Comments on: Second Life MetaFilter group

Second Life MetaFilter group

brownpau — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:08:50 -0800

I noticed from Projects that we have at least a few Second Life-savvy MeFites, but no real MetaFilter-focused presence in SL, so I went ahead and made us a MetaFilter SL group. Come join, message me in-world if you have any questions, and if you're nice I might even give you a teleport to a sneak peek at a little virtual MeFi anniversary surprise I'm working on. (Just search for my handle, same as on here plus an "Oh.") The group's also open to members of other MeFi-related communities, for which I will even make custom group tags on request. (Monkeys, Bunnies, and IRC lurkers join in!) If anyone here isn't an SL resident but wants to be, I'm sure the group will be happy to give you a welcoming walkabout. Or at least I will.

Oh, and in before "get a first life."

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:19:15 -0800

I can't wait to convert virtually all of my on-line ramblings into literally virtual on-line ramblings.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:22:31 -0800

get a fi... dammit.

By: dersins

dersins — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:25:24 -0800

(Monkeys, Bunnies... join in!)

Fucking Second Life and fucking furries, man. What's up with that, anyway?

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:26:20 -0800

Monkeys & Bunnies, living together... Mass hysteria!

By: gman

gman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:35:12 -0800

get a fi... dammit.

By: misha

misha — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:35:16 -0800

I know this. Is it...Ghostbusters II?

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:37:39 -0800

It's a Unix System. I know this.

By: arachnid

arachnid — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:54:43 -0800

I know less about this than you could possibly imagine.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:03:40 -0800

I tried Second Life once, but I lost.

By: dunkadunc

dunkadunc — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:07:22 -0800

Metafilter on Second Life- oh my! Jessamyn, Mathowie, and Cortex could even make avatars based on the Metafilter Comic!

Next up: Metafilter on Furcadia!

By: DU

DU — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:04:24 -0800

so I went ahead and made us a MetaFilter SL group.

What have you done in my name?!

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:08:28 -0800

In all honesty, second life gets a pretty bad rap from a minority of its players.

By: librarylis

librarylis — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:14:13 -0800

I'm not sure it's the *minority* of its players, boo_radley (and I'm not sure they realize they're playing)...

...but then again, I'm in what is probably one of the few departments in the country where they not only offer a class in/on/about SL, they also occasionally have a prof that requires assignments to be completed in SL. My bitterness is unbounded.

By: davejay

davejay — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:29:57 -0800

brownpau oh: why wont you join our metafilter group?

davejay farquart: i am far too busy trying to live the life i already have

brownpau oh gives you a bonus life

davejay farquart: \o/ yaaaaaaaaay

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:53:44 -0800

Wait... I thought MetaFilter was already my second life.

By: purephase

purephase — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:26:58 -0800

People actually use Second Life? I thought it was just there so that academics could wank about it being the next biggest thing...

Learn something new every day!

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:37:22 -0800

Is this anything like being Born Again?

By: DWRoelands

DWRoelands — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:45:16 -0800

I know that lots of people really enjoy Second LIfe, and I've been involved with it on and off for about four years.

There are occasional bright spots on the Second Life grid where someone is doing something beautiful or inspiring or educational or just plain fun.

Most of the rest of it is a depraved hellhole.

Second Life is overrun with guys in newbie skin with horse-sized freebie penises IMing every female avatar they see: "u want fuck"? Some of the largest "communities" in SL are the "Gor" regions, where the misogynistic sci-fi fantasies of John Norman are acted out by men pretending to be Gorean barbarians and other men pretending to be female Gorean slaves. If you manage to avoid that, you'll invariably encounter someone playing the "Bloodlines" game and offer to bite you on the neck so that you can bite other people on the neck and make their vampire clan more powerful.

The sexual degradation of women seems to be a powerful and recurring theme across the Grid. Second Life stands as a grim testament to human nature. Create a world where there's no death, no disease, no war, and you can literally do or be anything you like, and men will build castles and drag women around on leashes and call them "bitch".

The search system is approaching uselessness because people game the traffic system with bots; the highest search results are all either "free sex" rooms or giant markets where you can get free skins and shapes and clothing.

