Sorry about your experience mate I'll give you a few tips that might help you in your next virtual world or if you decide to stay in SL, take them or leave it, if you’re still reading this.
- Do not buy membership if you're new. Just don't. Before you start throwing money and going through that annoyance, first take a few weeks, even months to see if you feel confortable/understand/like SL.
- It's a huge mistake to make comparisons with SL and another virtual worlds.
- You can rent houses, lands, skyboxes so you can decorate them as you like, you don’t have to stick to linden homes.
- Want friends? There's a subforum where you can find people. Also, if you look in the viewer's search engine, you’ll find groups and/or sims where you can find people to chat with. It is a common mistake (mostly in new residents) to think that everyone in SL is here to make friends. Some just like to build, RP, explore or be with their significant one, so sometimes if you approach them and they’re not interested in having a conversation or you’re interrupting what they’re doing, they might be rude to you and you’ll have the impression that everyone’s that way.
- Search, learn and explore. For the way you speak, it makes me believe you just jumped into SL and didn’t explore it deep enough to know all the fascinating things about it. Learn to move around and visit the right places for you; learn to search not only in the search engine, but also in sl blogs and forums so you can achieve it.
Now, bring brutally honest, if you are so disappointed by what you saw in the forums, maybe SL isn’t the place for you: If you can’t understand that most nice people you might have a good friendship with are not in here and the users who use them are a veeery minimal part of SL, if you can’t understand that not everyone is a rude antisocial person and that they’re places where you can make friends….yeah, maybe you’re too naïve or SL is too mean for you to stay.