Persephone Emerald

According to what he said on this video, he'd rather use his old avatar and he won't be using Linden as his last name.

My alts: Evan wearing the Lelutka Logan head and Alycia wearing the LeLutka Lily head.

There are times in RL when we have less privacy than we'd like to think too, so in these situations we also continue the pretense of privacy. I've worked in a job where there were cameras in most of the work areas (pharmaceutical production), but one ignores them after awhile for the post part. Employers can sometimes read our emails or even track our keystrokes on work computers, yet we still use the computers for non-work communications. One does not comment on another person's bathroom noises or on their overheard phone conversations. I currently live with 2 housemates in RL, so any of us could snoop into another person's bedroom, but social convention requires that we don't. I once had a roommate who would look over my landlady's shoulder when she was dressing her avatar or on a date in SL and comment on her avatar's appearance, like saying she looked hot! -- In SL and RL there are always some people who either don't understand social conventions or who choose to ignore them.

There is a parcel next to mine that allows rezzing. It's has a pretty little Japanese style teahouse on it, but I never see the owner online or doing anything with it. I rezzed a few trees on it, to pull it's landscaping in with my own woods. I know what you mean about griefers using rezzable land for dropping griefing objects, but I also like that random people can use this teahouse to rez packages and dress if they wish, so I don't want to use up all of my neighbor's unused prims.

In case people are not aware of it, there are a series of videos by a couple of gamers who are benignly messing around in SL to see how weird it can be, beginning with this very popular YouTube video. I think our ability to goof around and have fun in SL is essential to keeping people using this platform, and that as long-term users we may at times forget how much fun SL can be. It's not just a platform for dressing up our avatars, meeting virtual romantic partners, or doing serious roleplay. Its physics engine and our ability to manipulate prims and our avatars are also alot of fun to play with. I think we may also forget how much fun newbies have with elements we now find annoying, such as using gestures or tricking unsuspecting people. I want us to all remember that we were young and foolish once too, and far from ruining our SL experience, those stupid or silly things we did were a large part why we kept coming back to SL.

I think that online and in social media generally people put themselves at risk by exposing their RL name, location, job information and personal details. I don't do those "fun" questionnaires that ask random questions to give your fictional name or lump you into some kind of category, because your pet's name or the street you grew up on could be security questions somewhere. I generally avoid using my RL name or picture online or in SL, though I don't mind telling people what city I live in because it's a big city and I have a common first name, so it would be hard to identity me with just that information. I like to profile myself with my SL profile and like to look at other people's to figure out something of what they're like. If someone doesn't fill out their profile at all I assume they're either not smart enough, too boring, or too paranoid to warrant my further attention. If they happen to have an interesting conversation with me, then I'll re-evaluate my view of them. I don't mind being cammed on and do cam on other people sometimes, but I figure as long as nobody says anything about it, then it didn't happen. I do think it's extremely rude to cam on someone while their avatar is naked or dressing and then IM them to say they look hot or whatever. Because we don't have real privacy for our avatars in SL, I think this requires of us the social nicety of pretending that we have such privacy.

I have an ex boyfriend in SL who I'm still friends with. At one time he kept rezzing onto my land and just standing there. I think he may have been using a mobile viewer or maybe his wifi connection was just really bad. I got tired of him just standing around on my land, so I set my scripted dog to push him off the parcel. He didn't complain, but it was funny to watch him get pushed. Another time when I was still dating him but was annoyed with him, I modified a freebie noob mannequin to look like a vampire (because he was into one of those vampire pyramid scheme games), then used a pumpkin catapult to shoot pumpkins at it. I also shot pumpkins at some exploding noob mannequins. This was all on group land and didn't bother any one else, so it wasn't really griefing. One of my best tricks for people who grief me or bother me with unwelcomed proposition's though is an object I received with the name of "Scarf". I changed it's name to friendly little monster, because when worn, it animates like it's having sex with the avatar.

^ I love this last one most of all. It reminds me of how I will sometimes do the Twisted Hunt dressed as one of the cubes, then sit there and wait for someone to Touch me. It's best when the cube is scripted to break or say things, but it confuses the hunters either way.

