FellicityVixen

For about a week, I had a similar or same issue to this. I would log in, and get a stream of 5-10 messages saying each of the items I'm wearing can't be found. I'd be standing as a white cloud waiting to load (however, others in the sim would see my avatar and clothing/appearance as normal, so that was reassuring). I would try to open inventory or appearance window and add on or wear another item, for the same sort of *item cannot be found* message to appear, plus another spam of every item my avatar had on not being found. Clearing my cache didn't work, then I thought to reinstall the SL viewer, and that was a mistake. It would load, but the log in screen would be black, with no log in bar or SL news. I was at my wits end all yesterday (Tuesday 9th July) trying to fix this. The biggest issue being, that if SL had been running properly before, then in my head, my computer couldn't suddenly not be compatible or not meet requirements. I'm glad I've came on here to read of this issue, and I've decided to try the Cool VL viewer (knowing that it's upto me to do it), and it now works! So, I would be careful if your SL is running right now, since if you uninstall it and reinstall, you might get the same issue with not having a log in screen. (This isn't to hijack the thread, only to add my own input and also to thank Fritigern Gothly for linking the thread that includes that alternative solution.

Ahh, you're right Amethyst, a group designed for announcements should be seperate from a social, chatty group. In fact I've seen some sims that do this successfully. And indeed, it would help for people who don't wish to hear general chatter from getting their chat bars alerted all day. My main ideas are based around building a *real* community and traffic- as opposed to having to compete with bots, weird search optimisations and other tactics for bringing in people. I sincerely believe that socialising is(and should be) one of the main parts of Second Life, and that the features within SL are difficult to use to encourage it. I don't mean that it's hard as in the tools aren't there, but more than the way that many sims, groups, communities are structured in SL are restrictive, isolated and/or ESPECIALLY sales-focused. I also think that for newcomers, the interface, navigation, features and exploration of Second Life world is so intimidating, that I wish I could figure out a solution for improving that!

I find that *news* trying to cover any sort of...game, internet, virtual reality, etc are often lacking research, extremely biased and condescending, and do not see the potential, respect the community, or care about the damage done to the image of that which they report. I especially hate the kind of stereotypical loner type loser image that people who are into computers, the internet, gaming, youtube, blogging, niche hobbies, etc STILL get, even in this age of facebook, twitter, instagram, as well as brands and companies trying to reach customers this way more and more. There is a weird documentary on Youtube covering Second Life, and the biased is that they cover the story of two people in world who meet and end up dating each other- except that the woman is married with a child, and throws all that away for a fantasy man. I mean, this is NOT a unique situation to Second Life, and it does nothing to highlight Second Life itself- just this drama with this couple which is facillitated via Second Life (it could easily have been facebook, World of Warcraft, Instagram, etc). As you've also highlighted, there's also the clickbait-title articles that try to imply that Second Life is in dire trouble, and that Sansar will be it's new rebirth or something. Again, this is a disrespect to the people who thoroughly enjoy and work at Second Life currently. I've seen this kind of biased reporting about Youtube as well. In particular, I've seen a lot of bad articles dismissing the success of PewdiePie, I've seen Jimmy Kimmel do a highly awkward and offensive youtube video featuring Markiplier and TheMissesMae- and try to market this as a factual insight as to how youtubers record a gaming video. The irony of this is that I just DO NOT understand why youtube(or maybe I should say Google) would support big name TV shows and personalities over their extremely popular home-grown youtubers. Should the Jimmy Kimmels, Jimmy Fallons, Ellens, James Cordons and Wendy Williams (among others) should decide ONLY to broadcast their shows on Tv (their ORIGINAL medium), then all the channels and personalities that youtube have shafted would be needed far more than ever. And I'm sure that for SO MANY people, they go onto the internet and onto Youtube to ESCAPE the same commercial big bucks, mediocre content that those same names do over and over- as people are more and more bored them. So I believe that, unfortunately, the internet is getting saturated with clickbait crap content from big bucks commercial sources that SHOULD know better, but think they have to do such low tactics to attract readers. A lot like the spamming, deceptive tactics of many other things these days to try and earn a buck. In the end, I just stop reading article-type websites, even if it means I feel out of the loop about a lot of current affairs.

