based on the fact that we simply can't process more than around 200 or so individual identities on average, after that we begin to generalise - for better or worse, and racism certainly is one of those things that are for the worse. And not only is this compartmentalisation a part of our own perception, it's also a part of our projection; we identify as 'American' or 'British' or 'Londoner' or 'Texan', and in doing so often adopt and imitate what we perceive that to be, to fit in. The globalist perspective is extremely young, and whilst the rate of technological advancement has been throttled up immensely under the past century, human evolution is lagging behind. What exactly this will amount to is hard to say, but it will probably take generations to catch up, and where will technology be by then? What are our future challenges of adaption going to be? That isn't to say that we should just give up; we need to grapple with the issues that we are faced with, but the ideal of a world where everyone is kind and generous to each other is going to struggle against some other very deep-rooted aspects of human nature; greed, aggression, grief, vengefulness, opportunism - things displayed by the protesters in this very moment.

Not as such, no. We don't really have that kind of thing here as, well, our law enforcement seldom gun down people - and whilst I obviously do not condone of it, I'm hesitant to give my 'official' (i.e. 'personal') support to any movement which I don't fully grasp. No one should have to live in fear of violence or prejudice from one's own nations law enforcement, and that this is happening in a supposedly modern nation appears rather absurd. I do however, for once, agree with Trump's sentiment of calling Antifa a terrorist organisation. Whilst I understand that they aren't really a very organized organization, anyone who willingly join a group which through violence seek to disturb the democratic process should be viewed as a potential threat, especially as they often recruit very young teens who don't understand what they are getting themselves into. Here, they've been responsible from everything from invading the homes of right-wing politicians, attacking their families, stalking their spouses and children, even putting out 'bounties' on people promising cash and knuckledusters (illegal weapons, by our laws) to anyone who 'teach them a lesson'. Protesting is one thing, and one thing that I can fully get behind. But the rioting and looting, attacking random police officers in retribution? That's simply not constructive, it's opportunistic and destructive, greedy and disrespectful of the real issue and its victims.

Saunters up to Beth with a mischievous smirk. Mm, did I ever ask you 'what in the seven Hells is wrong with you'? Anyway - another way to quickly terminate a potential friendship is to flip off one's ability to see your online status; it sort of defeats the whole purpose of having you on that list to begin with and really just is a form of ghosting, and it's so easy to spot. If you don't want to talk to me, that's entirely fine, I don't demand your full and complete attention at all times when we are both online simultaneously. Two people summarily ejected from my contact list in the last week alone for doing that. One of them I didn't speak much to to begin with. Sighs.

I don't think there is a way to do that. If they're bento you should be able to use other AOs for them though, assuming they're rigged using the wing bones properly.

... ... 😈