xTornTwilightx

Well the frustration comes from what to do with that information. I am doing better at picking up hints that I might have a different perspective and ending the conversation sooner or at least treating that person much more casually. Here's a good example to prove the severity of the issue: I decide to play a male character. I get into a serious relationship with a girl character. Some people would say I'm obligated to tell her I'm really a girl. Others would say If I'm representing myself as a male character I absolutely should not tell her about who I am in real life. Others would say that unless I exhibit concrete gender dysphoria then I should absolutely not be presenting myself as a male to other players, *especially* in a serious relationship. The last one might sound nice until you think about it for five seconds and realize it means that your real life *you* must be represented to your best ability in the appearance and mannerisms of your avatar. You can sit back and play neutral in either a hippy or libertarian fashion and say things like "its whatever, just like, let people play the way they want" but ignoring the gravity of this doesn't make it go away. If you were very casual about SL then I'd give you a pass. But most of you are not. I feel like I'm bringing up an actual issue and some of you are treating me like the cause of the issue. And yes, it is "flawed' to think that you can play SL however you want without it impacting other players. Its a little difficult to put into words but player centrism can ruin the immersion of a character centrist player. However no one can "make" you not feel like a person sitting at a computer watching a chat. Every time I see a RL profile picture I want to call the cops. While writing this out I was reading what someone posted above who is too far away to quote and it looks like someone smarter than me has already figured this out so I'm going to go read that. I honestly don't know how this has not been implemented into the game already as some form of profile checkbox.

"I would like to defend my use of multiple avatars" Ok so this is where I do get a little stuck and it highlights another thing. I don't think its criminal to have multiple accounts but many people do. If you look at it through player centrism, that person is the same person on every account, therefore they must be hiding or doing something nefarious. Through Character centrism its simply something like, "I'm playing a game and in this game this is who 'i' am." When I started I actually made three accounts with the intention of giving them all different personalities and then nope'd out of that once I realized the work that would be involved. What I *want* to tell you is "You're messing with my immersion, please create a different account for each of your characters" but I don't actually think that because, lets face it, who has that kind of money. "My avatar does not share my personal look" This doesn't violate either approach. To me you decided to be that character. To player centrism your avatar is like the car you drive. "Are you inclined to over think things?" Yes BUT I'm trying to rationalize the frustration so I can better understand it. "Your "No RP" example is a little unflattering. " Well to soften it, most No RP players do not exhibit all or most of these qualities. Also its hard for me to make it flattering because I find it so.... flawed. I think the pervy dude example highlights it well. There's a very, "people judge themselves by their intentions and others by their actions" feel to it. If SL really is 99% chat boxes and friend lists why even load up a laggy game where you have to pay all this money? I'm sure there are other chat services out there and you could find one that's tailored to your specific interests. Or maybe someone treats the avatars as just pixels but they love getting compliments on their avatar... I mean I guess that works, people like compliments on their car. But "youre pretty" and "sweet ride" have totally different intentions and effects. "You're gonna need more boxes." The outline of the current boxes are already fragile and hard to define enough but I get the sentiment. At first I just considered it as people just being "bad at SL." I've had to listen to someone pontificate so many times about the magical world of SL being more than a game, nay, more than RL, and on and on while they have a RL profile picture and their avatar is half-clipped through the ground. I've even met really nice people and spent time getting to know them and we just couldn't bridge this "gap" that I'm talking about. "But none of that 'No RP' description fits me." Without specific examples its hard to tell you how you play. Also the line is blurry until you come in contrast with someone who plays the other way. "I had to perform a job interview with a Super Rock Hard RP person in SL once" It can be difficult dealing with Hard RP when it isn't your thing, and its definitely not mine. Like someone said above, if I was limited to only talking about what my SL character has going on conversation would run dry pretty fast. That's why I gave it a second name, Soft RP. My character can talk about the coronavirus outbreak because in their world its a thing that exists. "Maybe in the Roleplay forum you’ll hit more people who are “into” the subject?" I really should put more effort into trying it out. I was just hoping for more a base-level RP here. Both creeper noobs and long-term, mature players seem to be focused on who I am behind the keyboard and that's breaking a basic rule for me. "For that reason, most long term SL friendships tend to be between people who take a similar approach to virtual worlds and the degree of immersion therein." I find myself wishing there was a character preference option visible somewhere so we could find out quicker = /

