New World Notes

The Community-Made Train Systems of Second Life Are Over 15 Miles Long -- Take This Map to Start Riding!

This is a pretty amazing map to the community-made train systems cutting across the Second Life mainland (click here for high res version, also available for free in the Marketplace), created by Rydia Lacombe, and updated from her 2021 edition. If they look longer and more complex than many real life train systems, you're right there -- they're longer, Rydia tells me, than the system in a major city in Scotland.

"Calculations in 2014 estimated that there was about 30 kilometers of track on the mainland. I would assume that this number is roughly correct - with the main line at least 12 km!" Rydia tells me. "This means that the SLRR Main Line is larger than the Glasgow subway system - which is fairly neat."

Anyone can ride these at any time, by the way -- just get a train (there's free models) drag it onto the track, and it'll snap to the rails, and you're ready to go. (Info below.)  I just took a leisurely train ride with a famous YouTuber, and can confirm it's a cool way to enjoy the rolling scenery while having a fun chat.

"I just like drawing maps," Rydia tells me, grinning. "I used to be told off in elementary school because it wasn't 'normal'. I just think it's neat."

There's also a broader motivation for her: 

London in Second Life Flooded With Mourners & Well-Wishers At News of Queen Elizabeth's Death; UPDATE: Added SLImage Tributes

As news of Queen Elizabeth's death spreads across the globe, mourners in the virtual world of Second Life have been converging into London City, a sprawling island devoted to the UK's capital. I have tried over the last hour to take photos of the impromptu memorial, but as avatars keep teleporting into London, the surroundings continue to be a blurry as actual London in the worst fog imaginable.

You can see them in the screenshot here, green dots indicating users from around the world, piling into the town square, where the British flag has been lowered to half-mast, and the audio stream has been changed from the usual Britpop music to somber songs played on piano and pan flute.

"May she be in God's arms half hour before the devil knows she's gone," announces a mourner in chat.

"There is music on the stream now," says someone who helps manage London. "I hope it is fitting. I'm raising a glass to Her Majesty The Queen!"

As is often the case, the serendipitous mourning is basically SLers gathering and chatting together in the wake of monumental offline news at a virtual world location with some mirror relationship to that news. (See also: Mourners outside the virtual recreation of the Eiffel Tower, after a terrorist attack in Paris.) 

And as also befits Second Life, the arriving mourners include Superman in a Batman helmet, a sentient dog, and a humanoid fox (not to be confused), along with various supermodels. Many or most are from the UK, but mourners and well-wishers from outside Britain are arriving too:

I Can't Stop Looking at Hilariously Quirky Posts from Second Life's Japanese Community on Twitter

今日も一日
Today is another day#secondlife pic.twitter.com/SXYQG81gT1

— Sanny Yoshikawa🌻🌻🌻 (@sannysquirrel) August 5, 2022

If you were to judge Second Life only by how it's mostly depicted on Flickr or Facebook, you'd assume it's a photorealistic fashion simulator. But among the Second Life users of Japan, many of whom congregate on Twitter, Second Life is just as much (if not moreso) a comically zany and quirky play space, where you're just as likely to, say, come across a giant circus hamster playing Pokémon GO.

"I think most Japanese SLers grew up in a quirky culture in real life," New World Notes' Japanese translator Sanny Yoshikawa tells me. (That's Sanny above, as the hamster.) "We played gacha or funny arcade games when we were little kids. Then we moved to Nintendo and PlayStation. Also, so many funny anime and TV shows were always beside us. I think we are native to quirky culture."

Sounds right to me. Now that I'm following hundreds of Japanese SLers on Twitter, my feed is blessed with adorably goofy and wacky images on the daily, depicting a Second Life that reminds me of its earlier, Bebop Reality days before mesh had moved the economy and culture toward high end fashion.

More on that topic another day, but for now, here's a glimpse of SL Japan, with some translation from Sanny when necessary. She helps explain, for example, why a buff naked guy with Gundam weaponry and a teddy bear helmet is wearing a salad on his crotch:

Tomorrow: Visit a Second Life Sim Devoted to David Lynch, Attend an Immersive Extravaganza as a Character from His Works!

Click here to teleport to a place where the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air. That's right: There's a whole Second Life sim devoted to dream world genius David Lynch, and there's a grand 7 hour event happening there tomorrow starting at 2pm PT. (All the details here.)

"Lynchland is not about roleplay," group leader Myrdin Sommer tells me, "but we do like to dress up as characters from a Lynch movie; LynchLand is a cool place to indulge David Lynch's eccentric persona so to say! And as a dress code we ask this from our visitors at events, but it is certainly not mandatory." But if you had the chance to turn your avatar into a character from a Lynch movie or TV show, why would you not?

"And that goes for everything in LynchLand," says Sommer, "The Bang Bang bar, The little church, the Blue Velvet Diner, The Mulholland Drive-in Cinema or the Lost Highway Motel, where we even have a room specially for David, so he can stay over when he is in ' town." 

And you never know when Lynch will be in the neighborhood: He just made a visit the Metaverse just a couple years ago.

More on LynchLand next week, meantime, here's some images from the LynchLand group on Flickr. (Warning, not all of them are worksafe viewing, not even when it's the Log Lady.)

Watch: Meta & Linden Lab Veteran Jim Purbrick Explains What New Metaverse Platforms Need to Learn from Virtual Worlds (Before It's Too Late)

Back when he was leading metaverse development at Meta last year, Linden Lab veteran Jim Purbrick kept telling Meta staffers to read My Tiny Life, Julian Dibbell's pioneering tale of a virtual world community and a trollish abuser within it. But the Meta team didn't prioritize his advice, and the inevitable happened: When Meta launched Horizon Worlds, it was immediately inundated with reports of sexual assault directed at female avatars.

