How Do You Feel When an Avatar Friend Slips Away?

Botgirl Questi has an incisive and melancholy post on missing Nightflower Morrisey, a friend and collaborator of hers, who was also a friend and collaborator of mine: Nightflower wrote a really great New World Notes column on virtual sex and relationships last year, with one post even getting republished on Jezebel. A few months ago, however, she started communicating with me less, and then unexpectedly, complete radio silence. Botgirl describes the paradoxical pain of missing someone without even quite knowing how much about them you really know, behind their avatar:

I never knew which, if any, of the stories Night shared about her human life included obfuscations designed to prevent me from intentionally or inadvertently discovering her human identity. Interestingly enough, my skepticism about the details of her human life didn't extend to commitments made within the context of our collaborative work or a feeling of genuine friendship. Until she disappeared.

Nightflower did share some personal details with me, and without revealing any of them, I can say it's likely she had a good reason for suddenly breaking off from Second Life. Whatever her reasons, I hope she's doing well wherever she is, and knows that many of us miss her, even in the avatar form by which we only knew her.

Comments

[Ann Otoole InSL]

How many people quit when they discovered there was no privacy in SL and their rl location data, all their movements, and all their alts had been tracked, logged, and resold by a convicted felon for over a year (who was also phishing his customers passwords too).

LL can't fix this.

[Jura Shepherd]

"How Do You Feel When an Avatar Friend Slips Away?"

Horrible. I assume they are either dead, or were never really my friend after all. What else are people supposed to think?

Look, if someone wants to shove-off for a while, I totally dig that. I really do. Just... you know, drop an email, make a post somewhere, or do whatever to let your friends know you're ok. We are all digital savvy people here.

Dropping me a note that says: "Hey, just letting you know I'm ok" isn't going to interfere with your privacy, nor will it negate my respect for it. Don't be cruel. Damn.

[Elle Couerblanc]

@Ann - I don't think that this is the main reason people leave SL and to be honest the average second life resident probably knows very little about the person you are referencing. I think the main reason people just drop off the grid with no word what so ever can be attributed to the idea that the fantasy of second life and all it has to offer becomes to real. Or it takes over their real life so much that they lose the balance between their two lives.

I have yet to experience someone I was extremely close to slip away. This could be largely due to the fact that the people I truly bond with share details about their real life with me. I have had friends who have left SL but we have other means of keeping in touch.

If this were to happen to me though I can only imagine I would feel quite a bit of sadness and emptiness and perhaps even anger. I don't know..I hope this never happens to be honest.

[Stone Semyorka]

I've had it happen more than once during four years in Second Life. It leaves you very sad and even empty or lost for a while but, as in RL, time heals and life goes on. You figure out there's nothing you can do about it, so you eventually recover and move on.

[Lacie Babenco]

Ok, so I did leave someone in SL and it was a rotten and lousy thing to do. After spending over a year getting to know someone intimately, my emotions couldn't handle it anymore.

Difference is that I tried to explain myself before going. My undoing was knowing too much RL about this person. It led to me feeling emotionally for them and getting worried about RL and what they were facing. Kept me up at night, made me cry and freaked out some people in my RL in the process.

Finally, enough RL issues caused me to say 'enough' and I told this lovely soul that I had to go, it was killing me inside. I knew too much, worried too much and was scarring myself.

So now I have lost a close confidant and someone I truly love. I feel like shit but inside something tells me I had to do it. I'm not sitting in silence feeling smug or laughing at what happened. It sucks and I know this person is so upset with me. Emotions are strong and this didn't happen on a whim.

But it happened, and as someone who has left someone in SL, it's not something I would ever wish on anyone.

[Myf McMahon]

How do I feel? Awful.

My partner of two years has been absent without explanation for just over three weeks now. Intellectually I know there are a multitude of reasons that could be keeping her away temporarily. Emotionally though, my heart keeps focusing on the worst possibilities and I find myself sliding deeper and deeper into grief.

So Hamlet, you ask what I feel? I'm grieving, that's what I feel.

[Avatar1000 Resident]

I've had to "leave" SL many times and create a new avatar because of what Ann O'Toole is talking about.

People would approach me and befriend me and then their RL questions would begin and very prying and nosey, which made me suspect them as stalkers posing as new friends. I could not even look them in the eyes to see if they are for real!

I thought I was paranoid, until I heard about other people's similar experiences, and then I found out about people like Zfire Xue.

I have no interest in spending a lot of time in an imaginary world that also has these types of problems.

[Foneco Zuzu]

I must go to a different world then Sl reported above.
Nobody who i meet, as soon as i told them i dodnt mix rl with sl in peronall matters try to push me to reveal any about ir.