Forgive me for not rating you

So, today it was announced that several rather extreme changes are being made to the economy in SL, all with the stated goal of slowing down inflation. One of these changes is that each rating, positive or negative, will cost L$25 after tomorrow.
I'm not stingy in Second Life. I love rating people positively (and most people I know in Second Life merit kudos since they are some of the best people I've ever met). But I'm sorry, call me what you like, I'm not spending that kind of cash on rating people. $75 for a triple positive rating? I can buy something fun with that.
So, don't think that I don't like your buildings or don't find your avatar very well designed, or don't think of you as an asset to the community. I really do, and I'll be giving you positive ratings - in spirit. But I'm sure we can all agree, there are far better things to spend our L$ on.

Happy birthday(s) to me!

It's funny, as a kid I often really hated the fact that my birthday was so close to Christmas (it's tomorrow, December 22nd) so really in retrospect it probably wasn't the best thing in the world to join Second Life the day after my birthday and now have the two kind of merged into one surreal double "birth" celebration.
Oh well, who knew I'd be here for a whole year? I signed up expecting to stay a few hours. :)
So happy days for me, happy holidays for all those who enjoy such things, and hopefully more happy years ahead for all of us in SL!

SL Getting Boring?

I was going to post this as a reply to a newbie who's leaving SL after 6 days in the forums, but it turned kind of long and rambly, and I didn't feel right kind of being down on SL in the official forums. This is a lot of how I feel about Second Life lately:

This was a really interesting and useful post. I only wish more people who try SL and decide it isn't going to meet their dreams would take the time to share their impressions.
I think a lot of us who have sort of "bought in" the the vision of SL are a little guilty of drinking the kool-aid sometimes and will just repeat mantras about what SL will be someday or that it's on the edge of becoming something great or the new 3-d internet or something like that.
As someone who's been in SL for almost a year now, I think there is a lot of validity to the idea that it is sort of an oversized chat program with some creation and commerce toys to play around with. The lack of new, interesting features since animations and streaming audio were added have lead for me at least to a sort of boredom with the place.
Don't get me wrong, I still love the people of Second Life and really admire the tenacity, vision, and optimism of the Linden staff. But, I guess a place that is so powered by hopes and dreams and "what if"s and "someday"s can only keep you interested as long as they keep delivering hints of that future to come.
I think the combination of the performance issues that lasted way too long, the rapid drop in land values, the decline in L$ value, and the utter stagnation of features and things to do or buy have left SL feeling a bit like a dream unrealized. Every sim has buildings that look like 100 you've seen somewhere else. Most events are cheap ploys to get dwell or hosting fees. The number of "wow" moments in SL has dropped to a trickle and the number of yawns has increased. Its bigger, more spread out, more populated, but not really more interesting. If I were new this December instead of last December, I don't know that I'd stick around beyond a week either.

What is fun?

Of all of the questions new people often ask in Second Life, one of the hardest to give a straightforward answer to is "what is fun to do here?" It's certainly not that there is a lack of entertaining things going on, great events, wonderful people to meet, it's just that it is a question that is so open ended and so much based on the personality of each individual.
Ask me how to make a sphere, or how to make it rotate, or how to get your newly purchased light saber out of a box and I can answer without even giving it a second thought, but "how do I have fun?" and I feel like I end up going to clichés: "You can do whatever you like." "Explore, go to events, see what appeals to you." "Well, what's your idea of 'fun?'"
All of those are okay answers and about as good as I can do, but I feel like I'm letting the person asking down when I say that because the truth is everyone finds "fun" differently in Second Life. It's a bit like getting off a boat in New York or hopping in a cab in Chicago and asking "What's fun to do in this town?"
My very best times in SL are so serendiptious and non-engineered. Like last night, for example: I was at DJ Miggy (AKA Aeguvas Ritter)'s weekly live music party that he does via SLive. It's always a good time and he's one of the most entertaining DJ personalities anyway, but what made it an awesome night for me was sitting there in this virtual world with people from all over the planet and two other people from Las Vegas were there in this crowd. We ended up chatting and joking about, of all things, silly local news personalities and which local reporters have had cosmetic surgery and which ones do really silly ratings ploy stories. It was a total throw away, almost stupid conversation, but it was just so much "fun" for lack of a better word. That sort of random silly connection with other people I guess is what I love the most in Second Life and the sort of thing that is almost impossible to tell someone who is looking for fun how to go find.

