Kicking Second Life Addiction – A Life Outside The Grid
by Alphaville Herald on 24/11/11 at 9:58 pm
by Tenshi Vielle - founder & former publisher of Shopping Cart Disco
I joined Second Life in 2006, and it wasn't long before I was meeting folks on the grid and making a digital name for myself, something I never had when I was growing up. As a child, I was far too smart and far too shy to be bothered with any social aspects of life. Second Life, strangely, was my foray into a niche-type fame (or infamy as many of you may be apt to categorize me) from running a 2,000 to 3,000 and sometimes 5,000 hit-a-day website that operated solely on the gossip on the grid and attempting to fight the good fight -- and making enemies in the process.
Tenshi Vielle in Second Life (file photo)
My time spent on the Second Life grid was an entire escape from reality. In late 2005, I was pregnant, going to school, and working 3 part time jobs. By 2006, I had my baby and had joined Second Life after seeing an article in Wired magazine - and joining simply to laugh at the ridiculous hype this virtual world was getting.
I began making friends in-world, and logging in was a daily thing after my morning cup of coffee. When I wasn't out with my family, my newborn slept on my lap or in a seat near my feet. The burdens of my real life built up, so I threw myself into building something I could actually manage in Second Life - a small, stong website, a reputation, a cause to log in. I spent a lot of time supporting the artists of SL, large and small. They became my close friends.
When I found myself with one part time job and the baby, I found employment in the virtual world with a real-life company on a short term basis. It became more of an excuse to log in, because they were sending me actual checks with official pay stubs. My newborn was growing, I couldn't shake the baby weight between caring for him, my so-called depression, and attempting to care for my injured baby-daddy who had also moved in with myself and my family.
The burdens grew. Folks who didn't like me in the virtual world stalked me, called me all kinds of names, harassed me, blamed me for ruining their birthdays, even their anniversaries. It got ridiculous.
Shortly afterwards I was also moving in real life to find a job. The economy in my home state was tanking hard, and I was sorely affected. I worked a job as a janitor - yes, any port in a storm - and not only caught scabies that year, but pinkeye, two cases of the flu, and god knows what else. It was not a job I wanted to continue.
Logging in became more and more of a chore, and I had lost my desktop computer in favor of a laptop. In desperation, I elected co-administrators on my website and began dealing with social issues and helping with stories for the site via text message while at my new job. It was just too much.
I never realized I was so deep into Second Life until a tiff over administrative rights on the website caused me to dump my virtual best friend, which pulled a domino affect into other online friendships and caused me a lot of personal pain. I'd never cried over anything in the virtual world before - not the digital riff raff, griefers, nothing - but this was different and I realized I was far too invested with people I didn't even really know anything about.
My virtual life fed my ego in a way my real life couldn't - my word was important to other SL users. I could assist making a virtual artist, or help bring them down - something I attempted to avoid doing until I felt just cause for it. The group I fell in was small, cliquish and petty, sniping at each other and then being the world's greatest frenemies scripted by a bad episode of Desperate Housewives. Ostracization was a favorite technique of theirs.
I had more virtual shoes and clothing than I did in my real life - and I had, at one time, owned a lot of shoes and clothing in my real life. I had more hair styles in my virtual life.
After being homeless in real life for about a month, after getting kicked out of my "midway" place after moving (but thankfully keeping my newly aquired job) I attempted to continue work on the site as I had before, but couldn't.
My life was still a mess. In the course of three years, we rented an apartment; we bought a house; then my relationship went so far south that I thought I was at the cusp of hell. I sold my web site for $200 and used some of the money to pay for an apartment for a month so that I could escape my dissolved relationship and move on.
I kept my virtual friends up on what was going on in my real life and why I was absent, but my own life narration began to sound absolutely ridiculous even to me, despite the fact that I was living it. How could anyone go through so many horrible things and be able to talk about it online and believe it? There are so many sociopaths in Second Life who make up horrible stories (including medical diseases and traumas) for attention, but I wasn't one of them. I was simply logging what was actually happening to me, which was as hard for me to believe as the one living it as anyone reading it.
My virtual life is in shambles now. I rarely ever log in - I think I was last online about two weeks ago, for a half an hour. I couldn't find anything I wanted to do, and everyone who was online on my friends list seemed completely foreign to me.