It's a really interesting question, and I guess for me it highlights another issue that people can have in SL. It feels like traffic score is a good idea that is now easy to manipulate, and affects the people trying to search for places to socialise, meeting people, shop etc within Second Life. But then again I believe anything that COULD be effective, soon becomes a tool that the majority use, and push so hard on that it loses the effect it SHOULD have. I think we see it with other promotional techniques, such as gacha hunts, too many tags for an item in MP/for a place search/for a group search. Not all of those are bad, but it becomes useless if they are overflooded. I am in no way blaming traffic manipulation for this, sometimes I feel like the search tags are hilariously off (similar to Marketplace searches, where a place can have a list of 35 popular words, and really you would only describe it as perhaps 15 of those). I also feel that the skewed and unsatisfying results causes people to get bored and restless with trying to find people to communicate with in Second Life. For example, although many music clubs can be busy and full of people, I find that the reminders to *show some linden loving* *tip the DJ/host* *support the club* etc is a mental drain for me when 1) I lack lindens and 2) I want to chill out, not feel like money is important (it's kind of why I'm on SL- to ignore the pressures of IRL, not find more pressure). As for better ways to find populated places.....I believe that there's some tactics that can help. I believe that as an explorer, you can ~~~join groups of sims, and judge their socialbility there. Sometimes they will insist the group is only for help or advertising events. Sometimes the group won't even let people talk!!! I can't stand those sorts of groups, but you can find ones that are friendly and lively. Roleplaying and themed sims work well for this too. ~~~chat a lot to the people around you. I suppose this seems obvious, sometimes I even speak just to let people know if I'm afk. I believe that even a little bit of conversation can just break the ice for others to join in. Open ended questions can really help with this too, such as *do you like this sim?* *do you know if there's any shops here?* *I like your hair* etc. ~~~I believe brainstorming, suggesting ideas, asking about events, etc within a group can be a really fun way of creating a community within a sim too. I know a few sims who already do a lot of events, but it is also fun for the other members to sit and discuss ideas, what they sim could offer, they may even plan a mini-event for that day! For example, a group of people may decide to dress up as cats, or they may decide to have a dance together day, or decide to wear red for Valentine's Day. Again, this can be fun if the sim is themed, or part of an interest or hobby, and depending on the idea- it can be pretty cheap to execute. For a land owner, there's various things to help with too: ~~~have a group for your sim (if it's a big sim!). This means people can be discussing your land even when they aren't around, as well as advertising your events, etc. ~~~have fun events for your sim. This doesn't have to be super expensive decorations and total transformations of the sim each time you do something. It can be something as simple as having a board declaring *ROCK OUT FRIDAY*, with a featured DJ providing specific music, perhaps a little quiz object (like trivia ball- or even your own written quiz based on the theme), a dress up requirement and of course, your group announcing the event beforehand. It doesn't have to be based on giving out lindens or items either, but that's an option that many sims do. ~~~A suggestions box. This might help if you feel like you're not sure what to do to improve your sim/shop/land. I'm sure it would also be handy if you need to deal with a lot of enquiries, and may not always be online for them to im. ~~~make your sim/shop/land a well organised space. This might be a case of better structuring your walking paths, but just make sure that the landing spot is appealing, not too cluttered, shows off what your theme is all about, shows directions to various areas if it is a big sim or shop, and has walking distance to an area for socialising/dancing/etc. The reason being, it can be a bit awkward if people are landing right in the middle of everything happening, it also gives an opportunity for advertising, shops, objects of interest (like donation jars, suggestion box, online boards, events boards, event announcement times and dates, etc) to be spread out in an area most people will see and read them, but that won't trip them up when they look for a place to sit/stand/dance/chat. HOWEVER I'm not a landowner/shop owner so my advice many sound TOO simplistic. I believe that the less obstacles you have for people to gather and make friends in your land or shop, the better. I feel like keeping traffic is as much of a challenge as getting traffic, and most of the time people want to socialise. So not just maintaining a nice place, but also as a visitor- recommending good places and being friendly and considerate at the places you DO enjoy, I believe that goes a long way. These are simple things I can think of at the top of my head. They aren't so much ideas for finding better populated areas per say, but I find it helps with finding a community. The hard part is maintaining that community spirit- as many bad apples can ruin the experience, and many places can stagnate, change in a negative way, move sims, change owner, close down, etc (not all of those are bad, simply that change can affect the flow and atmosphere of a place). Bots, and the encouragement of bots, is something that is sure to be noticed in certain situations (especially social areas), so that is why I believe a lively group chat, and way of getting feedback, can really help with making the improvements that a sim may need OR bring people to a sim when events are on, people are gathered, etc.

