I'd estimate there's roughly 3000 active Second Life users from Ukraine. According to data from SimilarWeb, .5% of visitors to SecondLife.com are from Ukraine. And based on public data from Linden Lab and from what insiders tell me, there's roughly 600,000 active SL users. So simple math gets us to 3,000 Ukrainians, more or less -- not a huge part of the international Second Life community, but quite a decent number. Many of them are content creators on the platform -- here's a list of just some of them -- and many are active in the virtual world in other ways.
At the moment, however, most or nearly all of them are not looking at any digital depiction of a better world on their screen, But more likely, at a bare basement like this. That was a temporary shelter for Hanna, creator of the beloved SL fashion brand Osmia, when she fled her home with her husband earlier this week, even though she is over 6 months pregnant.
I've been trying to keep in touch with Hanna on social media as much as possible. Since writing about her on Wednesday, the updates have gone from grim to worse. She is now hiding out in a city under active Russian occupation:
"I'm having a hard time mentally," Hanna messages me. "The streets are really dangerous."
"But I want to tell you - [my city] is Ukraine and no one here wants to go to Russia! None! Only Ukraine."
She tells me that, because of this: "I just know that the media can say different things now, just you know that no one here wants to go to Russia."
So my impression is people in Ukraine have only sporadic contacts and information from the outside world, even among those who still have an Internet connection. They may not know the world is watching, and hoping for them, and doing whatever they can for them.
If you know someone within the SL community like her -- and chances are you do -- please consider reaching out now. Probably not via Second Life, but on all the other messaging platforms we use. Discord, Flickr, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Plurk, even Facebook.
I don't know how this will end, or the best way to help. But I am pretty sure that they will want to know right now that they are not alone.
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