Paradise Lost
by kris on 03/12/08 at 11:49 pm
by Kris Dibou
It occurred to me today that SL is like a gourmet meal that you eat backwards. Allow me to walk you through this meal beginning with the dessert.
1st Course: Dessert
You’ve joined Secondlife and discovered a world of beautiful women and handsome men, where there is no disease to pick up from casual encounters, save for bruised feelings. Some unknown beings have created beautiful sims for you to cruise around in and you begin to dream in avatars.
2nd Course: The Entree
After you have spent some time deep in pleasure, you arrive at the main course where you enjoy a more broad spectrum of flavors and truly participate in your dining experience. You learn to build, perhaps to script, and perhaps learn how to dj or make animations; maybe even become good at Photoshop. In this portion of the meal, you may, in fact, let your Rl body go and develop health problems. After you’ve had your fill, you drop down to the salad and soup.
3rd Course: Soup & Salad
You log on less frequently, create less and just keep running on the flavors your remember from earlier. You begin to wonder why you even bother. The Lindens appear to be letting you down and you have noticed how fast everything moves, while your online experience literally lags.
In the end, two things are certain- what you don’t eat will go to waste, and what you did eat turns to shit.
LOL
Dec 4th, 2008
Great Metaphore! I love it, hoever you forgot 1 thing. The leftovers do not get watsed, you have your waiter wrap them in a doggie bag so you can take it home and give your Furry pet diehrea all over you nice digital area rug. and when you contact the so called Professionals (LL) they say “Sorry we can not do a thing for you because you paied for your meal with hard work not a cradit card”
Moral of the story is -
Never eat at that resturant again, the food sucked, the service was totally slow, and the table next to you was a bunch of nudists who ordered a whold roast pig to they could test out thier new Penile Implant in it’s ass.
Ratcloner101 Stoop
Dec 4th, 2008
When the meal tastes like shit, simply steal the recipe, and make a better meal yourself!
Artfox
Dec 5th, 2008
The next step is a purgative.
Just before you marry you discover your long term gf is a male. In shock you confront your earlier partners and are told amongst other things to ‘look up the meaning of gender’. You doubt your own judgement.
The Lindens grief you by reducing opensim prices (everyone leaves), then re-grief you with opensim price rises (everyone leaves). In both conditions long term friends and residents leave, probably in shame, without warning or a word of goodbye.
Your long term friends finally meet their dream partners and those dream partners immediately undertake a systematic campaign to break up the friendship, with the aim of isolating your friend from their support networks.
All you can do to get thru this stage is grip the toilet seat and groan, hoping the smell of the flowers growing over your outhouse will mask the rising stink.
Yet you go on and try to build a beautiful place
Sassy
Dec 5th, 2008
Two years on, I’m still cruising through that 2nd course, pacing myself so as not to overload.
Perhaps the perceived loss of paradise simply extends from failed expectations.
I’ve seen and have even made some beautiful things on the grid, but these are merely objects, and “virtual” objects at that. I’ve had favorite places disappear (once while I stood in it) and favorite people disappear (and even die). And yet friendships I’ve carefully developed and tended remain, and provide me with daily joy.
If you approach any life, First or Second, to see how much you can take from it, you will soon find it empty. If you approach it to fill it up with goodness, it will soon be running over.
2 cents
Dec 5th, 2008
AP
Employers cut 533K jobs in Nov., most in 34 years
Friday December 5, 10:41 am ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
Employers ax 533,000 jobs in Nov., most in 34 years; unemployment rate rises to 6.7 percent
*Yahoo Finance
2 Million lost jobs in the U.S. of A. this year – in reach!
///job losses speak for themselves///
BRENT CRUDE FUTR (USD/bbl.) 39.660 -2.620 -6.20%
*Bloomberg
Filling up at the pump to be a heck of lot cheaper going into 2009 – but where you gonna be driving – to the unemployment offices? Plus shit, your SUV is gonna get repo’d any day now – so – so much for $1.05/gal gas huh?
///the value proposition of everything is getting turned upside down///
Retail bankruptcies on rise as consumer spending takes dive
By Mae Anderson
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.21.2008
*The Associated Press
And this was back in February. You still dumping spacebux into the Linden Research ass-trap when you could be storing up cash or paying for life’s “real” necessities?
///where’s your money going?///
AP
GM to lay off 2,000 more workers at 3 factories
Friday December 5, 11:28 am ET
AP
AT&T to cut 12,000 jobs, 4 percent of staff
Thursday December 4, 10:49 pm ET
AP
Factory orders drop more than expected in October
Thursday December 4, 10:37 am ET
Factory orders plunge bigger-than-expected 5.1 percent in October, sharpest drop in 8 years
///where’s your money coming from?///
***
///sorry to say your virtual escape doesn’t pay the bills///
If you’re a paid account holder you’d better ditch the credit card relationship before 12/31/08 and make sure you call “billing” to get a written confirmation of that closed account status! Then, call your credit card company and make sure to block “Linden Lab” from further transactions – it’s the only way to be sure ya know and only takes a few minutes on the phone.
Reliable inside sources state that “the cashflow crunch” for the Lab already started to get serious back in late September/early October…
Don’t get stuck with your ass hanging out!
Johnny Wishbone
Dec 5th, 2008
And as another mini-appetizer, you realize that the 76,000 inworld number from any recent Sunday is 50% bots:
http://greendots.typepad.com/green_dots/2008/11/index.html
At least this bot hunting it somewhat fun. I have found several thousand already. It really is easier to do that most people think.
Envi Teardrop
Dec 8th, 2008
good one kris
I remember my dessert. It was this amazing strawberry-pecan-vanilla-tequila home baked pie like you’ve never seen. Everybody (except me) knows that pies like these should be served with a large cow of milk or a small champagne river. Well, I didn’t know. Got all excited, tried to swallow it whole, couldn’t, and eventullay was thrown out of the pie shop.
Waykewljr Beerbaum
Dec 8th, 2008
I must disagree with this.. I have been playing SL for 1.5 years, and I have not played it less, I am playing it more than I was 4 months ago, plus I am learning still, learning more advanced things. This story = Completely wrong.
AnnLove Vandeverre
Dec 10th, 2008
I think this is a cyclical process we go through if we are to be long-term residents of SL. I have found that about once every 8 months, I get extremely tired of Second Life and log in infrequently for a few weeks. Then the cycle restarts, and I am once again amazed with and very into SL.
After two very fun, often successful, sometimes irritating, but mostly enthralling years, I plan to stay in SL. I will weather the storm of increased Open Space prices (meaning less work for me — and more expense for my own sim) and come out alright. Changes in LL policy are just like the ups and downs of RL: if you really believe in it, you don’t just poof from this world or any other. Don’t give up easily–in SL there is always something new to discover, a new skill to develop, and new friends to be made.
Sadako Shikami
Dec 12th, 2008
i’ve been in SL since Sept. 06 and i’m still enjoying my dessert! i believe your SL experience is what YOU make of it. i wanted to own a sim, even an island, and i might have been able to merge with a group of people that collectively purchased and paid tier. however, i often read the official SL blog *comments* and got the real story on how land in SL works. i own just enough land to get enough prims for my businesses, that’s it. i have great sympathy for those ripped off in the OpenSpace scandal, however, more important than location is research, research, research.