I'll start my doing my best with some definitions I've made up. Hard RP - Everyone knows what this is. "What is this RL you speak of?" "Obama? never heard of them" Soft RP - This is character centrism and the way I play. Yes i know who Obama is. Yes I might say afk. But outside of the necessary, I "am" my character. Here's a good example. Sometimes when I tell people "I'm central time zone" they say, "yeah but what country/state???" and this has always really made me angry. At first I thought it was purely a safety thing... like stop trying to find me creeper. But then I realized I was angry because they were trying to find out more about "me" and I want them to speak to my character. Its a little difficult for me to define Soft RP because to me its just such a normal and, dare i say, correct way to play. So lets moves on for a moment. No RP - This is player centrism. It comes in a dozen flavors. I'll start with the most obvious, obnoxious, and baffling example. "Hey girl, I'm 6'3 IRL, you think thats hot?" This is someone projecting "themselves" into SL. Its so weird to a soft RP'r like me because like, wouldn't it be way better to make your character look like you then say, "Hey, notice how tall I am? Hot isn't it? Want to grab a drink?" Also why is this guy "himself" but I am my character? Ok sure, maybe he says the same thing to every first day Ruth but I doubt it. Anyway lets keep going. So at this point you might be thinking, "Well duh, some people really like Hard RP and some people are noobs, whats your point?" So here's the point. Being pervy and bothering people in SL with your IRL dimensions is just part of "No RP" play. Many people treat their "character" like their car irl. Sure, it represents them to a little extent, but not really. For example, one thing I've noticed older characters do is swap up their Avatars. Is it formal night? Time to be tall and skinny for that dress. Country night? Now they're short and thick for those shorts. Or maybe they don't customize at all. I've seen 8 year old accounts in starter avi's wearing the same freebie outfit from London City every day. It doesn't matter to them, just like a lot of people don't care one bit about what car they drive. The biggest indicator of a No RP player is a RL profile picture. "Ok, so you came up with some definitions, who cares? Let everyone play SL however they want!" Yes but it does cause problems. Here, lets have an example conversation: Them: "You should come to this party and enter the contest, it'll be fun!" Me: "Ok I'll go but I'm not going to enter the contest, I don't have anything to wear for it" Them: "Haha well you can just go naked like me" Me: "Oh dear, I'm a bit too shy to walk around naked in this game" Them: "First of all, SL isn't a game, at worst you can call it an interactive chat experience but really its a whole world where people can live and be themselves, their true selves. Second, saying 'your uncomfortable about walking around naked' is a bit childish, you know its just pixels right? It doesn't matter? Are you trying to RP or something? Anyway there are sims to go RP in if you want, so lets go to the party" Hopefully this illustrates it well enough, especially because I've had this type of conversation many times. This is what Character Centrism vs Player Centrism looks like, or Soft RP vs No RP. The wild part of it is we both feel like the other is "playing the game wrong" and also ruining our experience to some extent. Also I threw in the whole "in this game" part just to illustrate how I might commit "Player centrist" heresy. I dont say it often so please don't focus on that. There are so many other examples. I'll keep this G rated but I'll see people doing the *thing* and they'll be like, two feet away from each other. My first thought is "Are they seductively thrusting at each other?" and I have to remember, "Nope, they're just sex chatting." Another is when people say things like, "great job on your outfit! You should really change your face though!" and I'll get super mad about it. I'll be halfway into typing out, "who do you think you are?!" until I stop myself. A third thing is when I date people they almost want to spend every date where we met, where they know people in nearby chat, where they always hang out. (What, you mean people like to go experience new places and have specific experiences to remember the person they just met through? Does having a different environment and seeing that person in that setting help you learn more about a person? Nah, lets sit on the same barstools, what does it matter where our cars park anyway.) This is a bit of a rant because I'm not sure there is a solution. I think I came to SL a bit late and now people are through the looking glass, so to speak. I feel like I'm in a bit of a small minority in the Soft RP group. Maybe I should just learn to Hard RP and escape the problem completely. Anyway I really needed to type this out because its been driving me crazy but if you have any insight I'd love to hear it 😃