Every dance club is the same. All the events are "Best In _____", where the blank is a color or a theme (e.g. red, black, latex, etc.) They give away a prize of a few hundred Lindens (about $1 or $2 USD) as a reward for you staying i the club for a few hours to improve their traffic numbers.

Second Life seems to have devolved into two activities: shopping and sex. In that regard, they've created a remarkable simulacra of the real world. The shame is that the citizens of Second Life didn't choose to dream any bigger.

It is not my intention to rain on anyone's parade, or to denigrate the intentions of any of my fellow MeFites who play on the SL Grid. My experience with y'all has shown me that Metafilter is generally a cut above the general population.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:00:35 -0800

What else could you do in SL? Does it support a procedural object system or physics engine or anything? (I know next to nothing about it.) If not, you are pretty much limited to human-human interaction, which, yeah, means you end up with a porny soap opera.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:13:57 -0800

Having now reminded myself that yes, SL supports that stuff, I retract my question. Also, people pay $N/month to watch blocky characters having simulated sex? They know about Google, right? (I realize a lot of users don't pay a fee, but it still doesn't make sense that you'd have to have all this CPU power and time for lowrez porn. It's like buying a Wii to play Leisure Suit Larry.)

By: owtytrof

owtytrof — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:18:41 -0800

It's like buying a Wii to play Leisure Suit Larry.

You say that like there's something wrong with it.

...I mean, there is, but you say it that way, too.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:19:53 -0800

I find SL interesting though I don't have time to participate, but I wanted to mention that this "they also occasionally have a prof that requires assignments to be completed in SL." makes me concerned about the LIS profession. I think it's a super idea for people to have experiences interacting with patrons in alternative environments for reference and etc but as a librarian who knew someone else who had this similar issue [was this at UNC?] I'm still not totally sure this is really the way to move forward. I'll be curious to look at this a few years down the road and see how it all looks from there. Carry on.

By: DWRoelands

DWRoelands — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:20:37 -0800

Second Life went free-to-play some time ago.

As a free account, you don't get the weekly stipend and you aren't given any land, but the whole grid is otherwise open to you.

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:11:55 -0800

concerned about the LIS profession

I am lead to believe there is a Library Studies professor at Simmons who is/was taking a sabbatical to spend the semester in Second Life.

By: davey_darling

davey_darling — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:30:27 -0800

Does anybody have any experience with OpenSim and running their own server?

I am a high school teacher who is thinking about setting up an OpenSim environment to have my students work in (I teach a Communications Technology course). For example, in a Photography unit, I would have my students take their pics (in meatspace) and then build a gallery to display them in in OpenSim.

Good idea? Bad idea? What else could I be doing with this?

(this question may eventually blossom into a full grown AskMe)

By: Alterscape

Alterscape — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:19:25 -0800

Davey_darling, I think it would be more useful to teach your students the skills needed to develop a formal portfolio, electronic or physical. If you're feeling particularly ambitious, you could help them print/matte/frame their best prints. They'll get more mileage out of those skills than "build SL content," I suspect.

I used to use SL a bit, and I have to say that I don't "get" the appeal of the current generation of software beyond escapism. Use it to socialize? IM and email are more effective with less CPU burden. Play games with other people? There are lots of games that run in game engines that have much better mechanics and performance. Collaborate for work/community? IM/email/videoconferences work better at conveying expression. I understand why "/me does whatever" works in an informal context (IRC, IM, wherever), but I can't imagine it in a business context. Porn + Sex? RL is the killer app, there.

That's not to say that there aren't some interesting things going on -- the simpler-than-most-3D-software "building" tools strike a good compromise between ease of use and power, and there's a built-in venue to show off what you've built. At the same time, it will never look as good as a 3d rendering done in a "real" package, and the simplified tools don't offer a good transition path to "real" 3d packages (unless you really only want to model with primitive objects and booleans). Also, the "SL sailing" community has a pretty fleshed-out game engine for sailboat racing that works well enough to be enjoyable, though I think a purpose-built simulator would be more effective.

That said, meh, maybe I'll join up.

By: lysdexic

lysdexic — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:38:50 -0800

I'm having avatar anxiety now. What would I be? Wrrd Grrl?

By: theora55

theora55 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:13:38 -0800

On SL, I'm Theora Portland.

I recently visited 2nd Life in a workshop, and found some interesting areas related to education and books. You have to sift hard to find interesting content.

