Open Forum: What's Your Most Important Experience from Second Life's Last 10 Years?

This coming Sunday is Second Life's official 10th anniversary, and I'll be writing a lot about that soon, and what that means to me. But I also want to write about what it means to you, good reader, so please share: In all the time you've been logging into Second Life, what's been your most important experience there? Please share in Comments, and I'll highlight my favorites in posts next week. (So be sure to include your SL username and links/SLurls, for credit.)

And since I'm asking, I'll start first:

A bit more than 10 years ago, only a few days after logging into Second Life for the first time, I met an avatar who was a tall sleek woman in shades, who had made a steel and glass mansion on the side of a hill overlooking the sea. Her name was Catherine Omega, and as she mentioned to me (totally in passing, like it was no big deal), she had made this virtual dream house of hers while she was actually homeless in real life, squatting in an abandoned apartment building with no running water, let alone working Internet. That became this post, "Home for the Homeless". And because she was one of the very first people I met in Second Life, I was pretty sure right then that I'd stumbled into the best story I would ever write about. And her mansion was just the start of the story, because I wrote about how she turned her SL talents into a RL job that helped get her a material home of her own -- something I explain in my book too. A book that changed my life in all kinds of ways. For instance, it's one key reason I'm writing this post with the Beijing skyline below me.

So 10 years later, here I am, still writing about it whenever I can. How about you, what was the signature memory that helps keep you here?

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Comments

[Pituca FairChang]

The memory that has impacted my life is joining The Americana Group back in Beta and meeting Garth Fairlight (later to become Garth FairChang) there. He would later immigrate from London to Southern California to marry me. Tragically his life was cut short by pancreatic cancer. I stay on to keep our 38 regions of FairChang Islands alive and running in his memory.

PS. I was a neighbor of Catherine Omega's back in Shipley, and am still a follower of her's on Twitter!

[Pituca FairChang]

PPS And two of our Americana friends were our attendants both in SL and RL weddings, and remain my great good friends to this day.

[Pappy Enoch]

10 years? Hell, the most important thing since humans done come up from monkeys are my posin' buck-nekkid in the Alphaville Herald fo' Valentine's Day. I done even wore me a Cupid suit:

http://alphavilleherald.com/2011/02/pappy-enoch-post-6-valentine-hillbilly.html

Pix done packed her backs and closed up shop not long after. Herald am deader than ol' John Brown's body. That are because I are too hard a act to foller, clothed or nekkid. Miss Iris ain't never married po' me, despite my excerlent fashion taste, and my heart am still broke.

[Pappy Enoch]

That should be "Pix done packed her bags" but the poofreadin' feller am drunk again. I done shot him and are doin' the job myself.

Now if'n Miss Iris would marry me, that would lay in the shade my nekkid galavantin' in terms o' importance, and we would have the best ding-dang-dong fake wedding in the history of Second Life's fake world.

[Paypabak Writer]

I think the death of Rheta Shan was pretty big for me. To capture the actual event and all the posts that occurred, I point you to my post on Moonletters: http://slfix.com/?p=2312 for links and my personal take.

[Damien Fate]

Most importantly I met my wife, Washu, in Second Life 9 years ago!

Another exciting experience was working on the CSI Second Life episodes :D

[Savoree LeDesir]

My most significant Second Life memory is of my real life friend of several years who was known as Adric Antfarm in Second Life. I was doing a hit-and-run study of Second Life as part of an outside project, and his enthusiasm for Second Life convinced me to take a second look. He helped me figure out the basics, and gave me ideas of where to go and what to look for. He died shortly after I began to get hooked and his blog (hilarious) is long gone, but his Flickr account is still here.

Ironically, we didn't really spend any significant amount of time together in-world, but after he died, exploring Second Life and creating SL-related artwork helped me deal with the pain of losing a very good real-life friend.

[Bixyl Shuftan]

Besides meeting my partner Jasmine, I suppose my key moment was getting hired as a journalist on the Grid. I can't really say how my experience in Second Life would have been without it.

That doesn't mean other events have not been important. I remember times when I met someone who would become my friend for years, and I remember times when I've sadly had to say goodbye to someone.

[Jo Yardley]

The actual moment I realised that SL could actually be interested and not some crappy low graphics place for chatting, being barbie and doing hanky panky.
I discovered 'Flashmans', a bohemian kind of bar, with lovely old music, where I met people who shared a passion for history with me.
There the idea for 1920s Berlin was born and I realised I actually wanted to stay.

[Huckleberry Hax]

I've been reflecting on my SL on my own blog. This would have to be my signature memory:

Nancy was my first reader. We met in rather embarrassing circumstances. At a dance club, I was browsing her profile and saw an entry in her picks for an SL comedy club. Fascinated by this idea, I immediately clicked on the teleport button only to discover that the club didn’t yet actually exist and that she’d created the pick in her own house. In and of itself, turning up unannounced in someone’s house isn’t a total toe-curler on the embarrassment scale, however what I’d failed to notice whilst reading her profile was that Nancy had left the club before me and was partway through an outfit change in the moment that I materialised in her bedroom.

