EmmyDammitEverythingIsTaken

Sorry for the late reply Dante, I had seen that in the menu's, it makes sense now that I'm seeing how land is owned I've been using the movelock anytime I'm not moving around. Between what I've been seeing and what's being said here, I think it's the sim's I've been in. I was using the destination guide quite a bit and you find yourself visiting the same places over and over, I'm thinking that's what quite a few people are doing, I'm seeing the same names a lot. I've been trying to break away from that and use the search more. I've found quite a few places I'm going to go back to, they were listed as having high traffic but were dead when I was there, I think I've been doing my wandering at quiet times Marigold, I think you are right with 'welcome areas', I've always had someone at those places giving me trouble. I'm starting to think I'm painting a bullseye on my myself by being in these places. I guess the griefers know people go around those places and we are good targets because they can get away with it. I found a sim I really like, a super relaxing place and it's moderated, I've not seen anything of trouble there. Nalytha, I'm thinking of rental a place, just somewhere to jump back to to try things out. I'll start small and work my way up. I did put 'rentals' into the search and it exploded with results, I'll keep looking through them until I get an idea of what is and isn't a good deal. It would give me something else to work on too Sorry if anyone has tried to contact me, I've taken to leaving the 'only friends and groups can message' setting switched on and I changed my profile to a more 'leave me alone' one lol. It makes me look super antisocial, I'm really not! lol My name...... Yeah I'm only slightly regretting that one, that was another frustrating moment lol. It sounds better if you say it really fast in a french accent

Thanks Seana, Amethyst, I'm going to stay for a while and see how it goes I've always liked learning new things and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, or as my mother would say 'a pain in the butt' lol so I like to get it right. . It's not too bad with SL, you can keep a web browser open at the same time for looking things up. When I started I chose an avatar called Carla, I did try changing clothes and it seemed quite random what was happening. I went to a sim called Firestorm Gateway, it's in the destinations. There are people there that help out new starts. Someone gave me a run down of the avatar parts, like when you strip everything away, these are the essential bits that make an avatar. They showed me what alpha's do and the difference between mesh clothing and the normal ones. That made a huge difference, the randomness was gone. I think that was the starting point I needed. They've been really nice there, I went back again when someone gave me hair I really liked but a tiny bit of my scalp was bleeding through and it was driving me insane lol. They took me to a hair store that they used and showed me hair bases, a base that matched the hair colour was what I needed. I also found out about when something is 'rigged', they tried to get me to move the hair to get rid of patch of scalp showing through but it was stuck in place. After that I was quite happy to add and remove anything and I didn't feel like I was guessing. I had a bit of an 'ah ha' moment yesterday. I bought a new animation and went to the sandbox to add it into my ao. The ao came with instructions on how to add animations so I've done that a few times now. It got me thinking though, so I dropped a few more more items to have a look at what was inside them, the same way you add an animation to the ao. I was finding loads of things, especially animations in the empty bags that clothes came in, so I'm gathering a bit of a collection of animations. I don't know if they'll be useful, but hey, I have them. My ah ha moment happened when I put a jacket on the ground, it had a file in it called maitreya autohide, it wouldn't let me open it but I could see the name. Maitreya is the name of the body I have. I had noticed when I wore clothes, the alphas would apply automatically. After a bit of googling it turned out that the autohide is how they do the alphas on the body. So I went back to the store, got their 'autohide kit', back to the sandbox, followed the instructions and made an autohide woo! It was almost exactly the same as adding an animation to the ao. I'm starting to see the similarities between a lot things in sl. The whole place is becoming less 'fuzzy'. I did do a bit of wandering. I found a road as Maia suggested and started there. I was checking the owner name and descriptions. I didn't go into any houses, I did think they would would be owned by someone or would have a purpose. Unless there is a giant sign saying, come in! I think I wandered into somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. I got teleported back to my starting sim. When wandering around like that, is there a way to know that I'm about to go on to private property? There was no warning and where I was, there was nothing obvious to show any borders.

The Free Dove has been mentioned to me a few times, Bobbie. I haven't been yet, I'll take a look That's great, Moondust, I'll look for roads as a starting point I didn't want to drop into a place I wasn't supposed to be. I've been using the destination guide, that's how I got to the sims I've been around. I was finding I was running in circles ending up at the same places. The map opens up so much more! A few people have sent me lanmarks and there have been quite a lot of suggestions, that should keep me busy for a while

Thanks Annika, Aislin That's great info Nalates! I see the Bumps, Pushes, & Hits menu, that's handy. I had a look at the world map, I didn't realise how big it was! That's one thing I'm not too sure about, how to navigate the world? Do you just click a place on the map and choose 'Visit this location', I mean, are you allowed to do that, drop into an unknown place? I hear people talking about places and often wonder how they know about these places, how did they find out about it, how does news travel here. I've found Luna, Furball and Pooley in the websearch inside the viewer, I'll take a look at them. I'll do some reading up on how renting/buying works. With region names, is that name that appears in the corner of the bubble when you click the map, like.... https://gyazo.com/4c723f1a053144608057a551e40b58d2 I just clicked a place at random, would the region name for there be 'Nimue'? I have noticed that mesh bodies can take a while to load. I've jumped into some busy places and seen legs fly around the room for a while. I leave applier underwear on my avatar all the time.