I would say that politics these days has gone REALLY overcharged though. It's really sad that it divides people who know each other, but it doesn't surprise me either. I would not say it shows their true colours- per say, but their reaction to the situation right now, what they are reading and believing, and how they think their lives may be affected. I don't think it makes people bad, good, confused, stupid, etc, about this, and I also don't believe most people can agree on ALL things either! How they deal with disagreements will be telling though, rather than the disagreements themselves. I think the media has managed to exaggerate the tone of these elections a lot- we have had it really bad in the UK- that I don't believe that any result would have caused no uproar of sorts. In the UK you only have to compare the media reaction to the (media backed) pro-remain Scottish independence winning, versus the (media backed) pro-remain EU losing. Both votes were actually super close, but the media has managed to communicate how *it* feels in a very biased way- considering public vote %. The media is ALWAYS reminding the SNP that "the public voted no", whereas even now, they are trying to work out if triggering Article 50 for Brexit is even legally possible! It is REALLY hard these days to actually avoid politics in the news, the papers, the internet, etc, but it IS possible to avoid it in conversation. Methods of doing this could be topic changes, remaining quiet while listening to their opinions, making light jokes about it (but not in a way to insult their side, more like a general safe joke to avoid a deep discussion), thinking of OTHER current events to talk about instead, etc.

Ahh, someone commented that Trump was NOT democratically elected- and I apologise as I did not realise that US voting worked similar to the UK. We have a *first past the post* system with our regions as well- causing parties who may have an overall higher % to "score" lower seats(seats= wins) within each region. Klytyna, you've made some excellent comments regarding some of my paragraphs. I am not 100% convinced about the *Asian* generalisation, as usually when I see it, it's the inclusion of Middle East and Far East. BUT you're probably correct about it. I agree that Oriental usually makes the distinction- but it's not a term I hear very often compared to Asian for Koreans/Chinese/Japanese,etc, and perhaps it's just me. But the articles I did read about the gang crimes in this case were being described as *Asian* when they were known to be a particular religion and country. Again, I want to make a disclaimer that I am NOT saying ALL of them are criminals for being that religion and country- only that it put a fear of being racist of those two factors as a huge barrier for the authorities. The crimes themselves were the most disgusting, and should never be excused in ANY country- but particularly in the West for all their human rights laws and standard of living, etc. They did not want to be accused of being *certain word*-phobic, a word often thrown about when someone happens to be related to that religion is portrayed negatively. As for religious tolerant, I never really thought about religions being intolerant on purpose(except in some that I strongly dislike). I've always thought they tried to teach people to be good, friendly to thy neighbour, not kill anyone, etc etc. However, I suppose a certain amount of exclusion and exclusivity has had to happen with most of them to survive over time and remain distinct. BUT.....when it comes to certain religious teachings (regardless of the religion, so I'm not targetting any), I think the current laws and morals of today has to make people see more sense. For example, I would have thought love between two adult people of ANY gender (or genderless-ness) should not matter, so long as they are happy, consenting and want to be married. I feel sad that there are many bad things happening that many religions could TRY to change, and instead they want to tell people who they can bond with in prescence of God. ___(I'm sorry if this opinion offends, disgusts or otherwise angers people)___ As for the banned countries......I did wonder at the choice myself. I had read that it was an action decided by Obama that Trump simply put through- but I don't know if that is even true. I also believe that two VERY corrupt countries- one of which you mentioned (SA), the other being connected to the Rotheram crimes(P)- would have been more suitable for bans if they had any suspicions of them. However, like you said, money is corrupting the politics here. Perhaps those countries are even as dangerous to attempt to limit as they are being left to their own devices! I don't really know how to feel about immigration policies really- because on one hand those countries need help with their refugees, and I kind of believe that the richest should use their wealth, power and influence to make sure the poorest do not die. On the other hand, there is so much devestation happening throughout Europe with the deficits, high unemployment, funding cuts, austerity measures and public service cuts, as well as mass immigration just causing non-intergration changes, that I'm not sure accepting huge numbers is wise for other reasons (compared to say foreign aid, sending volunteers, setting up safe areas closer to their countries, helping neighbouring countries take more refugees of similar backgrounds, better refugee tracking/aid/housing/protection at borders,etc). But the big difference is that Europe has it's policies and hands tied by the EU- whereas America is a whole different ball game for many different reasons! I mean, I personally think that America wouldn't put up with half the crap that has been happening in Europe, and rightly so. And that isn't to insult Europe, the EU, America OR the immigrants/refugees coming in. It is purely my opinion of this culture clash going on, and the structures (politically, socially, globally, etc) that is fuelling/limiting/driving/containing all this.

