Yes, and there is also a deep mathematical harmony and meaning to this picture. If you draw a line extending straight from everyone’s gaze it makes a cute little pony. Mark is steeped in the secrets of The Pony Code.

Yes, I asked the kid if he was world or platform. Unhesitatingly, he said “platform”. YOU were the one who said “both?” But I bet he’ll get the job anyway lol.

I like your write-up and just want to add some quick background and a couple of my impressions to yours, but I’m bushed for the night. No more filtering thoughts into text put into little boxes for me.

But real quick, you’re in my favorite pic from the meetup I’ve seen so far (Glitchy’s set, which is later at night and only at the apartment). The elements: A jovial Prok (for Prok critics she’s quite personable in the RL ;p, suriously), the can of Bud of which you speak, sheep stamp, NY Times articles on virtual worlds, Prince William postcard and giant novelty pencil from London, Ted Castronova’s “2007 may become known as the year of the virtual world crash” quote, and the PC Guy from the cover of the last Wired cut out and tacked up on a painting of a woman with a potted plant growing out of her face. It’s its own little galaxy of wonders.

Oh, and

> Jerry introduced me to some new young guy trying to get a job and said, “Here’s Prok who will criticize you” lol.

Do you remember what you said back to him? It was great. You looked him in the eye and said, “Are you world or platform?”

World or platform… Both?

Hit me up on Twitter. How’s the cat?

No, not at all. These are people I wouldn’t have met, and wouldn’t have anything to talk about to for the most part if it weren’t for Second Life. That is, what I was trying to explain — SL is a medium for enabling you to talk to people you wouldn’t normally talk to, would not *wish* to talk to, would find it *annoying* to talk to, or whom you *hate*. Yes, that’s my conclusion, folks, after two long years. It might get better and we might have more of those cosmic soul alliance leveraged crowdsourced thingamabobs, but right now, the Metaverse is the only way that I’d want any kind of proximity to Hiro Pendragon of New Jersey, and that’s fine by me : )

Now, is the chat in real life better? A medium that enables you to tune out everything about Hiro that is objectionable but just buy his swords, or just see his post on a blog, or just look at some park he’s made is a medium that is *very successful at what it does, my God, don’t knock it*.

Would more special me-time with Hiro in the Metaverse or Metaverse Extension West in Brooklyn create more special warm feelings? Um, no. I’m fine, thanks.

Unfortunately, RL, like SL, is a place where for survival you make quick judgements. So the look in the eyes of a person is very important. Obviously, you can’t look into an avatar’s eyes. Well, you can, but they are kind of stoney.

In RL, say, you meet a guy like Johnny Ming. I forgot to put this. Now, he’s got this ridiculously sucky juvenile podcast that sounds like it’s taped in a high school locker, and of course that’s because it has the Midnights and all the other objectionable juvenile sorts with their gossip and nitpicking and sniggering at others behind their backs. You might listen to Johnny, who barely gets a word in edgewise with these people, and think, poor Johnny, a promising young talent, yet dwarfed by the very FIC he is showcasing, so sad, so sad.

He may yet outgrow it. But when you meet him in real life, you see, by God, Johnny is a nice guy. You can tell that here’s a fellow that was properly brought up by his mother or grandmother or something. Here’s a guy, that while all the other geeks in the house are like playing the Wii or blasting T-rex tunes, he says, “Are you sure I can’t walk you to the subway? are you going to be ok?” Now, there’s a gentleman for you. Of course, he’s not from here. And with the whole subway thing, I mean, either you ride it, or you don’t. You can’t be half-hearted about the subway, because if they detect weakness, and detect fear, they will go for the kill. So you don’t do something like “have someone walk you to the subway and wait for the subway with you at 3:00 am when you might be mugged” because then you’re the kind of person they WILL mug, see.

Anyway, I live in hope that Walker and Johnny will start a sort of Car Talk for Second Life, I mean, you know, not about cars, well it could be about cars, but about tech stuff, with occasional guests, and dump these cheerleaders and jocks they have on board now.

Nice writeup. It’s interesting how you’re saying, in a round-about way, how much more effective face-to-face conversation remains over virtual conversation. Maybe this is because of the digital nature of online interaction. In an analog environment we can still keep tabs on things even if we’ve tuned them out. In the digital medium you’re either tuned in or tuned out with no in-between… which is a bit of a shame.

Is there a chat equivalent to “only sort of listening”?