New World Notes

Cajsa's Favorite SL Style Blogs from 2021 -- And Tips for Being Featured by Cajsa in 2022!

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I thought I would end my column this year by telling you what I like in Second Life blog and am more likely to feature in 2022:

1. I like to see fresh, unique fashion styling. If you are wearing an outfit right out of the box, it is less interesting than if you mix and match from different designers. 
2. I like clothes. I am tired of the 50 Shades of Lingerie posts. I am tired of ass cheeks and nipple covers. If everybody is doing it, it’s not transgressive and brave. It’s boring. 
3. I like stories, if your picture tells a story, I will probably love it. 
4. I like text. I love blogs with narrative. If you love something, tell me why. If you want to share that you got an A in history, do it. Let us into your life. Show more of yourself than a picture. 
5. I like blogs that are simple. No sparkling banners, no music, no autoplay anything. 
6. I like blogs with small banners. If I have to page down to see your content, I might not see your content at all. 
7. I like unique avatars. Feel free to be a frowny-face or a cyborg or a furry. 
8. I like slice-of-life pictures that show you doing something. 
9. I like credits that include the creators’ names. There’s so much rebranding and the use of special characters in store names, so give us creator names so we can search for something that is less likely to change. 
10. I like originality. Perhaps because I am constantly browsing Flickr groups featuring bloggers but there are days when it feels like it’s all the same old stale woman laying on her bed in lingerie. I don’t know why there are twenty lingerie pics to one with clothing, but come on, can’t you see how banal it is when everybody is doing the same thing? 

Now here’s a look at my favorite bloggers of 2021:

Ten Noteworthy Metaverse Stories from 2021 You'll Read More About in 2022

Here's ten New World Notes posts from 2021 highlighting noteworthy trends, features, controversies, or challenges that we're very likely to see come cropping up in various forms in 2022 and for that matter in years to come:

ROBLOX Reportedly Pressures Journalist Covering Platform's In-Game Market "In Which Children Are Encouraged To Gamble Real Money" (December 2021)

At some point, you have to think, controversial stories like this will become a much larger headache for ROBLOX in general and Metaverse platforms in particular.

Decentraland Stats: 300K Monthly Active Users, Under 20K Daily Users

With no shortage of breathless stories this year about a putative "Metaverse real estate boom", we're likely to see a slew of stories asking whether these purchases were leading to an actual boom of users interested in that real estate. (And expect similar themes to bubble up around the broader NFT craze.) 

Facebook's Biggest Metaverse Safety Problem Is Baked Into Facebook's Brand

Can Facebook/Meta actually transition into becoming a Metaverse company when its DNA is so essentially not very Metaverse-y? Find out in 2021!

80% Of Facebook Employees Believe This Week's Whistleblower Revelations Will Damage Company, According To Massive Internal Poll

Same theme as above, but more government regulation-y.

Anyone In El Salvador Actually Using Bitcoin? Evidence Seems Scarce

Same as above, but more "virtual currency is disrupting Central America and leading to a crisis"-y.

Five more beyond the break:

Top 10 Most Read New World Notes Posts of 2021

As with most years, the most shared and read New World Notes posts of 2021 tell you a lot about the current state of the Metaverse, along with Second Life and its successors' place within it:

• BREAKING: Sansar, Would-Be Second Life Successor & Metaverse Platform, Is Offline -- Staff Reportedly Furloughed Since September
• Neal Stephenson: The Metaverse Isn't Dystopian, The Problem Is Monetizing User Data -- And We Need Collective Bargaining To Make It Better
• Dear New York Times: Here's What Stylish Marriages In The Metaverse Actually Look Like
• Watch: Second Life Land Baron Who Hates Evicting Tenants Featured On HBO's How To With John Wilson
• Dear Media: Maybe Don't Draw Wrong Metaverse Lessons From Second Life?

  Five more after the break, including the saddest news of the year:

Cajsa's Favorite Second Life-Based Images from 2021

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

One of my favorite posts from 2021 was this one that featured Nicholas Huntsman who recreated Saturday Evening Post covers with his own pictures. I love the wit and macabre sense of humor. Look at the treasure he posted on Monday. 

