Randall Ahren

If someone has their busy mode on, I don't leave a message. Rarely, someone will get back to me and ask why I didn't leave a message. It's because I wanted to chat with someone right, now not the next day or an hour from now.

I didn't make the rules. I'm just adapting my game play in response to how most other people play. Hate the game, not the player. It wasn't a block message, so I wasn't being purposely ignored. It was an automatic busy message.

You had an auto message set.

That was the 2nd time I saw you there. The first time you were AFK.

They don't want to listen the stream from somewhere else. That's not how the game is played. The game is played by making an avatar as attractive as possible and parking it AFK at a busy venue to see how many fish bite. They won't get any bites if their avatar is away from the crowd.

If you just spent all night with friends, but no one really seemed to touch you, that's probably because you were in a virtual world.

This game should come with a warning: Highly addictive; may be hazardous to your real life health and social relationships. Use at your own risk.

So you agree SL is less sociable now, and we should adapt by being less friendly?

The biggest mistakes you can make in SL involve affairs of the heart. I've seen people really hurt here. They have a traumatic breakup and delete all their friends, and sometimes start a completely new account, or quit SL altogether, at least for a time. It's hard to understand how they could be so upset with something that happened in a video game unless you experience it for yourself. That's the biggest difference between the old avatar and the young. The old ones know you can really get hurt here. The younger ones haven't figured that out yet. So they're much freer with who they let into their SL and RL. Older residents can be downright hostile and sometimes put warnings in their profile like "not accepting friend requests, so even effing think about it."

On Netflix there is a series called "Because This is My First Life." The title is something someone playing SL might say, so I had to watch it to see what inspired the name. From the description, it did not appear to have anything to do with a virtual world. Near the end of first episode, I found the answer. The main protagonist, Ji-Ho, feels disappointed with her life at 30 because she's not in a romantic relationship, she's struggling in her career, and cannot afford her own home. She engages in this bit of dialogue with Se-Hee at a bus stop: Ji-Ho: "I think this life is a bit of a failure, but I'll try my best." Se-Hee: "I wish you the best of luck. We are all living this life for the first time." The implication being that mistakes are expected because this isn't a second time through life for anyone. Ji-Ho takes it one step further, because this is her first life, it's also her last life, so she has to make the most of it. In SL though, you can make lots of mistakes, and start over. I guess that's the purpose of second life. It's a place for mistakes because you can begin again.

There's another, more cynical variation of that saying: "beauty may only be skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone." On the subject of book covers, authors and publishers claim the cover is very important, even for ebooks. Sometimes its the cover that makes the sale. Anyway, with these rules, you have to think like an anthropologist to uncover them. SL has its own, unique culture and even has an accent. Why do people say "nopers" and "yeppers" in SL? I've never encountered that anywhere else.

The rules aren't written down. You have to deduce them by observing resident behavior and forum posts. One rule is that you must be meshed up. If you're not meshed, then you're a nobody and all your IMs are justifiably ignored.

I didn't make the rules, I just suffer under them like everyone else. As Omar said in The Wire, the game is out there, it's either play or be played. I'm tired of being played.

Multitasking is here to stay. A commitment to a single leisure activity at a time is not going to work. Observe how long the average commitments last in SL between marriage partners. When SL comes up with compelling game play that demands my focused attention, it will get it. For now, if I play, I'm playing the way the majority of residents are already playing SL.

I played SL according to the new rules last night. You dress your avatar attractively, park it at a busy venue, open a new window and play a more exciting game like Valorant or Fortnite. SL is like fishing. It's boring AF. So you toss your hook in the water and while waiting for a bite, play another game. If you get a bite, you pause your game and scan the IM. The problem though, is that you can't pause your game. In Fortnite or Valorant, you'll get killed and let your squad down and that's inconsiderate to your team. So you just have to ignore those IMs. It's not like its another person that sent the IM. It's probably a creep or someone with an unoriginal opening line like "hi" or "hello". F that. But if you get an IM, that means you win because you fooled someone into messaging your AFK avatar. And I won last night.

Neither do I.

You're surviving on $500 USD per month? Maybe you could create more products and increase sales.

You're cashing out too soon. Wait until you have about five million Linden dollars and then cash out. The cash out fee is 5% with a maximum of $500. Therefore, if you cash out $10,000 USD, that $500 (the maximum). So if you wait until you have five million Linden dollars, that's around $20,000, and cash out, it hits the maximum cap of $500, and effectively halves the percentage fee from 5% to 2.5%.

I'm their prophet.

Or anyone with a Marketplace wishlist prominently displayed? Material girl living in a material world?

How about a People's Cooperative that buys SL from the current owner, and thereafter runs the cooperative for the good of the people? That would be revolutionary. Some corporations have voting and non-voting shares, Berkshire Hathaway for example. Only holders of class A shares may vote, class B shareholders cannot vote. You could have a similar structure. The intelligentsia really aren't that influential. They tend to get exiled, such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Radishchev. Even you reported being banned. That's the price of being a vocal member of the intelligentsia.

Likewise, the same applies to you. SL would be a worse place without you. You bring something unique to SL that otherwise would be missing.

Linden Labs managed to provide the residents with Realms without bankrupting the organization.

It wouldn't even be worth the cost of the electricity. How many people are gaming the fishing spots where you earn 10 L$ per hour or some absurdly low amount?

That's never going to happen, ever. Maybe eharmony has achieved that (I doubt it), but certainly no other platform I know of.