This new video, from Jim's recent talk at The Mixed Reality Lab in the University of Nottingham, crystallizes the advice that Meta should have prioritized -- and hopefully, will be watched by anyone working on new virtual world/metaverse platforms, ideally before they launch.

"It is very tempting for tech companies to take things that are a lot of work, and worry about them later," as Jim puts it. "One of the phrases you'll hear often is, 'Hey, this is a nice problem to have. If our virtual world is popular enough that people want to turn up and cause mayhem, maybe our virtual world is successful and we can deal with it at that point'. The trouble is what you're trying to do with these rules and systems is to establish norms... If you wait until everyone is acting badly, it is incredibly difficult to turn that community around."

Sub-Orbital Galaxy Still Floating Above Second Life After 14 Years, Still Inspiring Virtual & Real Communities

Photo credit: Susietea Resident via Inspire's Flickr Group

Twelve years ago, Bonny Greenwood was floating in outer space on an asteroid doing tai chi to trance music when she struck up a conversation with a friendly passerby. (As one does.)

Then again this is a common thing to happen in Inspire Space Park, a suborbital galaxy that’s been floating high above Second Life since at least 2007 -- created, as the founders told me back then, “to make the perfect ‘chill’ place in SL that wasn't about sex, or ads”. (Watch me twirl above the galaxy below.)

It’s still orbiting above the virtual world, I am happy to report, and has very recently expanded to include an earthbound fantasy forest and steampunk-themed park. Click here to visit yourself.

It was co-created by Earth Primbee, and as a testament to the community that’s developed around Inspire Space Park over its lifespan, he is still after all these years able to cover land tier costs from donations:

“It is the feeling one gets when the music and scene combines,” Primbee muses to me. “Maybe you are dancing, doing Tai Chi, meditating, or orbiting and find that moment where it all comes together. It is a peaceful feeling. People need that and the people have insured it stayed. Became a home of sorts. A place where many have met for the first time. A shared place for them after.”

Inspire’s original co-creators have since moved on, and Primbee himself has largely turned over operations to three women. Which brings us back to Bonny, among the triumvirate of the galaxy’s new managers:

As Fifty Linden Fridays Launches Its 12th Anniversary Party, Its Founder Tells Me How an Internet Meme Led to One of Second Life’s Largest Groups

Barb photo by Catalina Staheli, edited by Kreao Kujisawa

Click here to join the 12th year anniversary of Fifty Linden Fridays, one of Second Life’s largest in-world groups. Expect a massive crowd, however, because with 52,530 active members, roughly 1 in 10 of SL’s entire user base is a member of FLF. 

Founded and still managed by an SLer named OMGWTF Barbecue -- or just “Barb” to those who know her -- this celebration is quite a culmination for a young woman who, back in 2006, joined Second Life simply to have some rude fun. 

Hence her notably wacky avatar name:

Second Life Not Only Has User-Created Railway Systems, Someone Made This Amazing Travel Map for Them

The Second Life train community (railway/train creators, engineers, regular passengers) is yet another awesomely geeky subculture I've been meaning to write about for years, and this recent /SecondLife post is a good place to start: Created by Rydia Lacombe, behold this beautiful traveler's map to the railway systems of Second Life. (Get a free copy on the Marketplace here.)

And yes yes, you can not only ride these trains, you can BYOT them. (Bring your own train.)

As /Stellaaahhhh explains:

Mass Effect Fan Community Creating Massive Roleplay Experience in Second Life Inspired by the Game

Click here to visit something fairly amazing in Second Life: A massive roleplay game world inspired by Mass Effect. It’s the creation of BluShock, a fan community that’s been creating entire worlds and experiences in Second Life based on the videogame franchise for over a decade. I recently made a small visit to the asteroid base, just a small part of the larger experience, and was duly impressed.

“It's our largest and most ambitious/compact base of operations yet,” BluShock leader Fazzy Constantine (above) tells me. “We have over 25 rooms and multiple elevators with 8 levels each, a huge arboretum dome, which is inspired to look like the Presidium Commons, on the Citadel, from the Mass Effect games, which our roleplay group has been inspired by, since 2010.”

But the base is only the beginning:

“The asteroid will be our base of operations in our fictional star system. Vanaheim, which is set in the Milky Way galaxy, in what would be known as the Beta Quadrant, if you were into Star Trek. We have three more main worlds we'll be creating, over the course of 6 to 9 months.” Here's further details on the group's in-game news site.

Anyone can visit their worlds, but the group is serious about maintaining their roleplay narrative, even in their Discord server: People can join, he tells me, "Through application, and then we hold an induction. If they have roleplay experience, great. If not then it's pretty easy to pick up. If they want to just observe and become explorers of the asteroid and worlds then they can choose to do that and still get invited to the Discord server."

More from Fuzzy below, and some pics from BlueShock’s Flickr group:

10+ Years Later, NPR Science Friday's Fan Community in Second Life Keeps Listening to Live Broadcasts -- Here's How to Join Them

If you enjoyed Science Friday's recent great story on the life and death and rebirth of the NPR show's SL fan listening community, the good news is that you, dear reader, can still join them too: Click here to join Science Friday: The Next Generation.

After a decade plus of existence, the group still boasts 85 SLers and is led by Beragon Betts (who's also on Twitter by the same name). 

Every Friday at 11am STL / Pacific time, the group gathers in-world to collectively listen and comment to the live Science Friday broadcast.

"Anyone can join who is well-behaved," Betts tells me. Well-behaved being key, because as you'll hear from the Science Friday segment, the group has occasionally been inundated by anti-science trolls. But maybe that's less of a problem, seeing as lately the anti-science trolls are more active on social media, than Second Life. 

Betts advice for new members: