The Seven SL Facts About Me meme posts have been interesting for me to read. I would have liked to participate but I’ve had an attack of real life keeping me busy lately. Fortunately, I had a bunch of posts about the Meta_Body II scheduled so I didn’t feel that my blog was floating into oblivion.
I take the time to read a lot of blogs about SL. I really appreciate the diversity of paths for people to take, whether in the real or virtual world. The posts about “this is how it is for me now” are great . Suggestions and ideas about how SL can be a better experience for us all are great. But when someone writes about what we all “should” be doing, I lose interest quickly. Being told what’s right and what’s wrong seems so old-age, last millennium and boring to me. These messages are everywhere in our media and certainly don’t bring out a feeling of compliance in me. But hey, if you think it’s working for you, go for it.
One area in which people have opinions about what we “should” do is in regard to our profiles. No matter what I do, someone eventually comes along to critique my profile. The most recent being that my profile is harsh. From my point of view, it was a kindness to give a head’s up that I would walk away from drama and rudeness. Some of the people I’ve met seem to have no idea about social skills or possibly how to be pleasant enough to spend a little time with. Life can’t be easy for them, whether real or virtual.
Arguing and drama in a virtual reality is a waste of time and energy and isn’t worth bothering with for me. In the real world, I’m a grown up; I stand up, deal and take responsibility on a daily basis. By the time I log on, I’m in no condition to be a therapist or referee or dumping ground. I certainly don’t want to go along with anyone else’s dictates about how much attention I should give to drama. Is it efficient to keep that a big mystery and let people find that out after time and attention has been invested?
I tend to like the up front approach instead of the big silence approach. Some of the places I go have lots of residents around and I do get IM’s; I’m shy, but friendly. Often the other person goes suddenly silent after a sort of interview and I no longer wonder why that happens. I don’t know the secret handshake or give them the magic word, maybe. It’s always someone who’s approached me first. A conversation or friendship has to be a two way street for me and I let people go when they seem too ambivalent. When people honestly communicate what’s going on, I respect and appreciate it but I don’t like to make assumptions.
In this post, I’m making liberal use of “for me” and “I”, which may not be good writing but whatever it’s like in your shoes and seeing from your perspective is something I can’t claim any authority on. How could I presume to tell you what you “should” do and be?
A few weeks ago, I was changing Pearl’s outfit yet again in the Linden Home of a friend. The phone rang and I left the room for a few minutes. When I returned to my laptop I had an IM from a resident, (who’s also a blogger!), telling me to “get the hell out of here”. Maybe the account was hacked? There’s a few other possibilities that flitted through my mind, none of which I took personally or thought was any of my business. Some other day I might have felt differently.
That kind of thing is tedious and I simply went on with what I’d been doing; the account has since been banned from my friend’s Linden Home even though we have no idea if the resident was actually in the home or even nearby at all.
Someone has just given me a Flight Feather that I found easy and fun to use. I’m delighted when people give me little gifts (except for red roses which tend to make me feel awkwardness and dread). In the photo above, Cyber-Grunge Pearl flew up to a previously unreachable area of the Victorian Steampunk roleplay sim where she resides part-time.
The person behind the avatar carried on with choosing for herself what to pay attention to and how to play this game of being human on planet Earth.
