Five things Five March hates in Second Life

What is it easy to write about things we don’t like! But at the same time I have written about the five things I like very much. This is to compensate the negative by the positive. (Compensating seems to be a need of man. Being poor, you are given some money, being rich some money is stolen from you. Regrettably to become rich you have to steel lots of little bits from the poor.)

Ok, what are terrible things in Second Life?

First of all, I hate Slot machines. Stupid boxes mostly put in great quantities against a wall. Throw money in and if you are lucky you get money out, but always less. Sometimes it is indicated that you even get 90% of your money back. First of all the principle: why should you just pay somebody money for him (or her) to give only a part of it back? And second: why should we believe this? We cannot check the 90%, maybe it is 50% maybe less? And then with what statistics could we prove this figure as a customer? And then the people who own the slot machines, they don’t put one in their place, no 20, 40 or even more. This slot machine illness is like a virus. Why put so many of these things on your place? Is this to accommodate 100 avatars at the same time? But they cannot even enter the sim at the same time. Oh yes, all you hope for is that they quickly throw money in, and leave. Of course some of the avatars try these machines. They are hoping for a lucky break. Well don’t. Go dancing somewhere, or even camp to earn money. Better still, spend your time searching for freebies, because really, everything you need is available, free!

(Even more distasteful are the money jars. Just begging this is! Leave a tip, they say. Why? Present me something I could buy, imagine something, then you have an object or an idea to sell, seeing if somebody is interested, please!)

Then I hate the “no entry tape”. If you own a place you can shut it off. So flying around, exploring the world, we end up banging our head against a poorly visible barrier. It is like an invisible large brick on a highway, you are stopped abruptly, and you have to find your way around, sometimes landing against another invisible barrier and another. Why are these people in this world? Why don’t they just stay at their computer at home? Why building something in a large open world and then shutting this plot of land of. And then, with a little bit of manipulation of the camera you can always see what it is. Never is there anything to be seen you cannot see everywhere else. So please don’t shut off your land, It is spoiling the game and it serves no goal.

Thirdly how do I hate the ever-present FOR SALE signs! These things are spoiling the view! Ugly in design, because the speculators are just there to make a profit as fast as they can on land sales. The signs are as big as possible, and of course rotating. And by the way: the biggest signs are indicating the most expensive land, relative to surface. These signs of speculation are signaling that something evil has come into Second Life. Greed. Land speculation is a way to make real money fast. It is too simple to be true, it doesn’t demand any imagination. Actually it is a sort of denial of the goals of the game, to contribute to something bigger than the individual. Society, culture, development of civilized life, imagination. Luckily some signs are just lying on the land. I myself built a wall as high as the signs on my land, to get them out of my sight. I took this wall down the moment somebody bought the land and built something for herself on it. Peace!

The fourth thing I hate are the “the sitting ducks”, avatars sitting in chairs to earn a few bugs, but for the rest being totally inactive. Of course these avatars are not really “alive”, that is to say active. They are in Second Life, their computer is running, but they themselves, in real life, are doing other things. A small program called “Anti-idler” is running, so that their connection isn’t shut off because of inactivity. The avatars are sitting to attract other avatars. I do understand that these avatars are serving a purpose even when inactive, but they are the ghost’s of the game. These avatars are in a sort of sitting coma. The other option to earn money is to dance, it has the appearance of still being active.

Five!
As in real life, I hate repeats in SL. If you own a shop, why putting the same picture of an article you want to sell a hundred times on the wall? Why put a hundred slot machines against the wall? Why putting a “shop for rent” sign everywhere? Why 10 “for sale” sign instead of one? And why covering an enormous surface with all the pictures of all the clothes you ever made? Presenting a selection is much more convincing. Repeats are also visible in architecture. But awful is the repeating in the animations, the pose balls. Better emptiness than lacking imagination. Give us a break! Ok this gives me the chance to finish in an upbeat. This blogg is not about a sim in particular. But the dance animations of Sine Wave Island are really good and unique. These are really convincing. For sure made by a dancer.

And now forget about the bad and quickly go to the five things I love in Second Life!