Thanks for the input everyone. I did a bit of reading last night about how to protect yourself, from what I can see, sitting on something seems to be the way to go. I did find that you can lock yourself in place with the firestorm viewer and that's the one I use so I'll lock myself when I don't have to move around. I'll have a look at the Little Blue Sandbox, dressing rooms would be handy. I think I've been lucky with the one I found, I've not had any trouble there but they do have a big sign up saying anyone caught giving others trouble will be banned. I've not had to use it that much though, really only to add an animation to my ao, almost all of the clothes and parts I've bought have come packed so you can wear them and they unpack automatically or by clicking them. I've become quite good at changing without needing a dressing room, by adding clothes, giving a bit of time so anyone in sight of me can see the new item, then removing the old one. I did have a bit of a disaster in a store one day when I managed to end up wearing nothing but about 35 cardigans in a store, everyone there took it fine and had a bit of a laugh at me. The problems didn't start until a few days in. I was using the avatar I chose to start, got a shape, skin and new clothes and it was all going good. After chatting to a few people I started reading reviews of mesh body parts, I found a good site that has a listing of what's available and tells you where to find them. That's when the trouble kicked in, people started acting like I was tampering with black magic. I didn't see the big deal, it wasn't any different from clothes, hide the original body part, add the new one, done. If anything, I've found the new parts much easier to deal with, as long as you choose the the size for the part you have, everything just fits with no messing around. At least when I was in the starting sim, when attacks happened it was usually someone that found a new toy and wanted to test it on anything that moved, it was annoying but it was nothing personal. When I was out wandering and someone attacked and sent messages, it felt personal. I've been using the block/mute button but by the that point I've already read their message and when it's the same thing each time I've started to think that putting a bit of effort into my avatar was a bad idea. You get the feeling you have to stay with the new starts, like you aren't welcome outside there or if you do leave, you have to have your skin bleeding through your outfit and feet sticking out from your shins to be accepted. Even when Nalates said 'I suggest you open the Destination Guide, in-viewer or Web Site, and start exploring' I got a bad feeling in my stomach. The thought of exploring now isn't a good one. I did consider getting renting a place but it was like 'Here is a place where people seem to enjoy giving me a hard time.... let's buy a house there!'. I know it's stupid because people can't really do anything to you, in that they can't harm you but it's become really frustrating and quite upsetting, especially when I've been trying to stay out of peoples way. You are right Cheri, it can only get better. It surely has to stop at some point. I think I just needed to hear from some others. I appreciate you all taking the time to respond and I'll take on board everything you've said. I am feeling a bit better about it, I'll grit my teeth and go wandering, see what I can find.

Thank Rhonda, I'll find a chair too

Thanks for your reply Nalates Urriah. The only way I seem to be drawing attention to myself is by working on my avatar and that's really all I want to do. I don't IM people or start conversations, I say hello if someone stops near me, that's all. I thought I was doing something different by putting some effort into my avatar. Every time I get a nasty message it's about them not believing I managed to find the add and detach items menu. Half of the time I couldn't report them even if I wanted to, I'll see a quick message pop up the local chat, then I'll get thrown around, then there is load of junk that fires through the chat and I'll either crash or have to tp away to another place. I thought the sim I was at was a safe one, I hadn't seen any trouble there at all. Of the others, one is a place where lots of new people go through, its in the destination guide and chaos does break out every now and then, I have found a corner I stay in to try to keep away from it. It must be the places I'm going to. I'll try to find somewhere that's empty I can go to. I've found the option to switch off IM's and I'll change my profile to let people know I won't be chatting. if I can stop being thrown around that should keep me okay. Thanks for keeping my post right Kristen and for the advice.

Hi everyone, Can anyone tell me if this kind of thing is normal for second life... I've been on second life for 14 days now. All I've been doing for the past two weeks is reading about how second life works and trying to get my avatar as nice as I can. I was just at the Da Vinci gardens and was on the marketplace looking for rings when my avatar starts flying around the sim. This I've seen way too many times already, so I figured it was some idiot and tp'd away. Then I get an IM, [18:08] <Removed>: NOT your first avi! exposed on the blogs! Liar! So now I know who started throwing me around. This is seriously doing my head in. I've had to change my profile to say how to search google to find out how to do things in second life just to show dressing yourself isn't difficult. I am being attacked and attacked and attacked some more and why, because I'm not a moron?? There is so much info out there on second life it's hard not to find what you are looking for in a few minutes. Each day I want to use second life less and less. To me it's nothing more than the sims mixed with a chatroom. I get that it's more serious to other people but seriously, what is with these lunatics? They are everywhere! Normally if I got harassed this much on something else, I'd just quit and move onto the next thing but I've already put a good bit of money into this thing. I've bought myself nice avatar parts, all mesh with the moving face and hands. I don't think it looks fantastic, I've mostly copied what I've seen in the stores advertising pictures. This is really becoming a really horrible experience for me and I've barely started exploring. I have about 3 sims I go to (no adult sims), other than going to those places I sit on the market place and throw money away. Does this happen to other people or is it just me? Should I just just cut my losses and abandon sl? Or maybe wait a year and come so my nice shiny new bits are nice and out of date? I mean what do people normally do? I admit I don't have a thick skin and sl might not be the place for me, I can't take what feels like a constant stream of abuse. I just asked the friend who introduced me sl what I should do or if there is anything I can do and she doesn't know, so I'm asking you. Can anyone give me advice?