Reading this article made me think of this question: https://www.thegamer.com/facebook-metaverse-second-life/ For some this may not be a secret wish, but I suspect that for many of us old-timers we would secretly love to act as silly and unaware of SL social rules as we used to do. My all-time favorite activity that is not entirely socially acceptable is making objects physical and then dropping them from a great height. A semi-transparent sphere encompassing an avatar is the best, especially if it's set to having Rubber physics. You can roll off a platform, bounce when you hit the ground, then roll into another person's property or into linden water. Walk inside this sphere, and you'll feel like you're inside a giant hamster ball. I once accidentally made a giant sky platform physical and dropped it into a the goth club neighboring my mainland property. I apologized and removed it ASAP, but it was still funny to see it slicing through the gothic cathedral next door. I also made use of this physics trick when an SL soon-to-be ex "borrowed" a substantial amount of RL money that he looked like he might not be willing to pay back to me. I made over a hundred Easter eggs with prizes inside, all physical and sitting on a sky platform. Then I deleted the platform and let them fall. Users of our sandbox sim found brightly colored Easter eggs all over the sim with gifts inside, but these eggs were also named things like "Snake", "Weasel", "Jerk", & etc. as a sign to this soon-to-be ex that I was not above hurting his reputation with our group members if he failed to return my money. In the end, I was one of the few (or possibly the only) person whom he paid back before abandoning the sim and moving on to greener pastures. Even in a big public sandbox, it's fun to make some giant physical rubber shapes, drop them, and see how they bounce and roll.

Nobody else can see your notes. I sometimes make notes to remember how I met this person or who they are to me. Sometimes I copy part of our last conversation to help me remember what we were talking about. I don't do this often, but it has been useful to differentiate SL "one night stands" vs. someone I helped in a group vs. a neighbor to my land vs. some random person who now wants to send me DJ requests to come to a club.

I think most mesh heads default to lips that are too full for me. Try taking both the fullness and thickness down little by little, and don't go under 20 for either. Taking the slider numbers too far from 50 may mess up how your lips will look, such as showing your teeth when you don't want them to show. You can also play with the lip width and corner of mouth curve to see what that does to your lip shape. I like to set lips for females at 60 to 65 for a slight smile, but for males 50 to 60 looks better. For makeup and skins, those that are made specifically for your mesh head will work best. You may be able to work with a smudgy eyeshadow from a BOM makeup layer that wasn't made for that head, but lipstick that doesn't match your lip outline will never look great. If you don't have lipstick made for your lips, check out Trend or other makeup stores for their group gifts, store credit gifts, and sales. Also try using the lipsticks in your Head HUD and lowing their opacity, so they blend softly onto the lip texture on your skin. For eyes on LeLeutka at least, I've found BOM layers go under applier layers, so you can blend eye makeup this way too. Lower the opacity of the applier layer to blend it softly onto your skin and BOM layers, or leave it at full opacity to get a stronger, sharper applier layer.

And yet, concerts with RL performers have been hugely popular in Fortnite. So maybe "If you build it, they will come" is not true. The platform has to offer something that plenty of people want and are willing to pay for. Second Life is not hugely popular like Fortnite, yet we've had inworld concerts in SL long before any other virtual platform did. We've had people selling both virtual and RL items in SL for years (though not many RL items). We've had a sandbox world that grew into a multidimensional virtual world (closer than any other virtual platform has come to a real Metaverse). We've had both adult/ NSFW and "safe" areas in SL for years. We've had the most customizable avatars for years. Inworld framerates can be low at times, upsetting content and people are common (but not worse than on Facebook), and there are no clear game objectives, rules or cheats for "winning". Yet, there is the opportunity to find a wide variety of entertaining content and make a profit in providing it. I don't think the limiting aspects of SL are ideological, but rather they're mostly technical. Meta (aka Facebook) is limited by the greed and power-hunger of it's creator, so it will likely never be able to create a virtual space that many people want to inhabit for long periods of time. Flat Facebook is bad enough, but people using it can turn their eyes away if they wish and can filter their experience to some small extent. I would go crazy if I had to inhabit a 3D version of Facebook for more than an hour, and I certainly wouldn't spend money there if I didn't have to do so. I would go into Fortnite, Sansar or SL to watch a concert or play, but I wouldn't do so if all the avatars looked like legless playdough creatures. The visual graphics have to be worth the immersive experience, and not just an excuse to try to sell me something else. Virtual Reality should be an escape from the many stresses of RL, not a piling on of more of the same.

You must've forgotten about Captain Jack (a recurrent character on Doctor Who and lead character in Torchwood).

Giving gifts is allowed in SL and on the Forums. It's not gambling if the person isn't putting any money (or other valuables) upfront that they might lose. If spending time to try to be Tama Suki's friend could be considered a gamble, then you might be right though.

One thing you could do (as a builder using textures) is to link maybe 4 pictures/ textures onto 1 picture, then upload that 1 picture/ texture. You could then use offset functions to display only one part of this composite picture on a surface. This tool would be most useful when texturing different surfaces on the same item, as each part of the this composite texture would count (for rendering cost purposes) as the same texture.

