SL Veterans Wonder What Became of Their World When They Were Away

Interesting thread on /SecondLife featuring many oldbie veterans who've come back to the virtual world after an absence to find that much has changed:

I left for a year or two and poof everything seems gone! Where's the drama at Waterhead? [Above] At Korea1? Where's the crowds? Where are the good Metal Parties? Where's the good stores? Stores that are on the top list nowadays seem so created by noobish designers... And whats with the mesh bodies?

Lots of answers to that, mainly around the theme, "virtual communities evolve, and that's just how it goes". For that matter, I just visited my office in Waterhead after a week or two away to find it half underwater.

Anyway, your mileage may vary, but my strongest sense is that Second Life has largely become a social media-centric experience -- i.e., much of the activity in Second Life is no longer enjoyed an end in itself, but as fodder for the larger web; for screenshots posted to Flickr and Pinterest, videos published to YouTube, and, of course, drama ported to long, long, long Facebook threads and Wordpress blog commens. None of those platforms existed when Second Life launched in 2003, and as they came online, the virtual world experience became more and more integrated with them, to the point where the "world" aspect became less important.

Reader, what's your take?

Comments

[BJ Mefusula]

"social media-centric experience" ~ I have seen that encroach to some extent ~ but i think it only reflects what is happening in RL.. Some cannot stay off facebook, many shun it ~ but most use it to record fun we had.. :)

I still get a great kick exploring, sailing and DJing good jazz to like-minded friends.. No need to always see doom and gloom in any evolutionary change.. ;)

[Alazarin Mobius]

I am one of 'those people' who live stream videos from SL to YouTube & Facebook. I shall explain. I am a musician who performs original live music in SL... something I've been doing for 12 years. Unlike most SL live music performers, my stuff is quite niche and falls way outside of the comfort zone of most SL'ers who are looking for the next diva, DJ, singer-songwriter or karaoke singer. I get a few people who turn up at random, see a bunch of anthro avatars on a stage playing prog rock in an otherwise empty venue and immediately teleport out. Such is life :-\

I have tried and failed for over 10 years to get potential listeners to come to my shows in SL. So I decided to take my SL shows to where I actually have a few regular listeners: Facebook and YouTube and it works. So now I do my shows in SL and live stream them to where I have an audience.

If that's doing SL 'wrong', I'm way past caring. It works for me.

[Pulsar]

Second Life has an internal social network, where you can share pictures and messages. It's great to keep your contacts and friends in touch. SL is many different things that people do in different places: as in real life, you can't be everywhere at the same time and meet everyone you know everyday. You can send private messages, but it's not the same thing, plus someone is shy, someone is AFK or offline, someone else may be busy, 100 chats per time is stressful, offline messages get capped...
Sharing a picture works better to share your experiences and for other things. But although this internal service is handy and you don't need any further registration to multiple 3rd party services, nor extra privacy worries, only few people use it. The service tends to be slow, loading pictures sometimes failed entirely, it can be frustrating, it's limited... while on Youtube, Flickr, and so on perhaps you feel you have a larger audience.

[Pulsar]

Another thing I noticed is that even Strawberry Singh receives typically more comments on her Youtube channel than on her blog, even if you can comment on her blog without sign up, unlike Youtube. Youtube has a large audience for sure, but there is another reason too, which is the notifications sent to the channel subscribers: when you get a notification, you go straight to the video, rather to open the blog.
These platforms are more readily available and usable.
You can use RSS/Atom feeds instead, it is not centralized and it is as simple as adding a web browser extension like Feedbro to stay updated with your favorite blogs and websites, without having to be logged in Google or Facebook, Twitter or anything else. Yet not so many people use it or even know that feeds exists.
These platforms are popular instead, they work and are readily usable and accessible. This is even more true with Second Life. As someone said on the linked Reddit thread, 2D is more efficient than 3D and it can run everywhere. Even the communication is moving from Second Life to Discord now.
Instead of everything becoming part of the virtual world, it seems the other case around.

[Yansh Leafblower]

Its dead everywhere , most are on discord now. I don't think SL will ever be what it was, no matter the amount of hype. Its glory days are over, and this is coming from a 10 year veteran of SL. People will argue otherwise but this time its definitely different.

[Eliza Wierwight]

Pre actively throwing myself into the joy of building, then commercial work and art. My noob days Inworld, my first venture into 'gaming' I fell into an enclave of extremely creative people with a speed dial for humour, it was an incredible time, greats highs and fortunately not that many lows. We were a tribe. Fortunate to have retained a few friends from that era, 10 years down the line things are very different in my experience. I log in predominantly to work now, 99.8% of my time Inworld that's exactly what I'm doing. On the rare occasion I wander, hoping to find like minded people, reminiscent of the good days, well, it simply doesn't happen. I strongly suspect that kind of Community for me is gone. May be proved wrong one day, not going to happen though working alone on my atelier SIM. I went to a large party Inworld not that long ago, no one was talking in local, the effort to remain sociable without reciprocation dwindled quickly. Might as well have parked my AV there and gone swimming in RL. I think I'll stick to building :P As to the extras Flickr, Facebook, Plurk, Instagram etc etc, I engage but not one tick a box that's overtly for-filling for me. I struggle to imagine how it would for others. Perhaps I'm just an odd bird :)

[Chic Aeon]

I too had more fun in the "olden days" and there was more camaraderie evident. While I still enjoy SL immensely I spend most of my time making mesh and being "on call" in case someone needs to know something about LEA6.

Now and then I have a customer question, but that is rare, and too -- now and then -- I have long conversations with fellow builders. I did go dancing a year or so ago and that was fun :D.

And yes, blogs in general are passe and while I don't know any figures for Berry's it is obvious from the lack of comments and interest in the memes (which were HUGE a couple of years or so ago) that there is less traffic at her sight. I would say mine main blog is down 65% over a couple of years ago. Most blogs these days aren't blogs at all, simply a list of what someone is wearing in the Flickr photo.

The "bloggers" have moved to Flickr in mass. Stores expect (EXPECT or REQUIRE) Flickr photos of their products. People join groups to get their numbers up in that click for a friend manner and some buy views and followers in order to keep even with others in the constant competition.

None of this is working for me and after my 5,000th post a month or so ago I slowed down. I no longer post every day. I feature my favorite designers and ones I have agreements with (not blogger rules as I don't go there). I also -- in part because of the NWN blog -- have dropped some designers that I used to feature. I am still in the "if you can't say something nice" camp, but honestly there were issues that as a fellow content creator I wasn't willing to promote.

So yes, things do change. I refuse to do "social media". I am on forums a lot but mostly giving advice -- or in the case of Sansar which is my August project -- asking for it. That works for me; not the Facebook or Twitter or even Flickr in most respects.

But there are still good times; just different. I agree that the changes are not just a SL trend, they are based in the real world. And I don't like it much there either LOL.

[Akasha Sternberg]

it IS true, but that´s just something I´ve noticed in FirstLife, too. Horrible isn´t it?
In SL there´s less and less places, quite a lot are (almost) deserted or gone, everything´s more and more the same and it´s harder to find alternatives. Especially if you´re into alternative fashion and/or music. There´s basically the belt-lengthed "dresses" in black and then some harnesses, a handful useful stuff but... yeah the scene is suffering.