This person gets it. It feels "administrative" no matter what I do. But with derendering/blacklisting i feel like im at least making progress. I'm definitely trying new locations and I've even swapped up my avatar a good deal. The profile thing is left out on purpose. I'm trying to avoid personality or chat "coaching." I have a profile, I have a semi-unique avatar. Its not too advanced to say one thing applicable to either. I'm not blaming anyone mind you. To each their own. But if I need to tweak my profile to perfection for someone to say literally one thing to me then odds are I'd be carrying that conversation on my back the whole time and that's not worth the bother. Over half the profiles I read I don't message and there's no chat history for that. Also sometimes chat history deletes itself sometimes. But yeah I'm aware sitting might get awkward. We'll see how it goes. I can't imagine I'm the only one to find the "ghost town" nature of SL to be a problem. Apparently this isn't a common strategy. I'll admit outright blocking people is a bit over-the-top but simply derendering people seems like a no-brainer.

I tried out de-rendering today and it was amazing! I went to one of my favorite spots and while I chatted I peeked profiles and probably derendered about 15 people. I was worried about blocking folks because they might just be busy with life or maybe later they'd want to ask me something. For you detectives out there who brought up my profile... maybe this is an alternate account I only played for an hour =P This is my first time here and every forum experience I've ever had made me feel like they were handing out pitchforks at the log in screen, except for here of course! I want to make sure yall know that I'm not "rage-blocking" but simply cleaning up the game experience. I do admit its cute going to a "club" and seeing a couple dozen people, but its getting to the point where, when faced with reading all these profiles, I would kind of rather log off and read a book. Mmm now I'm imagining a setting built into SL that flags you for being ok with random communication. Like a little icon or something, what do yall think?

Oooo i didn't know about the second blacklist, that would be perfect! I'm not trying to block communication, I just want to not render their avi and also not click them again and read their profile. I'll have to find that feature. Thanks for the awesome replies everyone. I might have ranted a little too hard. I know that people play for different reasons. There's not really dedicated chat places, or at least the ones aren't used for chatting. I just hate that out of 30 people in a sim, 10 of them are either going to have creeper profiles or ones that I don't vibe with ("I am mistress blah blah bow to me"), 7 are going to be afk, 3 are going to be strange monster people and I get a bit judgey if, lets say, your hips are five feet wide, 7 will not want to chat, and 3 will be really nice. I'm not angry at people for not chatting and I really understand language barriers. Think of it like I'm trying to create my own English-only chat-server across the game.

I've been on SL about six weeks. I've really enjoyed the dress up and the handful of cool people I've met. What always keeps me on the verge of quitting however is the complete lack of what we'll call actual players. We've all been there. You see someone that looks interesting, read over there profile, and decide to shoot them a message. Most of the time it goes like this: "Hey, I love those boots! I noticed you're a GoT fan, my distant uncle is George R.R. Martin! I've actually talked to him a lot about the series, he's a wonderful guy!" "thanks" with no further reply. I'm curious as to whether or not you can get away with just blocking all of these people. I know one out of every 50 or 100 times they'll shoot a message back 45 minutes later like, "Sorry i was really busy with work stuff, what does your uncle think about the hbo series?" but honestly it'd be a small price to pay. Its wonderful how the chat saves your last conversation but I rarely even open it before loading and reading their profile. Also saving render time would be absolutely amazing. So the first question, is there a block list cap? As far as "me" goes. I'm a girl in her twenties and mainly play my girl character. I also made a boy character and got him all dressed up (I was surprised how fun it was). The boy is much less proficient at meeting people. Also a small percentage of girls can get outright mean to him. I've gone back to my girl. I think both avatars are fairly "top tier" in appearance and I have a nice little short-and-sweet profile for each. I've played around in almost every sim busy enough to have people in them besides the pure-adult ones. I doubt that's the problem. Also I often get the suggestion to get immersed in some tertiary aspect of the game and meet people that way. The problem with that is its not intrinsically fun for me and at that point I might as well do something like, learn to play a musical instrument irl and meet other musicians. SL seems to mostly exist as a "dress up and chat" platform and its odd how adverse people are to it. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that half the people in the busy sims are just bots run by the Sim owner to boost numbers. I would blame myself more if it wasn't for the five or six people I've met that have been amazing at chatting. Some I've talked to for hours. I've even asked them "What is wrong with me? Am I ugly?!?!" Even when I finally get someone to respond with more than "thanks" it feels more like a Q&A than a conversation.... I'm just tired of messaging 20 people over the course of an hour to maybe get a decent conversation out of someone =( Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for any answers or recommendations.