^ This. There are all kinds of perverts in SL, so for this discussion I'm defining Cam-Pervert as those who enjoy looking at other avatars for salacious reasons, assuming those avatars don't know they're being looked at. A Cam-Pervert is not likely to be a newbie, since most newbies have not learned how to cam and certainly don't know how to turn off the ability of others to see they're being cammed. Camming is a common part of SL, for various reasons, mostly not salacious. Camming up one's own skirt to do a panty check, looking at what an avatar is wearing, or camming inside a house to see how it's been decorated are all normal and acceptable SL behaviors. Camming on others who might be naked or engaging in adult activities is also normal in SL, so if you don't want to be Cam-Perved, you have to learn how to disable letting others outside of your home parcel view avatars inside it, then don't ever get naked or do anything adult in someone else's parcel. If it still bothers you that other people can look at your avatar, maybe SL is not a good fit for you.

If you go to the Firestorm website, they have tutorials on how to do stuff. There are a few variations on how to put animations into the built in Firestorm viewer AO "HUD". The easiest is to either wear or rez an AO HUD, Open it, & dump all the Contents into your Inventory. This creates a folder which I advise dragging into your Animations folder. There will be a notecard in this folder that has a list of animations in it, such as: [ Walking ]walk1|walk2|walk3 . This notecard tells your AO HUD which animations to use for each of these actions. You can rename this notecard at this point if you wish. You can also delete the scripts in this folder if you wish, but do not delete or rename the animations in this folder. Open the Firestorm AO by clicking the ^ arrow on it. Now drag the notecard that lists your AO animations into the window at the top of your open AO box. This creates an AO set with the same name as that notecard. From this point you can adjust how your animations will work, but you now essentially have an AO set built into your viewer. Selecting Cycle or Randomize for sets of animations such as Walking will cycle or randomize which animations will play for that action. You can also select how long you want each animation to play before moving to the next one in a set. Do not delete the notecard or animations in this folder, or the folder itself. The Firestorm viewer creates a subfolder in the Firestorm folder that is a copy of this folder and works in much the same way as folders in the Outfits folder works. It links to the original folder, so if you delete a crucial element in that original folder, your Firestorm AO will now be broken. It's easy to add, delete and replace animations or AO sets in this AO "HUD" though. Clicking the Trash icon deletes stuff. Dragging notecards or animations into the proper windows adds stuff. I've chosen to use a more complicated and time-consuming way of making up my AO set, which I don't advise unless one is comfortable modifying notecards and scripts. I put the animations from multiple AO HUDs into the folder with the notecard that directs which animations to use for each action. I demo these animations inworld, delete the ones I don't like, and rename ones that have overly long names. Then I rename and open the key notecard, delete the names of animations I don't want to use, Copy and Paste the names of animations I do want to use, before dragging this notecard into my Firestorm AO "HUD". This method takes a long time, but allows me to customize my AO sets to suit the personality of each of my avatars and to remove animations that I don't like.

Body Language has very nice AOs but they're expensive. They had some half price at the last Shop And Hop event, so they might be in the next one in February. If you don't mind their prices, you can pick up some "free" group gift AOs from them by joining their group for $L 350. "Eat Me" Amimations has some free & cheap AO sets, but their animations are not quite as smooth & natural-looking as the ones from Body Language. I'd recommend getting one of their sale $L 50 sets, since the free ones are mostly not Bento and the $L 50 sets are better looking than the $L 10 sets. If you know how to mix and match your own set of animations, their free and sale AO sets can mixed with AOs from other creators pretty easily too. There are several other AO stores, but I've carefully studied the animations from these 2 stores recently as I was making up new AO sets for my avatars. Always demo animations before buying them. * If you're using the Firestorm viewer, it's pretty easy to add your AO set into the viewer too, which would reduce your HUD attachments and script lag.

I have been having this same problem all month long. All I get is a page that says HTTP ERROR 500. I suspect the problem is that there are far too many posts within that sub-forum, so they system can't handle opening it for me.

I updated My guy's look a bit more.

SL is not intended to be an easy way to make money. It's intended to make for money for Linden lab. If you just want to play and have fun, then you can earn a few lindens to help you join groups and get their group gifts by playing one of the inworld games that let you win or earn a few lindens. If you wan to make more money than this, then you'll have to develop skills that other users are willing to pay for. If you want to be a stripper, escort, club host or DJ you will need to create a good-looking mesh avatar and learn how to communicate well in text and voice. If you want to make and sell stuff, then you could learn how to make shapes, textures, mesh items, scripts or animations. All of these jobs require RL time, effort and some money, so No, it is not easy to make money in SL.