But Nancy was a wonderfully friendly and laid back person, and a moment’s worth of awkwardness soon dissolved completely once we got chatting – the subject of which quickly became the Second Life novel I was halfway through writing at the time. Perhaps because of my memorable entrance, she read AFK the moment it was finished and became the first person to give me positive feedback. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the encouragement I've received from readers in SL has transformed the relationship I have with my writing. Nancy represents the start of that transformation.

I wish now I’d spent more time with this kind, gentle, lovely person. Nancy and I would occasionally IM each other and chat, and after a while she started coming to the Blue Angel Poets’ Dive on Sunday evenings for the open mic poetry sessions I regularly attended back then. It was on one of these Sundays that she told me she was going to be away from SL for a while for health reasons. It never occurred to me that these would be the last words we would exchange, and Nancy died just a couple of months later.

[kitty revolver]

My most important memory from SL was in the very beginning of my sl existence, six years ago. I was dancing at a club that was deserted and I was wearing something I created out of Torley's textures and the circle rez script. I just remember feeling that I was having fun for the first time in about nine months. i think that was the point that I knew that SL would be something that would bring me back from the brink.

[Lani Global]

Finding OpenSim.

[nameshouldgohere]

I remember fairchangs islands, sandboxes at least. I think he also made vehicles for free, I saw those to.

I remember a few things but non are best because really there is so much going on that I am not part of or experience from afar and alone. The ones that stand out are remembered because they came up for other reasons than being best and now take up more brain real estate.

The life changing ones are not nice, many moments that destroy my life and this extends beyond second life so it is not a surprise. Sadly, I see happier people who have done or are hated so much more by people. Hate doesn't mean destruction of ones time and life, money of the harmer seems to be the primary influencer of damage. If they have money they destroy more, take more of you time and ironically could do more with the money that is good. They choose evil, not good. This is so consistant that it is rather insane, really insane. No body seems to do much buy join in rubbing it in that they are causing my life harm. They could do something more productive with thier time as well, yet they spend some time rubbing it in and it is rather eary. Leave me alone. stop hurting me. Why is it hard to undertand those two phrases? So, nothing much to really share as far as details, what is the point.

[ole]

i remember how i made my first machinima movie in 2007...

http://youtu.be/xDBQLOpLqwk

...those were the days i understood i could make my own little animation -look alike- movies (something i failed on before outside of my computer!) ...and because of recording it on a sim of Buero X, i crashed into Xon Emoto and the gang that i still call my friends these days.

many years later making machinima is what i like to do most in my free time, even before going to the soccer stadium, singing, shouting, drinking too much beer and all the other fancy free time stuff.

so, partially SL really changed my life and even changed me for the better (arts up, beer down). yay SL - may yar shiny beauty prevail for even a bit longer!

[zzpearlbottom]

Finding my Soul mate!

[Iggy]

Monthly road-trips in various SL autos or motorcycles were among my most memorable and important happenings in SL. For a brief while on the Mainland, I had the sense of visiting an actual parallel world with a fairly vibrant populace.

Eventually, increasing lag at sim-crossings, paired with a gradual emptying of the world, ended my monthly journeys.

But I'll recall motoring the SL roads fondly.

[Alazarin Mobius]

The first event was blundering into Luskwood some time during my first month in SL and hearing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on their audio stream. I was about to quit SL at the time and hearing that familiar wacky story made me realise that I was in the right place at the right time.

The second event was my first live music performance in SL. Slim Warrior had pestered me for some time to play on her sim but I kept putting it off. What I didn't tell her was that I was in a pit of depression and burnout at the time, hadn't played or practised for well over a year and had no material ready to perform. That first performance was messy and muddy on a 22kbps mono stream direct from my home but that got me started. Unknowingly she set me on the road to recovery and I've never looked back and have recorded seven albums since that day.

Thank you SL, Luskwood and Slim Warrior.

[Cheyenne Palisades]

My most memorable moment occurred in 2006, when I saw an avatar standing on a hill in Dreamland Asia, working on beautiful fountain. We've been together in RL and SL for going on seven years now. I'm now dividing my time between my home in Georgia and hers in the Hudson Valley while we look for a house.

I met Garth once via IMs. After a Havok update his free parrots began flying backwards. I had about a dozen placed around the volcano Pele, so you can imagine how surreal that was. Garth wasn't up to fixing the parrots (I now know why), but he gave me his blessing to do prim surgery on his modifiable gulls (which still worked). I eventually wound up with a paragull. A number of them are flying around Pele's caldera today.

[David Cartier]

My most memorable experiences are the many good friends I've made, but the events which still stand out in memory are the several U2 in SL events, held on Nyna Slate's Dragon Moon sim. That was Second Life at its best. That was magic.

[FlipperPA Peregrine]

Great memories. I remember how excited we all were back in the day getting our first land, first full sims, and more. I didn't join until November '03, so this thread is making me feel young!

Hugs, Pituca!

[Nexii Malthus]

I think my most memorable is my first five minutes, when I logged in for the first time in mid-summer of 2005.

Wandering out from welcome hub and started building. Used tubes and advanced prim params, built a cylindrical tower with a winding staircase and a rail.

The lightbulb came immediately after -- I had realized how incredible Second Life is.

The 3D environment, realtime feedback, in-world editor tools, users, avatars. It all made sense.