Creationism – Your Divine Alt?
by Alphaville Herald on 17/09/07 at 5:03 pm
Unlimited free alt accounts – they’re not just for griefers!
by Lacie Babenco
After an SL suicide you can start over – like this!
In my short time here in SL, nearly every individual I’ve come across has a secret, or semi-secret or very public additional life in-world. The idea of having more than one avi, an “alt” seems to be so commonplace in SL that I find myself wondering – “why not have one?”
Now – we all did the same thing by coming to SL, we created an avatar and then went about our merry way with experiencing whatever we desired. But, perhaps something happened, a bad experience, relationships went sour, businesses failed or, simply, you kinda had enough of what that original “you” is in SL. Terms like “restart” or “SLsuicide” get used at times to describe how someone has put to bed an existing persona they created and then began the whole thing again – tabula rasa.
Now, I started to think, what a chore it is to start with a new avatar! Signup process and the trip to Orientation Island can’t be fun especially since it brings flashbacks to the days when you didn’t have a clue how to move, fly, grab something or know where you could or couldn’t sit. Let’s also not forget all the sweet AO’s you had with your walk and stance that made you more unique. All are gone.
Speaking of starting fresh – remember how cluttered your inventory was with all the things you’d accumulated from day 1? The clothes, the hair, the skins, the shapes, the landmarks, the furniture, the objects, the cash, the friends list – all of it, gone. Worse yet, you quickly find out how much stuff you can’t transfer from your old you to your new you.
Embrace the possibilities of a fresh avatar – direct from the Lab to you
The new avatar you now control is a total stranger to you at first, straight off the linden shelf. It’s kind of a daunting task, but it could be very rejuvenating if you were burned out with your current avi, just what the doctor ordered. At least now you know where you like to shop for all the things your old avi discovered. Many of the tips and tricks you learned will be with your new alt from day one. The new alt could be the kind of experience you wished you had the first time around, well dressed and looking good in a short time, able to find the things you want and hang at the places you enjoy.
I’m sure a psychiatrist could make a career of how people go from RL to SL, and then find a need to reinvent their SL one or more times over.
Still, I completely understand how it could work out that you need to have a change. There are plenty of really busy people in SL that likely just need a break and want to move around incognito. If there is one true positive, it could be that once you know what you want in SL, and you can recreate yourself, it’s totally up to you. I’m not pro or anti “multi-av”, but in my mind, it’s not any kind of quick or easy out from your current situation. After all: “to err is human, to forgive divine”.
Bennie
Sep 18th, 2007
I wish I could have my alt log off and go to RL work for me.
Bobby Troughton
Sep 18th, 2007
In roleplay places alts are quite useful to have multiple characters. If one gets killed, or you want to add more intrigue to a plot, or to play another in other places, load up another. Also good if you get bored with a character.
So it should be noted then that if there ever was a ban on free alts, it’d effect more then just griefers.
Boinkers
Sep 18th, 2007
ok question: If you create an alt you pay 10 bucks, right ? Or do people who make alts open a new account with different / false email addys and data (wich, AFAIK is not allowed by Lindens – yeah, yeah i know: who careas about that
)?
Urban-Dreams
Sep 18th, 2007
I myself have 2 alt accounts. The sole reason for those accounts is to store my items just incase somthing happens to my main av and I loose everything. However, my second alt account is female and I find it amusing seeing who differently you are treated by other av’s
Ananda
Sep 18th, 2007
I am not surprised at this behavior at all… time, especially starting and ending relationships, seems to run at a much faster pace in SL but people run the same worn-down patterns here. This is just a sped-up instance of the pattern where people are born, learn, gather knowledge and friends and loves, lose them, die, and get born all over again in a new identity where they try hard to forget what went before. That people have a really strong desire to leave their past failures and identities behind is evidenced in the fact that most claim not to remember them, and will often object strongly to the very notion that they lived before.
Now this doesn’t answer *why* this is such a standard pattern…
Alyx Stoklitsky
Sep 18th, 2007
I make a new alt every day to crash Ravenglass with.
Or so Prokofy say.
Lugh Ingraham
Sep 18th, 2007
I’ve had a few alts…a few female and a few male.
I have them because it’s fun to create something or someone entirely new from scratch, as an artist…this is the ultimate medium…the human form itself.
Each one has their own personality and unique behavior and that does kind of bleed through into my behavior IRL but not a lot, just a little.
Although I did RP plenty on all of my alts, the sim owners eventually banned them once they found out that it was really me behind the AVs…just goes to show you what disagreeing with Admins will do to ya.
Course if you think about, no one really knows who is and who isn’t an alt….Lugh Ingraham could be an alt of someone….
Lindoid Interruptus
Sep 19th, 2007
You know, the “Official Guide” makes some very specific recommendations about using an alt as a inventory backup measure, as well as a convenient alternative to virtual mattresses or SL Ponzi Schemes (I meant to say “Banks” — really I did), for “securing” Linoleums that you don’t just yet want to sell back to the Lindens, but that make you nervous to be carrying around, especially if you are sometimes clumsy with a mouse, or fear any of the many scams one can enjoy in one’s other Life.
Of course the “Official Guide” also has some entertaining (and fairly copious) tidbits about Casinos and other gaming establishments on the grid. So it’s anybody’s guess whether their use is endorsed or not. Given grid instability and asset server hiccups, though, one has to be very risk-tolerant NOT to be using an alt for at least some basic functions.
Angel
Sep 20th, 2007
>> “ok question: If you create an alt you pay 10 bucks, right ?”
No, the lindens removed that charge. You can now create about 10 alts to the one email address, and they do correlate email addresses with hardware hashes.
I have… 10 and 2 that I couldn’t enable.