For more, click here:

Sansar's Corporate Owner Announces Attempt to Resolve Unspecified "Issues on the Platform" After Last Week's Downtime

Here's a mysterious update to the Sansar platform and website going offline and then back on again last week before the Christmas holiday: Steve Moriya, VP at Sansar owner Wookey, posted this in the official Sansar Discord server on Christmas Eve:

hi there. this is steve from the wookey management - sansar team. i thought i'd pop in to let you know we are actively looking to resolve the issues on the platform. we value our community big time, and hope that we can get things running smoothly soon. big thanks to daisy for her assistance here. we appreciate your patience and understanding...

No further word about the specific "issues on the platform", and insiders I've talked to aren't sure either. (And I've tried contacting Wookey for an official statement multiple times to no avail). Reportedly one of those issues is resolving the furlough of Sansar employees that has existed since at least September.

Today's SL Flickr Photographer: Naiike Pani

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

This portrait caught my eye, the first picture I have seen by new-to-me Naiike Pani. I love that she has this contemplative look, perhaps considering whether 2022 will be kinder to us than the past two years have been. She chose a song that perfectly suits the move, Anywhere Away From Here.

For a completely different mood, click here:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including Sansar's Unexplained Downtime / Worker Furlough & Grading My 2021 Metaverse Predictions

• BREAKING: Sansar, Would-Be Second Life Successor & Metaverse Platform, Is Offline -- Staff Reportedly Furloughed Since September (UPDATE, 12/23: Sansar Website & Platform Back Online)
• Blind Survey Asks "Are You Buying Land In The Metaverse?" Here's How 1400 Staffers At Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Others Answered
• Grading My Ten Metaverse/VR Predictions For 2021 From Last Year
• Coming To VRChat In Early 2022: Avatar Dynamics To Enhance Physics, User-To-User Interaction, PG-13 Sexytimes
• Rec Room Fact Check: World Likely Has 4-5 Million Active Users, Not 37M

Seasonal Christmas Scenes from Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

“One More Pine '' by Johann is a couple years old but I love it too much to leave it out. It reminds me of being a kid and going out in the woods with my dad and uncle and picking a tree for our house. We used a 1938 Chevy pickup instead of a tractor and drove through an old logging road in the woods behind our house rather than wide-open prairie, but the idea is the same, hauling home a tree to decorate. In a way, we celebrated Christmas for a month from St. Lucia’s Day on December 13th to julgransplundringarna, the tree-plundering on January 13th when the tree was taken down. Plundering makes more sense when some of the decorations are cookies. 

For more Second Life Christmas fun, click here:

Blind Survey Asks "Are You Buying Land in the Metaverse?" Here's How 1400 Staffers at Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Others Answered

The team at Blind, the anonymous social messaging app for tech employees, just passed along the results of a user-driven survey, asking the somewhat ambiguous question, "Are you buying land in the metaverse?"

Since it was posted December 17, 1400+ users have responded, with the most responses coming from employees with Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft/LinkedIn -- answers above. Only 13% have answered that question Yes, with 87% choosing No or How?

So this survey suggests that tech employees are overwhelmingly disinterested or confused by the concept of the Metaverse -- but also, that a substantial minority (over 1 in 10) are already personally investing in it. Personally I think the latter takeaway is more notable.

Here's some user comments from users at various tech companies, including some from firms directly involved in Metaverse development at some level (Unity, Amazon, Google, and Intel) :

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Thought-Provoking Imagery by Hilaire Beaumont

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Hilaire Beaumont’s “The Came Wearing Masks” was posted to Flickr on Monday. It shows a person in a plague mask and seems a perfect picture for this second plague year Christmas with a new, more infectious variant of COVID. He provided a link to a song of the same name, a song that makes me think of a dirge, and kindly notes he shot the picture at Petit Trianon. [Click here to visit] 

For an amazing photo challenge, click here: