Sympathy For Botgirl: Popular Second Life Academic, Artist, and Blogger Talks About Her First Life Indifference

 
Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

The best word to describe Botgirl Questi's current feelings about Second Life might be ennui. In a post on her blog earlier today, framed by lines from her recent "Alice in Identityland" machinima, she outlined her declining interest in SL-- no, not dislike, not disgust, not a boycott-- and wondered aloud if the virtual world had changed, or if it was really just her.

I have to admit, I know exactly how she feels.

If you're unfamiliar, Botgirl Questi (who is surprisingly not a bot at all) is a rather popular virtual world blogger, at least among our readers. She's far more interested in academic examinations than mesh minidresses, so her blog is quite unlike the fashionista-driven sites that absolutely dominate the SL blogosphere. Her writing, art, and machinima is generally the kind of thoughtful and very human stuff that I wish more Second Life bloggers pursued, and I say that as a (lapsed) fashionista blogger myself.

I'm sure a lot of us can empathize with Botgirl's position. She examines things rather pragmatically in her post; Second Life certainly has changed in some clear ways and it's no longer the same blend of real world and virtual world interests that it once was. It's still a vibrant community, but it's also a much more insular, isolated one. And yet...

I think there's much more to this virtual world ennui than that. At least for me there is. 

Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on some exact event or moment in time when your feelings change, and that can be frustrating in itself. For me, being in Second Life is often like holding one of my favorite childhood toys. 20 years ago that toy could be a million different things to me, could do a million different things for me, could be at the centre of a million different stories in my head. 20 years later, that toy is just what it is and nothing more. I can remember all those other roles it had, but I can't recreate them.

Botgirl asks if the world changed or if it was just her, but the answer is almost certainly both.

What do you think? Have you ever felt that virtual world ennui setting in? More importantly, have you ever successfully shaken it off? Let me know in the comments.

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Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Timesand has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan andwith pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

People move on and SL moves on as well.

Its long been assumed that the average customer for SL lasts about 1 and a half years.

Many may last longer - but the nature of it all remains. Things in your life change, things in the platform change.

You move on, and it moves on from you.

Bound to happen for everyone eventually. Just a question of when.

Its not something to cast blame about either way, as I'm sure some comments will end up doing. Its just life.

[Pussycat Catnap]

ps: Everytime I think the circle of things in SL has narrowed down to just X and Y, somebody up and holds and SLxB event and I see a ton of things I'd not seen before. Some of them are new, some of them I'd just missed.

I'm not sure the platform is narrowing or getting more insular. Its just headed one way, and people in it branch down their own paths after they get settled... and eventually that branch can get too far down its own path.

[Pathfinder]

For me, I see Second Life today as the Old Country.

Its true legacy will be the dreamers who were born there and then followed their dreams to new lands of opportunity.

[Connie Arida]

Life changes and so does SL. You could not go back to when you were at University, nor, if you think about it, would you want to.

[zzpearlbottom]

I must be a Alien as for me SL alwways seems reborn at each login, my fear is only one and one only, Lack of enough time to be in there!

[Iggy]

It was the last Burning Life for me. After that the ennui began. I got a glimmer of a world we made online that would bring back some of its better values to the world of flesh.

So I really like Botgirl's point that we could have built "a better world, free of prejudice and class distinction, by establishing pseudonymous virtual identities that would be independent of physical life distinctions."

My East-Coast part says "what a sap you were, to believe in that West-Coast moonbeam crap. The Internet is about making money, you idiot!" My less cynical side still says "but think what mighta been."

I want to agree with Pathfinder here, but what are the new lands, now that we are leaving the Old Country? The next one may well be a world of old folks and niche users, given how my 18-22 year-old students could give a rip about immersion and are pathologically afraid of anonymity and pseudonyms. They already live like avatars, or more precisely, like the golden wire-head kids in M.T. Anderson's Feed: so why create avatars?

Perhaps a world of old folks and outcasts will be world enough!

[Zack Wetherby]

The child is grown
The dream is gone

-Pink Flyod

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I'm not as invested in any virtual world these days. With Second Life, it's mostly the harsh limits on what I can build and create without putting up really massive amounts of capital.

But beyond that, the whole field just feels very stagnant right now. It's as if now that they've resolved the issue of how to make a profit off virtual worlds, they've declared "mission accomplished" and are now just cranking out formulaic variations on a theme.

We need more spaces for virtual worlds and game design where ROI is off the table and creators are paid and provided resources to just create. SL is way too expensive, and besides, you have to have the ability to transform the architecture at will. You don't get the innovation you need to advance the field when it costs millions to get a title on the market and layers of suits above you are all obsessed with the short-term bottom line.

And without that flow of new ideas and concepts, worlds die slow, lingering deaths.

[Draxtor]

I seem to be living on the same planet as ZZ: every time I login I marvel at the creativity of folks & I wander and explore and there is no end to fabulous stories. In a way I feel quite sorry for Botgirl and then maybe I don't because she may be very happy to have moved on. Or perhaps not? Here is how I feel about my adopted home country the US of A: scary development in many areas - public sphere, war, environment, inept leaders, disappointment all around. Am I leaving although I could? No, because of the people and their ingenuity and their ability / drive to make things anew. Every morning when I log into RL I feel invigorated to explore more. SL is full of creative people and to dismiss the world is IMO a judgment on what they do every day. If folks want to move on - please please do!!!! But also please: refrain from constantly commenting on how great everything was and how paradise is lost.

[sparky]

Everything gets old eventually. We do the best we can to make it fresh each day. Still, there is no doubt the world has changed.

[Botgirl Questi]

I was mostly thinking through my own personal experience. It's good to hear about how others have experienced the changes in their own perception of SL over time.

[Metacam Oh]

This happened to me when it became clear to me that SL would stop evolving and that the vision I had for it would never be put in place by Linden accompanied with the inability to keep paying the preposterous price to have my little virtual island.

[joker]

if only the LL mafia had allowed "people to make fair money" then maybe that "better world" would have been found.. ya know just the the "US" in 1776, with its then view of capitalism and government.

but alas, same avatar as before.. BS and money from the rich, to trickle down and enrich the poor.

fuedalism all along... for the few who didnt have to google the term before they blogged about it.

[joker]

if only the LL mafia had allowed "people to make fair money" then maybe that "better world" would have been found.. ya know just the the "US" in 1776, with its then view of capitalism and government.

but alas, same avatar as before.. BS and money from the rich, to trickle down and enrich the poor.

fuedalism all along... for the few who didnt have to google the term before they blogged about it.

[Val kendal]

Iris, you analogy about an old toy is so perfect.

I've experienced this too, and thought about it, and I think the answer for me is that its not SL its us. There's no way to recapture that feeling of wanting to learn to build, and create, and find out how things work, and explore, and see virtual art, and meet people from other countries, and , well, all of it. None of it feels new and exciting anymore because none of it is new for us anymore. That said, I find the difference between 'old timers' who stay and those who fall away is the willingness to engage new people and once in awhile find a new friend, a new fabulous sim, a new collaborative project. I find that once my old SL friends give up actually living *in* the world, and spend all their time standing in one place and IMing the same increasingly small group of people over and over, they are on the downward slope to leaving. Once SL stops provide something of value to you (monetary, social, creative), why stay?

[bobo]

i don't know, I mostly just build and rp in sl, long as there's interesting rp in themes i like, I logg into sl