Sat 24 Mar 2007
A Second Life resident generously spent much of last night with this ol’ fart. Having emigrated been relocated from the Teen Grid (TG), he has been in the Mature Grid (MG) for just over a year.
E: its my first space
E: my home for the first year or so of being in the main grid
E: a hermit
Azwaldo: i think i understand
E: sitting waiting for friends
E: this is wehre they come when they logg out of the teen grid and log into the main grid
Did not know what was meant by this last bit; but, it came up again later. Appears that Linden Labs provides an area of transition for those immigrating from TG – sort of an Ellis Island for the youngest users in the grid. Likely several sims are devoted to this purpose; and, it seems to have worked for E…he has land, building privileges, and is quite removed from much of the traffic.
On reaching an eighteenth birthday, each user in the TG is packed up and relocated to MG. Seems that E has mixed feelings about this. (E has just mentioned a number of TG friends, says he misses them.)
E: that i miss alot
E: that would be a guy named B__ B____ . we started only a few days apart and meet in a sand box
E: the only sand box in the area
Azwaldo: are you in touch with any of your friends by eMail?
E: im in contact via Yahoo
E: but thats like talking to a friend in a town you moved away from over the phone
E: then theres D___ R_____
E: phone is no substatue for physical contact for me
E: secondlife happens to be just that for me
E: a second life
Virtual reality…”physical contact.” Like many things in first life, Second Life is what you make of it.
Visiting E’s “shack” (as he calls it) encourages me. Having visited just a few virtual homes and offices – all of them furnished with end tables, and bookshelves (with a texture of eight books that do not do a thing) – it was interesting to see E’s sparse arrangement; only what is useful, little included for the sake of appearance. Every item — it seemed — was interactive, and the room uncluttered, and have a different feel than the RL suburban simulations I just mentioned. Certainly E’s RL clubhouse or tree fort, if he had one four or five (RL) years ago, may have had this same look…But that would have been due to RL constraints; in Second Life, E has chosen to create a spartan space.