That's a great-looking avatar. I think the top one looks kind of like Cher.

Unlike normal video games, Second Life content is 99% created by other users. Over time Linden Lab has also brought in new ways of making and using content, so SL can be a confusing mish-mash of options that continue to change over time. (Think of this as part of the history and culture of this virtual world.) Some skins cover both body & head. Some work on either the body or head, so you need to get both from the same store or figure out how to match skins that didn't come from the same creator. First, you've picked up the free mesh head from LeLutka. That's great because gifts like this come very rarely. Now you need a mesh body. I suggest getting the free male body from Legacy (which should fit old TMP male clothes) because it's free or only $L 1, so it's worth trying. I also strongly suggest getting the Belleza Jake body before Christmas because it's a great deal now. (Belleza fell behind on their updates for 2 years, which led some to think their bodies were not worth buying, but since they've been 1/2 price, I'm sure their sales have been great, which means designers will continue to make clothes for their most popular bodies.) The $L 1500 price for Belleza Jake is about $ 6 in US currency. With Belleza Jake ($L 1500) , Signature Gianni ($L 4000) or Legacy Male ($L 5000) you can find plenty of free or discounted skin and clothing. The current Jake v 3.1 fits LeLutka heads fine, but still needs an update to fit other mesh heads well. In my opinion the best deal for male hair is to join the "Not.Found" hair store group for $L 50 (20 cents), then pick up all their group gift hair that you like. There are pictures up in their group gift section for most of their gift hair, but don't overlook the gift packages on the ground that have a bunch of older hair styles in them. A few of their gifts are system layer beards or mesh beards. One necessary part new players sometimes forget is a good AO (Animation Overrider). There are several free ones available on Marketplace and inworld, but most of those will not be Bento, which means they don't move your fingers and face, so may look less natural than Bento animations. Getting one AO set of normal standing, walking, sitting, flying & etc. animations is the easiest way to animate your avatar so it looks less generic and seems to have a personality. With more experience you could make up your own animation set from various animations, but that's more work than you'd want to do now. For now, you should probably get a free AO, but if you wanted to spend money on it, Body Language has 4 sets of male AOs for $L 900 each in their shop in the Shop & Hop mall event. Also in my opinion, Bento animations are more important in situations where other people will be looking at your avatar such as when you're standing, sitting or hovering. I doubt people will look at your hands and face when you're running or flying. I have little experience in where to get the best male skins for the best price, but I can offer a little advice. 7 Deadly Skins is currently free to join their SEVEN group. I'm not sure if that group tag will let you get the pack of old male skins they have upstairs in their male skin section, but it's worth a try. While their male skins are not the best on mesh bodies, they look good on LeLutka mesh heads and don't usually show a neck seam between the Belleza Jake body and a LeLutka head. If their skin says it's BOM, it will look fine on your fingers too, though I can't vouch for whether the skin on your toes might be off a bit. Finding clothes you like can be challenging or fun, depending on where you look. For free stuff, I recommend joining "SL Frees and Offers" and "Fabulously Free" inworld. For a GQ look, join "L' Homme Magazine", since they have free gifts in many of the high quality men's stores. Gabriel is a clothing store that has some free jackets and shoes for anyone, a great $L 1 section of older clothes (including sizes for TMP men's bodies), and a nice 50% off section. The styles at Gabriel are Cyberpunk, Japanese influence, young & hip, roleplay, and some classic and casual clothing. Also join other groups for men's clothing & stuff and go to events that focus on stuff for male avatars. Once you find stores with content you like, join their groups and get their free group gifts. Join and drop as many free groups as you like to grab their group gifts, but be careful of dropping groups that could cost money to rejoin later. Finally, depending on what you want to do in SL, you may want to buy a "male attachment", otherwise known as a p.e.n.i.s. If you want a free one, the only one worth getting is the Huggsie on Marketplace. If you want to actually look good naked, you'll have to buy one and tint it to match your skin. These items come with interactive HUDs for added realism and fun. These items should not be worn while dressed, as they can show through clothing and add to your script lag even when made invisible.

Ms AnonyMouse sent me an unexpected gift too! I kept wondering how anyone could know I'd wanted a butterfly avatar. I'd completely forgotten about my MP wish list. Thank you, so much Ms. AnonyMouse!

That's a great-looking avatar. 😉 If you want to wear the same head on either a male of female body, the LeLutka River head has both a female and a male version included for the same price. I got River for a female head because it most looked like a younger RL me. (Note: these heads can be modified greatly with shape sliders, but the shape of the nose and lips can't change very much, so pick the head that best matches the nose and lips you want.) My look with the River head.