Those friends I had in Second Life that I truly loved, I took with me to my first life. They are on my personal Plurk account, they are on my Facebook. I stayed at one SL friend's for a week after I left my relationship and my home. She allowed my son and I to shack up over there until other arrangements could be made, and even drove with me a good 100 miles to make sure everything was going to be alright.
Although my virtual life no longer exists, I prefer my real life. Second Life has become secondary, although I am not completely sure whether it's due to my real life becoming so busy (work and a small child) or if it's because Second Life, in general, seems vacant save for my old friends that still hang around. I now have a low profile and the virtual stalkers have moved on to other prey. I have no idea what is going on with the artists I used to help protect - I believe many of them have moved on from Second Life as well.
I firmly believe the worst and best thing about Second Life was how heavily it was propelled by its users - and how often it was held back by its developers.
As for Second Life in my real life, I spoke about it often while I was still involved heavily. Now it's like a dirty secret. My friend asked me how I knew one of my Second Life friends last night, and I hemmed and hawwed and avoided answering all I could until I could avoid no longer, and gave a very vague answer. It's not the friends in Second Life I'm trying to keep hidden; it's the fact that I was once so deeply involved in something that revolved so heavily around basic social psychology, and that I so easily handled it, that becomes embarrassing.
Those of you still hanging around Second Life more than 2 hours a day, I would advise you to please consider logging out for a while and doing something else. Go out, talk to a stranger, ask them about the weather. Keep your virtual life, but learn how to keep it proportionate. Video games only temporarily assist in making a person feel better. The secondary benefit is that Second Life, as a platform, appears to be tanking. Unless there's a sudden resurgence of popularity due to the open development available (with no support from the developers themselves) you are, so to speak, putting your money in a hole.
IntLibber Brautigan
Dec 14th, 2011
pinterest.com/martneen/awkward-family-photos/
When I saw this, I immediately thought: “Second Life Yearbook”
Reader
Dec 14th, 2011
the meat thermometer says this one is way past done.
Jumpman Lane
Dec 15th, 2011
Where’s the muck!
Ara
Dec 17th, 2011
I must say I am genuinely stunned by the backlash around SL, plurk, twitter etc from people I had thought were Tenshi’s friends. Especially from those who professed to be the ‘good girls’ – shows you how much I don’t know.
I wish Tenshi nothing but goodwill in whatever she chooses to do. I will definitely miss her.
candid
Dec 18th, 2011
@ Ara, the backlash is nothing compared to the backlash Tenshi caused to peoples reps and their business, what did you actually expect
Edna
Dec 18th, 2011
Merry Christmas everyone. Seriously.
Pussycat Catnap
Dec 19th, 2011
To Tenshi: Best of luck. I’ve been in bad times as well and its not easy. But it can get better. Its particularly tough these days, but a person can survive. I myself hit rock bottom in ’91 – homeless for a short stint.
When you’re in survival mode, something like SL is an undesirable distraction. Once you’ve got your feet under you again, and are steady there – look to return here or some other presence. I personally cut my ties with all but one person I knew before 91, even my own family until 96 (The one person I kept contact with was originally out of concern, as he’d fallen into a deeper pit than me).
Sometimes it helps to move on.
There are some folks who absolutely love to kick a dog when its down. I would suggest that those doing so consider a little soul searching instead.
Does it really matter if someone hurt you in the past? Is this really the time for such? Try reaching a hand out instead. Whether or not you’re Christian, consider the message of that faith’s founder: Love your neighbor is not about when times are easy.
Axel Oakleaf
Dec 19th, 2011
@Pussycat Catnap.
This,
I’ve been hated on for being a plushie and such and people seem to kick me when i’m down and such.
I think that the people who hate on me for it,should do some soul searching instead of attacking me and never forgiving me for stuff.
I was raised Catholic myself and i was taught to forgive your neighbor and stuff. What is so hard about forgiving someone?
Ara
Dec 19th, 2011
@ candid – ah so its payback, of course, why didn’t I see that. Considering the bitchfest that plurk is, i should not have been surprised. However I did expect more from people who claim to be mature adults. Perhaps this is what a virtual environment can do to you. Perhaps this is why Tenshi left. Who knows.
