Blogger Open Forum: What Do Real World Acquaintances Think Of Your Second Life Blog?

In real life, Achariya Rezak is a teacher, and one day when she was going about her business, a student came up to her and began describing Ms. Rezak's Second Life blog.

"I Googled your name, and this came up," her pupil explained.

Which is one of the stranger ways to find the wall between SL and RL come crashing down.

"So hello, students!" Archariya thinks (and writes). "Welcome to my hobby."

I think by now most people understand the category of virtual worlds, but it must still seem an odd thing to learn there are so many SLers blogging about their virtual experiences. And it's also a good way to open up a discussion thread: If you're a Second Life blogger, how do you explain your activity to the uninitiated? (Especially if they discovered that fact via Google.)

Comments

[Crap Mariner]

*shrug* I suppose I'll ask them.

-ls/cm

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Not only do I not associate my blog with my real name, I don't even associate it with Arcadia. It may be possible to make the connection, but it'd take some detective work. I have no beef against people who use their real names, as long as they don't give me any grief about my choice to keep mine to myself.

[Alicia Chenaux]

To them, it's just another thing I write about. I've been online blogging for years, even having 2 real world ones now. They always expected that I'd blog during my Second Life time since I can't seem to keep from writing.

[Botgirl Questi]

Not much comment, but can see hits coming from company network fairly consistently.

[rikomatic]

It's tolerated by my readers reasonably well. On the other hand, my obsessions with lindy hop and breakdancing is tolerated by my SL focused readers.

I did fork my blog to focus more specifically on public good applications of virtual worlds to start http://betterverse.org .

[Tateru Nino]

I don't really know what anyone thinks about my blog. As for explaining blogs to people? I don't even attempt that - Trying to explain blogs just draws perplexed and scornful stares.

[Dale Innis]

There are a *vast* numbers of folks weblogging about SL. (I have this vague feeling that Resis are also bloggers to a greater degree than most other random groups of 'net users are, but I have no evidence for it.)

It would be relatively difficult to find my SL weblog via web searches on my RL name; you'd probably have to find my RL weblog and then read enough of it to find the relatively infrequent links to the SL one.

Back when I was still posting all of my SL-related stuff on my RL weblog, I got a few comments from readers, but nothing unusual. Of course my RL weblog is pretty random and strange anyway. :) I don't know of anyone that I know in RL but not in SL that regularly reads the SL weblog. It probably wouldn't make a huge amount of sense to anyone not in SL, really.

[Crap Mariner]

After putting up a post asking for their thoughts, my RL public has (not) spoken.

Which means they are not thinking at all.

... ZOMBIES! RUN!

-ls/cm

[CyFishy Traveler]

I tell people "my avatar has a blog" and they seem to accept it. Then again, that's usually some point after I've told them I change sex periodically and that I'm married to myself, so I suppose it seems relatively sensible by comparison.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

My real world acquaintances that are not regular SL residents have no clue about my SL blog — and I have hardly any patience to keep the others up to date anyway: SL has so much more interesting things to write about :)

Granted, I had some fun with a few comments bordering on being insulting when some RL acquaintances totally disagreed with what I wrote in public — while privately, when we are together, and without knowing my avatar name, they defend the opposite position :) I usually find that extremely amusing :) Although in one case this lead to an embarrassing moment with a client. I felt sorry for her since she apologised so profusely; nevertheless, I let her comment stay. It's part of my old immersionist values: judge me for what I say, not for who I am :)