By: JoanArkham

JoanArkham — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:03:36 -0800

I'm in (Vyvyan Voom), although I'm not on very often...no time.

It's kind of fun to look around...the sex and shopping got boring pretty fast, but there are funny, creative things to find. (And finding them can be part of the fun.)

I wish I could figure out how to build things and create clothing and such, but the learning curve is pretty steep and I keep getting frustrated.

By: sergeant sandwich

sergeant sandwich — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:02:09 -0800

Does it support a procedural object system or physics engine or anything?

physics engine yes. there's a fairly powerful oo-like scripting language that can be used to write some fairly crazy shit and which can (i guess, strictly speaking, must) be embedded into in-world objects. usually this is used to make them interactive, spawn other objects, and so on. some people have used this to implement procedural object generation, i've seen some fractal trees and automatic structure builders etc. there's actually a lot of cool stuff one can do with the scripting if one has the patience and inclination to learn a goofy, proprietary and seemingly unsupported language to make things that will go largely unappreciated.

the unfortunate reality of second life is good ideas, poorly implemented, and short-sighted decisions by the development squad and management. both the physics engine and the object-handling stuff is kind of crappy and subject to all sorts of flaky behavior and pitifully limiting constraints. most of the post-release development was about bells and whistles that make things sparkle and flash and wave in the wind, which certainly appeals to the user base, but there's some positive feedback looping going on there as well.

basically, there are some cool ideas, but the thing feels like it was pieced together from several disparate parts with some unfortunate choices in terms of architecture, and needs to be gutted and rewritten.

By: Malor

Malor — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:15:50 -0800

You know, it's a little sad -- reading the comments up there, I can't even disagree with most of them. There are still interesting people and neat stuff to be found, but you have to look a lot harder than you used to. I mostly fire it up once a week and hang out with some old, old friends that have been going to the same weekly show for years now. It's sort of like Cheers, but much less funny. :)

But, man, the first year or so was amazing. The population was incredibly intelligent, and you could fly up to practically anyone and be guaranteed an interesting conversation. Everyone was making stuff, learning the scripting language, learning how to model and build in 3D. There wasn't a lot of existing content, so SL only attracted highly intelligent and creative people who wanted to play with a giant Lego set. Most of the modern folks who start are much more ordinary, and since there's so much there that's already done, they can run around with their horse penises, rather than learning how to make one themselves.

When it was small, it was one of the neatest and coolest places ever done. The population was at least as smart as Mefi, probably smarter, and super friendly and interesting. Most early residents watched the rise of the adult material with great trepidation, and were quite critical. But, over time, the adult stuff has become very pervasive; it may even be the dominant force in the existing SL world.

At its base, it's important to remmber that SL is just a sandbox, a big Lego set. There are a lot of people doing things that you probably won't like, no matter who you are, but blaming SL itself for that is silly. It's not that SL is a bad idea -- it's a great idea, albeit technically flawed in many important ways. But people can be exceptionally banal and offensive in what they choose to create.

If you go in, as one of the local MeFi SL critics did, and explicitly try to tweak people, of course they won't react well. They may even kick you off of their property, shock of shocks. Like any other community, if you're there simply to mock them and feel superior, they'll do their best to chase you away. This does not mean you are actually superior.

I wish I could give pointers on where to go to find 'regular' people, but I'm just not active enough anymore to know. Brownpau will probably have good pointers. I KNOW that there are perfectly reasonable adults using the system, because I hang out with a bunch of them once a week. Surely, there must be many other groups that are similar. Sane and reasonable people tend not to attract as much attention, but I know they're still around. :)

By: librarylis

librarylis — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:49:05 -0800

This is what I get for checking my Recent Activity irregularly...

...I think it's a super idea for people to have experiences interacting with patrons in alternative environments for reference and etc but as a librarian who knew someone else who had this similar issue [was this at UNC?] I'm still not totally sure this is really the way to move forward...

No, it wasn't at UNC. Or Simmons. It was one of the schools in California.

And I'm very convinced this isn't the way to move forward, but as far as academic libraries are concerned, I've noticed that those who are the leaders in this are frequently middle-aged; I don't know that many of the younger librarians who are enthused. My school, for example, has one proponent, rather well known in the field, and once she retires I think the emphasis will die down.