It is a big reason I don't talk about politics in person. Online- while many places *ban* politics talk (along with religious talk), I find it much easier to explain my point of view across. Surprisingly, a lot of people who know better than me have explained themselves in a way that has made me think *wow, I didn't think that way, but you're right*. However, it is difficult. It's a highly charged topic, it affects everything, and I think it can be very hard when politics does the blame games and the solution tactics, and people either agree, disagree, feel attacked, feels worse off from a course of action, etc. I believe that religious is very much the same way, though much more personal. Personally though, I sincerely hope all this politics are a huge overreaction, that positive change happens, and that many people and countries who thought they were negatively affected actually have a good outcome to it all. I just think there's going to be changes along the way, and change is usually pretty hard these days. I really hope that it's good for everyone.

I always dislike when companies and brands voice their opinion of politics- mainly because 1) If I liked that brand but not their opinion, I'm at a conflict, 2) It gives the impression that the collective company or brand believe this, when in fact it may be the owners, bosses, etc and not every employee and 3) it gives the impression that the company or brand has some higher authority to support or not support whatever stance. It also makes it awkward when, as we see, Trump was DEMOCRATICALLY voted. The same thing is happening in the UK, where many big names, banking experts, celebrities, politicians, even entire political parties, etc are against Brexit. And YET Britian voted to exit the EU. They would have to fly in the face of the democratic vote (and therefore publically discredit themselves) to try and wriggle out of not exiting the EU, but they are trying their damnest to do it anyways in a way that looks good. However, I want to bring up another 2 points about something that someone said: But to create a boundary that causes undue hardship on someone based on the color of their skin, their religion, or their sexual preference is unfair and demonstrates prejudice. They should not be discriminated against and have less rights simply because they were born as a darker person, a woman, or a gay person. 1) I dislike this idea of someone having "less right" because of XYZ. For example, I do not believe that anyone in the world has the right to live anywhere they want (country wise). There is often a lawful process to go through to apply for citizenship, or to apply for asylum, or to apply for a work or student visa, etc. The idea that people get what they want because of this idealness, to me, is fanciful and unrealistic. For example, for both Japan and Australia (and perhaps other countries), if you want to live there you have to demonstrate a good level of the language, and prove you either have a trade, degree or job there- i.e. they aren't just letting ANYONE into those countries. Personally, I wish people would dismiss this idea of prejudice, and instead work from it backwards. For example, in the UK they talk about how there aren't enough women in science careers, so they try to even out the statistics so more women are accepted. For me, that's disgusting to the amount of men who many be surperior in skill, but are penalised for being men. Instead, they could be looking at the stereotypes of men and women careers, looking at how media and school books could make science appeal to women more. Or another example. They say that there's not as many black people employed in X type jobs as white people. They instantly think *oh, that must mean that the employers/interviewers are racist*. Instead, it could be that there's more of a white demographic in the area. Or another more troubling example. There was a major organised crime in the UK that carried on for over 10 years. The reason the authorities (police, social work, politicans, etc) would not act against those known criminals was because, they were of a certain religion. They were labelled in the press as "Asian" at first, implying that they were Chinese, but not THAT sort of Asian. For anyone curious- look up Rotherham gangs (warning, it's really disgusting crimes). So I think that this discrimination idea can actually lead to less meritocrity, and more of a reverse racism, where everyone who is often expected to be victimised actually gets the better chances of support and opportunity. Why not just treat everyone like individuals and equals in the first place, instead of this *let's not offend xyz*? 2) There is a paradox that the liberals (whither you believe yourself to be a liberal supporter, or believe in some, many or A LOT of liberal values- and I'd like to think most of the West believe in liberal values a lot). The paradox is this: The tolerant will have to tolerate the intolerant. Think on this. I believe this is the biggest issue with religion, because it is NEVER just about what God exists or what history and festival is true or good. It is often about the lifestyle rules and moral justifications that EVERYONE has. I would be happy to accept religion IF those same people could accept other peoples' non religions or different religions. Very often they don't. Islam in particular is very intolerant, and it is also very ironic that for a religion that lives in many war torn countries- but blames the West for many of those wars, deaths and failure to *take them in*, they also have plenty of religious laws that allow them to kill each other (and religious texts that allow them to kill without guilt). So I do not think the issue is as simple as *oh their religion should be accepted*. I also think there's a culture that other countries have (especially in cultures very different to the West), that can actually be dangerous. And it is more likely to affect the everyday person in microactions, rather than massive terrorist violence. I also personally believe that this war crisis will not be solved by other countries absorbing the refugee population while this terrible violence is happening, and then magically expecting things to go smoothly both with the refugees, and with the countries under fire getting restored. This is all ONLY my opinion, and it isn't to say anyone else is wrong, or that what I say is what should be done. It is only how I see things. I also accept if others want to disagree- strongly if they feel so. I could be utterly wrong in what I think, and hope I don't come across as offensive-only explaining why I think how I do.