Visiting

How do you find things in SL?
Objects, places to visit, people?
It is a 3D world, without a clear one dimensional classification on for instance length or on alphabet.
Words are not what is present.
Never the word was more different from it’s content then in SL.
Keywords are added to everything to attract.
So if something is “not free”- free is in the keywords. Smart? Well the search engine is a blessing, even with the system of false keywords (“no sex”….lol).
There is chance. You are directed, send on a way, follow a path, the oracle is always right, you will find something. So looking for a telephone 5 found nice Victorian instruments and a very amusing brewery. Looking for art, 5 landed in a museum of teacups, still under construction, but very intriguing.

Another link brought 5 to a french rural church, a chapelle, all painted within, which exists in reality

Finding things turns out to be very simple. One word or a simple question from a friend can release a complex query through SL. And looking at things from the perspective of this question the world looks different. Evolution, ecosystem, museum, art, science, laboratory. The search engine won’t bring you the answer or the sim you were looking for, but it will function as an oracle. Bringing better or even more than the answer.
People complain that all is the same in SL. Well only if you don’t have ideas yourself. All you can think of, indeed more, is there, but you have to be able to excavate it from the unordered 3D world. Not only not logically ordered, also in constant reordering.
So you have to be fast, because all is changing, or is being changed, at the same time. Being there in Second Life means changing. Some very nice sims can disappear in a second at the whim of the owner, having changed her mind.
So make snapshots, or and- even better, movies. Avatars change all the time, the sims are rearranged, the ideas trasformed. In SL even more than in the head of the most creative person, ideas are combined and fall apart. Ever shifting worlds.
You can help this process.
Walk around, make notes of interesting things, put these into your profile, you will meet people, look at their ideas, they look at yours, and you have soon other strange places to visit. Talking is more than chatting, you have to inspect the persons you meet, always new aspects to explore. There is more than you ever can imagine!

Visitors

Is that you? People say to 5 in Second Life? No that is not me. Yes indeed, this is not me.
Who am I?
Let’s us look at the others, who are they?
5 meets all kinds of…..people.
Rabbits playing drums in the desert.
Soldiers parachuting from the sky in the developers hangout.
Pirates admiring an exhibition about Rotterdam.
A pirate, who speaks English, but his girlfriend pirate only speaks French. Or an Indian who speaks German, while his squaw uses the Babbler-translator? Is somebody a soldier because she is dressed like it? Is somebody a lady because he has just sparsely covered long legs?
What is this clothing anyway, and indeed, what is it covering? Does it matter?
Yesterday 5 was offered a ride on a horse, well the horse was an avatar. The person was a horse. During the ride, with the horse in command, 5 wondered - what (who) is riding who (what) to where?
Do you want to be a horse too? She asked. You can buy me.
Not yet! I’ll give it to you. What does she offer?
Herself, herself as a horse, or just the horse, or an idea?
What is a horse, by the way, in SL?

A Horse can poop, can stoop, you can change the saddle, gallop, even backwards. Luckily it doesn’t attract flies.
Flies are absent in SL. Too many prims for too small a shape. No midgets, no flies, no ticks, wonderful world. If you are an insect, ou are not allowed in. Strange ecosystem without insects!
But you can become a dragon, a cowboy, a cartoon hero, superman, a horse, maybe even slimy things.
No, slimy is too blobby, blobby is too difficult, slimy things are forbidden.


So is that you 5? You’ll never know. One thing is clear, there is a difference between the newbies and the older generations. They even spot it themselves immediately. Whatever you are, a soldier coming down in the sim, and changing immediately in a general, a small rabbit playing a noisy potpourri and having a lot of fun, not riding the horse but being a horse, even appearing in an abstract shape, running around as a very serious Indian, changing into an alien…..we have adapted to this world, whatever we are. We welcome the other shapes, we know we don’t know who we are, and this becomes the reason of our existence.
This not knowing who we are makes us open for everything and everyone. You just see what happens. Actually we are stripped of prejudice about who we are, about gender, age, education.
Maybe we are more nacked then ever, being without illusions about the other. More nacked and more armed too.
Maybe we speak a few languages, but we encounter dozens more. Maybe we have read a few books, but we talk with people who have read totally different libraries. We have a few ideas, but miraculously ideas appear everywhere all the time. All caused by “is that you” ‘s. A horse can program, a rabbit knows the Illias by heart, batman gives citations from the Mahabharata.
5 would like to be a flower. Must be possible, 5 prim petals would do the job.