Bunjie
Dec 20th, 2011
@Axel Oakleaf
Taking a leaf out of “@Readers” book:
I was just passing and happened to read your comment, I had no idea he was a furrie and was being forced out of SL, and going by my current trends I’d likely only treat him a little more favorably as furries are my weak spot. {try not to take note’s kalel
}
At this point Axel Oakleaf seems normal to me though I don’t know anything other than what has just been posted under his identity, plus what I found in 1 Google search that I did to help me validate what you’re saying about him, but his name sounds familiar and if it’s from the JLU thing he’s certainly not someone I believe I’ve focused on.
I usually don’t Google names from here as that’d be a bit creepy but as you mentioned the plush thing I wanted to look up his name in case it was another attempt to fuck ‘no pun intended’ with readers / commentators minds through this site, and if you’ve been here and I’ve not noticed you at all, it’s likely you at least know how I like to point things out others might not have thought of while being a massive douche bag about it.
Self deprecating humor, gotta love it! :3 <3 let's blow some steam!
"I’ve been hated on for being a plushie and such and people seem to kick me when i’m down and such."
If you are who you say you are and I have no reason to believe you are, as I have the feeling you're someone else impersonating him in order to defame him by making statements that usually only griefers would obsess over, I'll try to address it to you through a 3rd party perspective.
That's only if he let's them and the real Axel Oakleaf seems to have applied some strength of character and decided he wants to stay inSL™ and ignore the groups that want him to leave, as he seems to have edited his forum post on LL's forums that explained why he was leaving to basically 'I've decided to stay'.
tl;dr some shit happened, a furrie decided to stay inSL™.
So he's on the right track where as unless you use the 3 sea shells you're not, especially here as names are not enough evidence of an expressed identity, although linking helps to quickly identify and ask a persona directly who is being impersonated it still fosters impersonation without another level of validation.
Comments can sit here for years and not be known to the person whos being impersonated, until it's too late and whatever's been said has sunk into peoples subconscious with no recourse for challenge.
Tateru Nino has a WP plugin that allows a person to authenticate a comment to the link using open-id which is what should have been installed on here when they migrated, that would help us shave off some of the miss understandings and doubts about who said what.
{note to LL: Dear Linden Lab post up and maintain a WP plugin for 3rd party blog sites so we can use our MySL profiles to authenticate our comments on 3rd party sites via open-id, and post them to our profile streams via trackbacks to mySL}
But a link and a number posted here and on a site only Axel Oakleaf could edit would authenticate you as him, but I doubt you'd bother to authenticate that statement.. and will likely avoid doing so because I don't think you can and because realistically what you just said as him could be taken as defamation of character in some bawwing circles.
Though if you're him well it's not something most normal people care about unless you're being defamed by it and have a sensitivity to things you're not engaged in being mixed with the first person perspective that other people view of you.
And it's not a bad thing but you know it can be frowned upon in some circles, inherently it's just another form of sexuality but we all have tolerance limits and society usually extends those to things far outside plushism and griefers don't.
The only people who should be bothering him is greifers and those can be dealt with by muting them and not taking it to heart, but if he's been around here / inSL™ and had the bad end of the stick he should by now have a high tolerance and thick fur for the comment incorporated bullshit that @'s his way.
To be clear from my end, if he was EX-JLU or some other failed vigilante recruit I have no interest in wanting him to leave and neither should anyone else, or based on what I said above are you talking about groups like the PN or other furries who don't like some quirkier parts of furrieism? that are trying to push him out?
I mention the JLU because someone replies to him and he is quoted as stating "some drama with the JLU" I didn't bother reading the whole thread as I'm not that interested in being creepy around him but on a side note his fursuits nice.
If it's the real griefers well they can go fuck themselves because if politics and or what ends up exposed through this site has learned us, it's that the person most often fighting strongly against something is either doing it themselves or a massive hypocrite on some level, and I feel I at least tell you when I'm being a hypocrite where as like the JLU/Kalel etc they wont or will attempt to divert the question from them.
Aka the "I don't comment on 3rd party sites" bullshit.
"I think that the people who hate on me for it,should do some soul searching instead of attacking me and never forgiving me for stuff."
Why would you still listen to someone hating on you and wait for an apology? this is SL you mute and move on or stick to hanging around with furries/humans who aren't douche bags..
If I've treated him like shit through here when I didn't notice he was a furrie I wont apologize, and while him being furrie is something I'd logically be more favorable towards I still can't apologize not least because I don't know how shitty I've been to him through here or if I've even @'d him in the past at all or if you're even him.
