Rabid Cheetah

Yep, it still works.

Sad to hear. I love my Slink Physique body, as it looks like an actual person. I hope it still works (I don't log in much anymore). If it does, then I feel having a discontinued body makes my avi even more unique than it already is. If it no longer works, then I still got a lot of years worth of use out of it. Still the best body I ever owned/won't be buying a new one even if Slink doesn't work anymore -- I'll just go back to Classic. I wish the creator all the best, sorry to hear about the RL issues.

I operated a Chinese restaurant by the Great Wall of Second Life when I owned land there, so maybe go there and explore. You never know, maybe someone else did the same.

All the fun times I've had there, trying to figure out why friends got kicked out, banned, and muted upon landing. I'm so sad to see it go. I declare a ten-day mourning period to deal with our grief at seeing such a fine establishment leave.

Sad but true. I do hold out hope that a virtual world is truly global, exposing folks to cultures they normally wouldn't encounter, thereby broadening their experiences and hopefully decreasing the urge to be mean to folks different from them.

Sort of. It's the same thread! lol Linden moved it to a more appropriate spot.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/virtual-body-shaming-september-issues/index.html

Well, personally, I have no knowledge of how prevalent this attitude is for the typical user, so I don't know if it's happening "left and right". I can only offer anecdotal evidence of my own experiences, or experiences I've witnessed happening to friends -- and even then, it's been far from prevalent. But yes, when it has happened, there's been nothing related to attitude, given that it happens on first arrival at a place, before whomever the person with the yucky icky radioactive avatar that can transmit Covid via the computer right through your monitor oh noz my eyeballs has had a chance to say one word. The reason for the ban is found out after the fact, via asking the host who performed the ban what the issue was. Heck, one time I had to act as an intermediary between a host and a newbie friend, as the friend had not just been banned from the place we'd just tp'd to, but instantly muted by the host as well. I won't say what place, as they've changed management several times since, but they were upset that my friend was showing off the very first thing she'd ever built (and I had the honor of watching her build it), a giant pencil, by wearing it on her head for the lolz. I tried explaining to the host that it didn't mean my friend was a griefer -- just a newbie proud of their newfound building skills...skills that exceeded my own, even after being in SL for over a decade at that point. They didn't mute me or ban me too, but it was indeed a rather snobby attitude, so I left. But yeah, I wouldn't say it's a prevalent attitude (and that didn't even involve a classic avi), but it happens enough that it could indeed turn new people off to this game.

I call 'em pixel snobs lol, especially when it centers around not having the latest glow-in-the-dark Metaverse-compatable Baked-On-Mesh-Baked-Potatoes for your avatar -- though I did have a potato for dinner, but that's beside the point. Anyhow, I knew this game's userbase was changing when folks started screaming at me and banning me clear out of the blue, just for having a classic avi at the time. Of all the things to discriminate against people about. How they look. In a computer game. As if that doesn't happen in real life enough. To bring it to a game? A game? SMH...

Are you talking about trying to get in to Second Life itself (if so, see Marigold's comments), or are you already in Second Life, and trying to get into a specific group (if so, see Rowan's comment). Note that the term "online" here doesn't mean "on the internet", but rather in-world -- able to login to a Second Life viewer to access this virtual world. Also, please understand that unless someone's got the last name "Linden", they're just a Second Life user like yourself, not an employee of Linden Labs. At some point you may need to contact Support.

I remember that from your tour/interview video of the area. It was nice to see that some ancient structures from Second Life's early days are still around. I don't see these as AR-able, but what do I know? My experiences with AR-ing actual ad-farms on the former teen continent have been that the issue never gets taken care of. But that's just my experiences, and I went through the tedious process of derendering them all. I'm much more concerned that, while it was eventually resolved, it took months for Linden to act upon numerous AR's to remove a statue glorifying Hitler from a roadside parcel. Pretty sure, assuming these are the actual legacy objects made from way back when mesh wasn't even available and not updated copies, that they're made out of good old fashioned prims. Same here, those low-flying sky-boxes are the real eye-sore. But that's how the Mainland is. Folks can't just AR something because they find it fugly; There needs to be an actual Ar-able violation of TOS. Without that, all folks can do is derender, and that obelisk & teleporter combo is just two objects -- derendering all that stuff in the skyboxes will take forever.

