Week 3: The People

There are a few different kinds of people that play Second Life. The diversity isn't as great as that of people in reality, but every once in a while someone does appear that stands out from the in-game crowd. I have not been so fortunate as to find all that many people willing to talk to me or even acknowledge my existence. The ones I did were usually strange.

In week 1, I did not find anyone willing to engage me. Perhaps they were all away from their keyboards, or they were just as snobby as I summized in previous posts. As it turned out, I could never find any zones with an abundance of people in them at once. The most populated zone I encountered during that week had 25 people in it at the time of my starting of the game. When I entered the zone, the people were spread out, only two or three relatively close to eachother. When I approached any of them, the reception was always the same cold silence.

Second Life displays which zones contain the most players

Week 2 was a slightly different story, as detailed in my week 2 report. I found two people that did in fact want to talk to me. Unfortunately, they were a peculiar type that borderlined unsettling to me. The first was the owner of the zone I was in. His motives for speaking to me were immediately evident as sexual advancements. I was curious if the person behind the player was as perverted as the character representing him, though I did not ask him. After all, many players of role-playing games or otherwise personifiable web communities often contain people that treat their avatars as entirely separate from their real selves, as if living out fantasies they could not participate in without these means. The second person was similarly distanced from reality. A Spanish-speaking female with a bunny avatar briefly spoke to me in broken English before I ended the conversation. After I ended the conversation, she began following me around the zone as I continued my research. She didn't stop stalking me until I exited the area.

Week 3: my first friends!

Week 3 showed a great change of pace. In a New York zone I had noted as being one of the more active areas in the past week, I found a woman walking in the park, a man riding on a jet ski in the neighboring waterway, two men walking around the zone, and two more men riding a golf cart around the city. All of them briefly spoke to me, but were not interested in staying still long enough for me to get to know them. Finally, I found two people (a man and woman, later found to be virtual boyfriend and girlfriend) that were very friendly and open to talking to me. In fact, I was able to speak with them for an hour and a half before they decided to go to bed (in reality), but not before adding me to their friend lists. In that time, I discovered that they were veteran players by five years and shop owners with many custom-made items for sale. Hopefully I will be able to interact with them further in the future. I believe they have much to share with me as far as insight into this culture goes.

These two people were quick to ask me if I was new to the game, presumably because of my default avatar. I don't feel that they treated me as a lesser player, though they did offer me a few snippets of advice, such as how typing "afk" in chat will cause your character to fall asleep or holding down the CTRL key while sending a message will broadcast it to all players in the zone. I saw this as being very friendly and good-willed toward new players. This was a great change from the cold reception I had been receiving from others. However, I may never know if those cold receptions were intentional or simply the result of players being away from their desks.