Am I a snob?

A funny thing happened tonight. A friend and mentor who I've known almost as long as I've been in Second Life sent me an IM when I logged on. He asked if I would be willing to teleport over to a location where his friend had made a new hot tub to get in and pose for a photo with a crowd (one of the selling points I guess is that it has room for many people and they wanted to highlight that in the photo).
Well my reply was something like "Thanks for thinking of me, but that's not really what I'm about or the the image I want to portray of myself in SL." An honest answer, but it made me wonder - am I becoming some kind of snobby, too controlled, unfun caricature? Am I more concerned about maintaining some image rather than maintaining friendships and relationships?
I guess, in my defense, a big part of why I learned to be wary of bikini beach parties and dance club "sexiest outfit" contests and so on is that people will pretty much treat you the way you act or seem to act. If you are a woman in SL (in my case a real one, not just living out some cross dressing fantasy) you have to work a bit harder to be taken seriously and have to swim upstream a bit against assumptions that come about from the big community of "dancers" and women who are looking to hook up.
So because of that, and just being true to my personality, I've always tried to make it really clear that I love so much of SL, love playing all kinds of games, building, exploring, etc, but that I'm not an object, am not looking to be someone's girlfriend or meet guys or any of that crap. Maybe I'm too sensitive about it, really. I wonder if I come off as cold or aloof in SL or if people who know me just get that I like to draw a line and have my boundaries. I sure hope they see it for what it is.

Sad Day, Neighbor Moved Away

One of the things I learned quickly in Second Life is that all relationships on line have a fast life cycle. It's very easy to make Internet friends, but they also disappear quickly. Most of the people I consider friends in SL, I think I pretty much just clicked with after the first few times of talking to them. That's one of the really cool things about that kind of social environment. On the flips side, so many people who I really enjoyed hanging out with just moved on to other things or stopped coming to SL or simply found a clique in SL that doesn't include me. As I said, I learned this quickly and have accepted it as kind of the normal reality of my virtual life.
But knowing all of that, things have been worse lately. It's like the process has sped up or at least been more focused on people I know - with every few days bringing an announcement by someone that they are leaving SL and selling/giving away their land (a pretty clear sign they are serious). It's kind of depressing. I'm almost afraid to read the forums now for fear of another "Goodbye" thread popping up. I don't really know why this is happening. SL has been a little more buggy than usual in the last few releases, but nothing that by itself would drive lots of people off. I've seen things like permissions bugs or ghosting or frustrations with social stuff like dwell, competitions, land speculations, and so on cited as reasons, but they really sound more like excuses to me.
The place is still growing like crazy. I don't think the Second Life community is in danger of imploding. But I guess when one of your friends or a couple of friends start announcing they are leaving the little part of the world you live in can feel sort of like it's missing something.

Addict

You know you probably spend too much time in world when the first thing that comes to mind about a trip to visit relatives is "Oh no, they don't have broadband! Too many days without SL!" Thinking about all the fun events that will be missed, friends not seen for days, forum drama that will pass you by (okay maybe that one isn't such a loss), it *almost* makes you not want to leave home. :)
Of course, it's probably good for perspectve to force yourself to take little breaks like that every once in a while to see that the second world doesn't crumble without you babysitting it. It's kind of easy to get so into whatever you enjoy in SL that you begin to think that it all revolves around you. I guess I'll find out for sure in a few days when I get back from broadbandless-hell.