Interesting /SecondLife thread from a young woman who left SL only 3 years ago, and now returns to a wasteland of WTF:
As a young woman (was 16-20 at the time), I made a lot of friends my age and had hours of large groups hanging out all the time. It was great! Now though? Everyone has left. Most of the sims we used to hang out on have completely shut down. The others are barren. I went on SL recently to see if I could find anything. All of the places that are populated are literally dance clubs, sex roleplay places, and Korea1. It seems as though all the younger players just don't exist anymore and it's all older people who are just into roleplay.
Some veterans who haven't left offer good advice -- like this from "DaemonBlackflag":
If you want to see floods of people, visit places like Collabor88 on the 8th of the month, or The Arcade on the 1st of the month in March, June, September, December. Most of the "welcome hubs" like Korea1 are just places people go to troll people. you'll find an interesting set of characters there... I see thousands of people all of the time involved with breedable pets, but i'm in a bit of a bubble.
This is, experientially all of Second Life feels like thousands of different bubbles, some overlapping, many not.
lol! plz, this is meisl.
Logs in to work platform. Checks IM's.
Does some work while wondering what to do where to go.
Wishes it could be like before.
Mass IM's a bunch of people on my list just for human contact.
TP's down to own sim, looks around like sh*t gonna be changed.
TP's back up to work platform, does some work.
Plays greedy greedy alone for 20 minutes.
Logs out.
Posted by: Maxwell Graf | Friday, March 31, 2017 at 03:59 PM
3 years. It's been this way for 10 years now. NWN's been saying it's going to die and close for that long too, but it hasn't. Just because I end up playing greedy alone has nothing to do with how alive it is in SL anymore than Hamlet saying SL is going to die makes it go away. But It's been getting him clicks for years. My point is, I can't make people be around when I want them to be. Perhaps the reason there is nobody there for whoever this person is has to do with them not being around? So...people go away when you don't hang out for 3 years. Who knew?
Posted by: Maxwell Graf | Friday, March 31, 2017 at 04:11 PM
New Citizens Incorporated remains open for business, as does the Builders' Brewery, Shelter, Caledon and even The Tower Of Prims et al. Basically, many educational and social meeting point organizations predating SL's boomtimes are still around if they're not intended to make more money than what is needed to keep things afloat.
Then there are the communities that were beaten down by circumstances (for example, overexposure to boomtimes publicity, the aging and new priorities of former SL stalwarts), but retreated and regrouped into new forms and locations. Gorean sims and estates still remain existant even if the leaders have changed in some parts too. Aetherstyle (one of the earliest SL anime sims) is technically dead, but the culture has refused to die and has infact become something like SL's answer to "Etsy Steampunk" in some cases, ranging from tiny hearthfelt stores and galleries to entire sims dedicated to the pursuit of ecchi, kawaii and shonen.
TLDR: community survives as long as the people who make it up still come in in significant numbers regularly. Let's not mourn too soon - SL is still kind of okay.
Posted by: Patchouli Woollahra | Saturday, April 01, 2017 at 08:26 AM
SL has always been a bunch of different bubbles that overlap each other to varying degrees. Most of us mistake our own bubbles for all of SL. SL is a lot like real life in this regard.
Posted by: Amanda Dallin | Saturday, April 01, 2017 at 01:40 PM
It is one of the interesting cases of SL that the bubbles - as they have been caleld above - never really interacted that much. I remember the LLs once saying that most people stay on two or three sims at most and looking from my own expirience, there is very little movement between sims and communities most of the time. That people who behave like this think that their bubble is all that SL has to offer is easy to see and it is also easy to see how difficult it is for such people to break out of their bubble and move on. Even finding the new sim the old community moved to can be difficult as more often then not, specific communities don't advertise as they too might have fallen into the trap of thinking that there is nothing else to see outside of it's own borders.
And tastes change well and it might be that the friends form years ago are still around, but on different alts and the returning person will never learn of this as meeting each other again on SL can happen, but is a rare thing I can imagine.
But returning and expecting to find everything unchanged is a silly notion anyway.
Posted by: Rin | Sunday, April 02, 2017 at 06:02 AM
Another one of these sad sack stories?
SL changes all the time. Just like regular life. The things that were popular a few years, a few months or even a few weeks ago have and can change. To expect it all to stay the same is silly.
Just because Studio 54 isn't a thing anymore in NYC, does that mean NYC has died? No one is going to take your hand and lead you to excitement in RL or SL. You have to find it. Unfortunately, most people are used to WoW type games where it is all thrown in your face, no search needed. This makes them rather helpless in VR places like SL.
Posted by: Melponeme_k | Sunday, April 02, 2017 at 05:41 PM
Rin: things change with time. Even jumping to a insane variety of sims all the time like a kid with a broken wormhole timer doesn't stop SL from changing for me. What it DOES do is make me the agent of that change to a greater extent, and that? I'm okay with that. The only thing it hasn't stopped me from getting hit by is developments in mesh - I haven't caught up on that after all these years :(
Posted by: Patchouli Woollahra | Monday, April 03, 2017 at 09:36 AM
Second life communities like anything, must be sustained by people. I count myself lucky to have joined one early that endured through the years. I have jumped around the grid taking pictures, exploring other communities and spaces, meeting new friends, and have seen some pretty awesome places come and go. Second Life is what you make of it. My home community is the type where people have logged out for 3, 5, 8 years and come back and been amazed/grateful that it's still there. It's like having a bit of home to come back to. I can understand the original writer's feelings of coming back to a wasteland if she came back and nothing she knew was left. There are new/old places out there to explore with friendly people, it just takes some teleporting to find.
Posted by: Noirran Marx | Tuesday, April 04, 2017 at 08:16 AM