Y'all are triggering memories of this, for some reason lol: It has its ups and downs. Yesterday was my 16th Rez Day. In all that time, the one thing I've learned the most about Second Life is that it's a very fluid software and userbase -- things are constantly changing. My best advice? Just be you. Or be NOT the real you, but the SECOND, other, virtual version of you, if you prefer. But let it be YOUR choice, and don't make the decision too hastily. Don't spend money right away; Wait until you know specifically what you want to do. Try not to get too upset as the years go by and all the stuff you blew money on seems obsolete. It isn't. Did you have fun with it? Do you still enjoy it? Then it's not obsolete, no matter what the sneering "kewl people" say. Search for places that have tons of free stuff (I wonder if Freebie Galaxy is still around?), so you can practice on objects and such without worrying about breaking or loosing something expensive. My two cents on banning people based on account age, avatar appearance, or whatever, and not on user behavior? A mix of paranoia coupled with wanting a way to, well, differentiate between The Sneetches (for everyone knows the Star-Bellied Sneetches are the best Sneetches on the beaches). 16 years in this game, most of it owning land, and never once did I use security orbs, ban lines, or arbitrary ways to ban people. I never even put up unfriendly signs demanding people read a novella's-worth of rules they better obey if they wanna avoid getting banned. I figure most civilized folks know how to act civilized. Those that don't usually show it in their behavior right away, ergo I'll boot on a case by case. Still, I can't recall ever needing to do so, other than a guy who abused the open build options I had at one of my art museums by dropping re-spawning noiseboxes. But that's just me. I like interacting with people, but not everyone does. To each their own. Don't let it bother you if folks ban you for the strangest of reasons. Everyone plays Second Life in their own way, and that's just fine if it doesn't match up with your style of gameplay. Keep exploring, do your own thing, enjoy yourself on your own terms, and let the friendships that evolve be the icing on the cake.

Wowzers! A free house! Best! Rez Day gift! Ever!

Nevermind, I figured it out lol

Thank you for your kind offer of free housing! Where can I find the Resident Application?

Kanopy

The only thing that comes close to the amount of money I've spent on electrons that ultimately disappear into the ether (as that's all that Second Life is, once you stop paying for it) was my comic book collection. It was worth thousands, but I had to sell it for pennies on the dollar when I moved cross-country. At least with that, I got a few bucks for my bills. With Second Life, I'm left with nothing but an empty wallet, and an "I'm a sucker" t-shirt.

You now know someone who, while not present at the event, had their hometown shot up. Let that sink in. I currently live 2000 miles away, but I grew up in the Deerfield/Highland Park area. The two towns are right up the street from each other -- I've even marched many times in Deerfield's 4th of July parade, who's route is even partially on the same major road, Central, which is called Deerfield Road when it hits the border of my hometown. Some of the kids from Highland Park even went to Deerfield High School. I'm sickened by what happened...but also, sadly, expected it to happen, somewhere, today. I could have been in the parade for the town I currently live in, but given how a certain group I'm affiliated with was treated at the County Fair last year, and the increased presence of people openly shopping for groceries while wearing their Proud Boy t-shirts, I decided to stay home. I don't think I'm psychic; I just think I have a higher ability than most to connect the dots, calculate probabilities, and a higher-than-average aversion to risk. Thankfully, the odds were in my favor: Nothing happened. At least, nothing HERE. But this latest shooting was, well, too close to home. The home I grew up in. And now these shootings have directly affected YOU. Because you can no longer say you don't know anyone who's hometown has ever suffered through a mass shooting. Let that sink in.

WHAT THE HELL WHY IS IT ALL MUSHROOMS I DON'T WANT MUSHROOMS I DON'T LIKE MUSHROOMS I'M ALLERGIC TO MUSHROOMS!!!

Even if I DID get paid to build someone's parcel, the amount of money I'd earn, divided by the amount of time it would take to do it, would be far below the Federal Minimum Wage. Not a wise career choice.

That assumes I'VE got the technical aptitude for that, and that my style and taste matches what the current userbase desires. I still build my own stuff with prims in-game, not mesh triangles in a third-party software. Plus, most buildings on the Marketplace are no-transfer. That means either I've got to buy a specific building, or someone's got to give me build-rights to their assets. Way too much of a headache. I actually DID build a lot of stuff for a group that tries to beautify small road-adjacent parcels; The group owner apparently didn't like my builds, and blew them all up. I'm not wasting my time like that again, beautifying, for free, a virtual world I no longer care about. That's for the Moles to do, and get paid by Linden to do it. More importantly, I've moved on from this game, and now spend my video game time designing my own metropolises in Cities:Skylines. No covenant, no TOS, build whatever the heck I want.

Yes, I do remember! 😄 Thank you. That was one of my favorite builds. The authentic Tang Dynasty house isn't even on the Marketplace anymore. Those were the days. 🙂 I even had the parcel sound set to stream classic Chinese music. I met a few folks that liked to hang out there, just for the music. It was a very hard decision when I had to get rid of it, way back when. I just couldn't afford tier on such a huge parcel. I did eventually come back to Ziczac years later, on the other side of the Great Wall. And yes, I still had the Human Cannonball object from Curio Obscura to let people shoot themselves over the wall, to the other side of Ziczac, and over to the next region. I do like setting up parcels. It's a great creative outlet. It's just that when I'm done, I get bored with it and want to build something else. Which gets expensive if I still like my old build and now need new land for the next one. I think if I do get back into SL, I'm going to focus on building objects and then putting them on the Marketplace. As it is, I get an email from Linden every other week or so, telling me that someone bought my Free Mesh Clothes box lol (https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Mesh-clothes-wearable-box/22561433) And I'm still on the top ten list, as it were, for most expensive junk on the Marketplace. So there: I've been playing Second Life for sixteen years, and finally hit the leaderboard. 🤪