I don't mean that to be offensive but I feel It'd be more offensive to him if I was to treat him now with hugs and apologies than I had done previously, just because hes 'come out in context' although you'll likely get an extra <3 for being you if you are in fact the real Axel Oakleaf.
Will the real Axel Oakleaf please stand up? http://youtu.be/sRVd11yQGF0
Anything else would be me bull shitting him/you and I'm not down with that regardless of what I just tried to explain.
Here's the short version tl;dr some shit happened, a furrie decided to stay inSL™ either because the JLU, furrie, or furrie furrie haters have tried to push him out of SL & this guy might be the real Axel Oakleaf with vividly fluffy sexual interests or not.
But I don't care unless the real Axel is being defamed by it and sees this site as a source of the greifers or because someone who hates him is advertising a fact of his life or defaming his fursona.
And if not and if you're him and you've posted it here publicly with it linked to your name then it's not something you still feels gets to you like being called a "furfag" is just so lame, old hat and on some levels to some furries a complement, so why post it in the first place as if you suffer from this perceived insult? or it's a reason for anyone to kick you?
Perhaps the fact is and what you really mean is that if you are him and you publish this all the time as a known fact about you then it's the first thing that comes into their heads when they're being a douche bag, because it's the only thing you put out there as linked to your name? and if it's not an insult as you're used to it by now, how can it effect you as a trigger for them to go further to kick you down?
By now you should have learned to deal with it and mute abusive residents or you're hanging out in entirely the wrong places.
{To be honest I'm lost myself now, LOL this is probably far too long, oh and I'm back :3 <3}
Axel Oakleaf
Dec 20th, 2011
@ Bunjie
I’m Axel Oakleaf,and some people have been nice to me,while some have been mean to me.
Like one person actually threatened me with violence and stuff and told me to diaf. I should have kept the chat logs. I was a member of Gridwatch once,i’ve never been a member of the JLU.
Reader
Dec 20th, 2011
I laughed moar
miss j
Dec 21st, 2011
Chances are Tenshi like the rest of the ” I left sl in a self ego fed rant about how second life sucks now and how my reall is better now ” crowd is probably back on a alt.
James Doe
Dec 21st, 2011
@Bunjie,
So Axel is a person with an SL identity yet you don’t believe that it is really him?
So on that logic all those times asking me for my real SL identity was what?
I mean would you have believed me as well? Seems to me on our parts is useless to try to convince someone like you.
Seems to me you need to figure out what you are saying instead of writing walls of text and getting your self lost in your own comments.
Axel Oakleaf
Dec 22nd, 2011
I’m on Sl,only thing is links to Deviantart don’t work here. My name on there is Axeloakleaf,no space between the word.
Connie Arida
Feb 4th, 2012
Just goes to show that you never really know whats going on beyond the Pixel attitude
Lizzy Bloch
Feb 6th, 2012
second life ruined my 4 yr relationship, I ended up sitting on it 12 – 16 hrs a day and doing only that
Sad
Apr 12th, 2012
I came across this article when researching Second Life. My 21 year old committed suicide. He had the normal young adult troubles of not knowing what he wanted to do with his life, but nothing more that would make him end his life over. I had to investigate more. I needed answers!!! Well after finding phone numbers and calling his friends I found out that he spent majority of his time on Second Life with a different name, a virtual house, a virtual job, virtual friends, virtual money, etc. Come to find out he confided in these “avatars” and shared his inner most secrets. When these “friends” got into altercations, they would blurt out eachothers business on a video amongst their fellow avatars. Well one video went too far…. and now he is gone:( I could not believe my eyes when watching these videos. How people get so involved in this world is beyond me!
lyn
May 22nd, 2012
fuck the scond life runined my relationship wif my bf,he cheated on me wif d girl he met on dis fucking game,wif a girl he havent even met yet,now we r back together again,but everytime i think about this fuckin past im so soo disappointed…glad he stopped
Rosemarie
Jun 4th, 2012
my mom is addicted to this shit , since i started high school , she’s had two boyfriends on there before. its stressful cause she’d screen lock the computer ,and i have homework to do. she lost my step father over it. and she would stay up all night talking to these american guys on the phone. i turn 17 in exactly a month and my mother has been playing this game since i was 14.
Yep
Jun 11th, 2012
“I came across this article when researching Second Life. My 21 year old committed suicide”
It is sad that someone took their life over drama in a stupid game.
