Five things Five March loves in Second Life

The lists I made for the things I love quickly got larger than the list of things I hated in Second Life. This made me feel good!

Here they are:

For a start I love the encounter with books! Well books? Texts of books in notecard form. In principle you don’t encounter any books in SL. But suddenly in Public Library, ElvenGlen, I found myself in a Library. Books about poetry, science fiction. It has been put there to reinforce the fantasy of the sim. My feelings for books are maybe a residue from real life, but Second Life suddenly felt warmer. It felt it having more content with the reference to books. Of course I am well aware that theses texts can be found in the internet, being free texts without copyright. But it made a connection for me. Later on I discovered “real” libraries, that is to say, Second Life buildings providing buttons to access internet sites with search engines for texts and books. This works out rather impersonal; it provides much less “warmth”, because these building are actually just an internet button.

Secondly I like the idea of the "inventory" very much.

The inventory, where everything you own and made is stocked, gives a funny insight in the human character. It points out rather painfully to our drive to collect things indiscriminately. The inventory fills, slowly or quickly, up. Or better we are insatiable! It can easily contain thousands of items. The interesting part is that whole buildings, yachts, all the gear for disco, whole exhibitions, can be stored easily in this “backpack”, which everyone is carrying around. And these things can be “rezzed” in an instant. (Rezzing is putting it in the world.) You can put it on a location faster than the blinking of an eye. It is very funny imagining every avatar having his whole life of collecting invisible on his back.

I here show an image of a sandbox, where somebody showed me his disco table.

Third thing, this is what I love to see more:

This is an ideal: hidden things. Well the idea of hidden things. No not the skyboxes or the spying on people. Just have to search a little bit before something nice is found. In principle everyone wants to show his or her ability, imagination and products. Show it immediately and to everyone. Shout it around. Every now and then you find something that is hidden from this direct view. This makes you wonder if there is more to be found. This stimulates imagination and fantasy more than the immediate available. I met a very well made Leopard (from Julia Hathor) somewhere, and later I discovered one lying on a branch of a tree above. That was great! This is what I mean; it gives depth to the world.

The fourth thing I like is the profile। Clicking on a person you can find out when this person is born, well, started Second Life. A few words can be added about interests, language, and a couple of places can be listed, which this person liked. In an instant you can figure out if it is worthwhile talking to this person, or about what somebody would like to talk. We should have something like this in real life! I like very much the honesty and the directness with which people put things in their profiles. (A bit in contradiction with point 3 about the hidden things I suppose.)

The fifth point I like is to encounter a little bit of imagination. The being different from the average and the doing things differently. This can be in all aspects, building, clothing, behavior, chatting. This point is like the hidden things, an ideal. Sometimes I meet imagination, most of the time not too much. But as with the hidden, it is meant to be like that!

And I do meet imagination, for instance the crazy Brainiac HQ

Other things I like, in general, are of course the possibility to fly around, the manipulation of the camera, the idea that a person can indeed be represented by a texture and an inventory, I like the building up of the world when you arrive somewhere…. I’ll write more about the particular things later on