The Alphaville Herald

Shuless – Episode Four

by Alphaville Herald on 17/05/08 at 11:59 am

I left her in the dust of my tp

by Iona Nikolaidis

[20:04] This girl comes up, says hi, and then offers friendship.
[20:04] Iona Nikolaidis: Oh, did that just happen to you?
[20:04] I left her in the dust of my tp.
[20:04] Iona Nikolaidis: haha!
[20:05] Iona Nikolaidis: That’s awesome
[20:05] Iona Nikolaidis: You broke her avie heart!
[20:05] I hate that!
[20:05] Hi. blah blah is offering you her friendship.
[20:05] Iona Nikolaidis: Didn’t I offer you friendship immediately?
[20:05] Iona Nikolaidis: hehe!
[20:06] No, I offered first…three seconds.
[20:06] Iona Nikolaidis: hehe!
[20:07] Iona Nikolaidis: see? aren’t you glad I don’t follow your rule?

In RL, you meet someone, you hang out, you maybe get a phone number or you maybe run into them at a party. Your friendships develop over time as you share experiences. Those experiences are like layers in a cake, each of which, hopefully, make that cake more delicious. Despite the fact that I have spend a lot of time over the last year in SL (which, I am suggesting, might make me kind of socially retarded), I have a lot of friends in RL. In SL, you can have as many friends as will “accept” your offer of friendship, generated by the simple act of right-clicking on the avatars you see on your monitor.

When Iona first started SL, she was “friend offering”-happy. I had more than 70 avatars on my friend list (hey, I spent my early days in sex Sims and Festival Island – those are a discerning bunch!) Over time, the friends list became the bane of Iona’s SL. You can use the friends list to manage your contacts. For example, you can give a friend the ability to modify your objects in-world. These are, hopefully, the sober friends that you would let drive you home after a night of drinking. You can click a box on the list to let that avatar see you on a map in-world. This is convenient if you want the friend to be able to join you when they log on without requesting a teleport; not so convenient if you are carrying on a second or third life within your SL that you might want to hide from a significant avatar (Yes, Alex could see Iona on the map and yes, at times I turned that off).

Over time, the friends list became the bane of Iona’s SL. The list just was too damn long, and too distracting to see who was logging online and offline when I was in-world. You could prevent that from happening if you hid your avatar from others, but that always struck me as a little too deceptive (funny, I know, in the context of a virtual reality based on fantasy and deception). I needed to take action. The friends list as the measure of your friends did not give me hope or happiness. I needed to take a chain saw to it.

First to go were those avies I couldn’t recall in any capacity. I had a lot of those on the list. The next set consisted of those folks with who I had maybe an IM or two, followed by the group of avies with whom I had more contact, albeit superficial. I had more difficulty whittling down the list when I began to see names of avatars with whom I had a significant conversation or event. Some of those folks I liked, a lot. But I wanted to play the game differently. For this bunch, I wanted to rely on my memory to tell me who my friends were, along with our shared experiences. I know I made some of these folks angry. I am sorry. Very, Lorna, Count, Kat, Rayne, Minty, Federico, Darkling….. can we still be friends?

At Iona’s demise, she had 7 avies on her friends list. And in Iona’s demise, I peeled off these last seven friends who, I know, were my friends, and would be friends IRL if I could magically rezz a TrixeBelden Batz, Danielle Nemeth, SleevedBetty Abrahamson, Shrimpney Poultry, Kristie Bechir or Wyeth Bailey to go out to the club with me. It hurt me and Iona to strip them from the list. But, as in RL, you can’t take them with you into the oblivion.

Another feature of the “friending” of an avie always struck me as a little old-fashioned, in a good way. When you friend a fellow avie, or the friend you, you transfer a copy of your in-world profile as a Calling Card, a little reminder for you of who your friends are. I had accumulated a lot of Calling Cards along with my friends, and deleted them accordingly. From the Calling Card, you can see the date and time you acquired it, although not whether you were the giver or the receiver. April 15, 2007, almost a month into my SL existence. That’s the date in the properties of the Calling Card in Iona’s inventory for Alexandra Shu.

I don’t remember how I acquired it. But, unlike many of the avies on the list, I am fairly confident I didn’t get it immediately. I wish I could remember for historical purposes, but I have had to learn to live with a lot of uncertainty….what’s one more unknown? I think, though, that friendship was offered after a little give and take, a circling of each other to suss out whether it would be a productive endeavor to make the add, and a few bouts of “So who’s a man?” It turned out to be, in fact, the greatest addition I had to my friends list. I had no better friend in SL than Shu. No better friend.

[13:38] Iona Nikolaidis: So you have a new friend!
[13:38] well, like I said, she was there before, so we must have connected at some point in the past, I just don’t recall.
[13:39] Iona Nikolaidis: I’m sorry, I should have said you have a new “special” friend.
[13:39] Iona Nikolaidis: I remember she was at the Brew one time you and me were there, and we talked to her
[13:39] Maybe that was it.
[13:40] I have to clean out my friends list. I don’t remember half the people on it.
[13:40] Iona Nikolaidis: Good to do!
[13:40] And the other half I don’t know.
[13:40] Iona Nikolaidis: hehe!
[13:41] A lot of times I offer friendship just to get them to stop bugging me.
[13:41] Iona Nikolaidis: The path of least resistance
[13:41] Iona Nikolaidis: Tell me if someone bugs you and I will fucking kill them
[13:41] Iona Nikolaidis: If you want…..
[13:42] hehe…use your orbit machine.
[13:42] Iona Nikolaidis: I will!
[13:42] Iona Nikolaidis: I have other things too
[13:42] Ooooo! I shudder to think!
[13:42] Iona Nikolaidis: hehe!
[13:42] Iona Nikolaidis: You have nothing to worry about!
[13:43] Do you have one that turns them into a giant ass hole?

[Shuless appears courtesy of http://soshuless.blogspot.com/ and is reprinted here by permission of Iona Nikolaidis]