Kids these days are so emotionally unhealthy. If a kid gets a bad grade, another kid calls them a fatso on the playground or they are being creepy and their roomate in college films it.. their first thought is to kill themselves.
People need to toughen up and get rid of the thin skins.
Pappy Enoch
Jun 12th, 2012
I done loved Jesus until I bekum mired in the cess-pool o’ Second Life.
Now IRL I are a ex-felon an’ a Communis’ fellow-traveler an’ I give up Shine to smoke Weed all o’ the time.
SL made my rotten horrible sister into a furry, too.
PS: WTF done happened to The Herald? It am like a doctor’s office here: old stories in old magerzines. Pix, am you still dead?
hobo kelly
Jun 12th, 2012
Sheesh, I reckon I’ve been seein’ them thar Fellow Travelers just about everywhere I bees bein’ lookin’ lately I reckon. It weren’t but a week ago what where we was a celebratin’ the early demise of what turned out to be a particularly nasty zombie meth head infestation, they had set up a scent slime trail that went past my place and all the way over to Walmart. Got ‘em though. You just keep sprayin’ and sprayin’ and a little prayin’ and now that thar flop house is empty and boarded up. So I done decided to turn my low orbit ion cannon towards the Fellow Travelers just 2 doors down from the now empty meth pad. I’ve been watchin’ them thar travelers too. Yup I’ve been watchin’ them. Their comin’s and goin’s and whatnot. Dirty commie Fellow Travelers all holed up in their big house with the back yard what is all full of dead broken cars. No F-150′s though. I checked that straight off. Gotta park on the street and be out there doing subversive stuffs in between the cars where I can’t see ‘em because their backyard parking lot is jammed so full of old dead cars it looks like somekind of annemarieotool unexpected consequence lot. So I was ready to pull the trigger on those commies, coming around on their special day and doing their secret things, but right before those commie fellow travelers felt the bite from my LOIC, right before, I found out that they were all really 7th Day Adventists. I reckon I’m going to hell ‘cuz I still wanted an out of control F150 to come careening through there and WHAMMO….
Ron Onyett
Jun 28th, 2012
Just wanted to log in and tell you that this article and comments scared the hell outta me. I have been hangin’ on 2L more and more and I’m addicted to making relationships with ladies and romancing them.
I rarely have virtual sex because I enjoy the nuances and such that goes on before that. I guess that is what I’m addicted to; being something I’m really not.
In RL I have never been a ladies man and never will. My personality attracts women on there like crazy, because I can come off real nice and all that. However, 2L is the land of broken hearts and I have done some harm and feel bad about it. It is not that I have ever done anything malicious, but I have had women fall in love with me on there for whatever reason, and then I back off out of guilt and a longing to return to real life.
Whenever I get involved like this, I keep telling myself that I am not the person on the screen and if these women actually saw me, they probably wouldn’t care for me anyway. They are just attracted to my charm and the lies I spew about myself.
Anyway, this article really struck a chord with me and I feel so compassionate toward the author, and appreciate the honesty and candor of her article. I really want to log off of this virtual world now, because my real life is still intact and I have really good relationships there.
If anyone would like to talk about this further, please feel free to email me or contact me on Face Book. Name : Ron Onyett
God Bless you all, and thank you Teshi for sharing.
Ron Onyett
Jun 29th, 2012
Oh, one other thing I wanted to say about this subject of being addicted to 2L is that in real life, if you have any decency at all, you will not treat people like disposable junk.
I had dropped so many people like hot potatoes on there and I just felt horrible. Sometimes I would send them note cards with messages on them explaining to them that I was a low life and a liar, living in a fantasy world. But in many cases I would see women that told me that they couldn’t live without me one week and then the next week were already partnered on there with someone else.
This is not reality and I think it allows your mind to believe that the person on the other end is a piece of crap to be tossed aside like garbage. Well, that’s not fair and it is not right.
Many times this type of behavior can really effect a person long term, and drive down their self – esteem, on both ends of the screen. So in my humble opinion, 2L is nothing but a total time waster, and I have chosen to take a life long vacation from it. I hope God and the people I have deceived on there will forgive me for playing these types of stupid games with their feelings and minds.
God Bless!
RON
soul4sale
Aug 22nd, 2012
Came here thinking this was an Open Sim article. Found a gem:
“As a child, I was far too smart and far too shy to be bothered with any social aspects of life.”
You gotz problems, Honey Boo Boo Chile…
EndOfStory
Aug 23rd, 2012
“Came here thinking this was an Open Sim article.”
Yea Right!
Sakuya Fairlady
Sep 17th, 2012
I used my SL name well… the one you can add because I don’t think you or anyone else should be scared of what other people say. All of these people who you hurt, who are back lashing at you, fuck them. Look them in the eye and say “get at me bro” cause they aren’t about shit. Get your life in order, leave the game in your past, move on from it. I have left several times just because I felt it was consuming too much of my time.
I have several friends, most of which who are IRL/SL and we have all agree to log out during certain periods of the day to do other stuff. I don’t think two hours is a good limit. Everyone had an amount of time they can handle. One day I could be on from 2 – 8pm the next from 11am – 3pm. It’s just about how much time you want to devote. I’d say, don’t login more than five times a day is a week.
As for whats going on with your life, I do know some people in similar situations. I am actually trying to counsel a very close SL friend in to getting her shit together and taking a month long break. It scares me to think people could want to replace reality with pixels x.x; Once you stop thinking of it as a game.. you have fucked yourself.
I ROCK JORDANS BITCH
Dec 17th, 2012
SECOND LIFE IS FUCKIN AWESOME but not so awesome that u get adicted to it try imvu
Ron onyett
Jan 11th, 2013
I have officially been off of 2L for 5 months. Praise God!
regret
Feb 5th, 2013
@sad: its so sad that a 21 yr old guy ended his beautiful life because of
this f****** sl , thanks for sharing your sorrows, it may reduce the bad effects to other innocent people, even i am also 23 yr old and created sl before 7 months and wasted lot of my valuable time. but i wanted to keep myself far away from sl and googled my problem , i got this website also and i have taken a firm decision that i never log on to sl again and never want to escape from my rl problems and obstacles instead i can face them and i can solve them ….
Merit Coba
Feb 19th, 2013
Kicking Second Life Addiction – A Life Outside The Grid
Former sl addict Tenshi Vielle confesses up to her addiction and now advises anyone who spents more then two hours a day in sl to log off once in a while and talk to strangers about the weather, after real life wised her up. Find the real world and real friends on facebook and plurk.
Get real – kick the habbit.
It reads like this:
I, Tenshi Vielle, got to sl and felt good because, unlike real life, I was somebody important: I could make and break people. Then real life got in my way so I had to stop. And now anyone who spents more then two hours in sl must be addicted because Tenshi doesn’t play sl anymore and anyone who does must be addicted therefore.
And now she keeps her friends up to date on facebook and plurk..
And Ron Onyett it seems, has simply changed to a new addiction.. now he is addicted to praising God.
Both are sanctimonious: self confessed ex-addicts ostentious claiming to have kicked the habbit and one found real life and one found God. But this isn’t about addiction to second life. . It is about your addiction to yourself.
Prok's Game
Feb 25th, 2013
Will this game be the thing to break Prok’s addiction to SL?
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/25/team-meat-reveal-mew-genics
hobo kelly
Mar 1st, 2013
OMG, sounds like she’s already there: “…It wasn’t long after though that I caught sight of a solid black stray cat named Goon, before he had a chance to run I grabbed him and pulled him inside…”
Merit Coba
Mar 11th, 2013
Interesting tidbit: an online adult version is in the make. Favorite historical passtimes like cat flogging and tailbending will be in them for certain. It will also have voice-warping enabled by default: you can purr and mew to your hearts delight.
There will be cat verfication too. They don’t want dog persons in there.
Senban Babii
May 13th, 2013
Well it’s been eighteen months or something, maybe even more, I’ve sort of lost track. Where does the time go? But as I recently had to touch on the issue of virtual worlds again through my studies I ended up thinking about them a little and that got me thinking about The Machine Stops and then this old Herald article about addiction came to mind.
“Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.”
The sad thing is that for many people, SL might be the only window out of the cell of their lives and if you take SL away, the cell remains, the terror of direct experience remains. So maybe we shouldn’t talk in terms of addiction but rather in terms of over-reliance?
Someone should write a Herald article about it all before the machine stops.
Steve Taikowski
Nov 5th, 2013
I am totally relating to your story! As I last week lost three dear friends because I let a young man back onto my sim who was on their “never allowed back list” I really had my heart broken as I am a soft hearted person who actually kinda loves his friends, esp the young kids who like sons and daughters to me. I had to laugh at one part of your story where you said you “Brought some of your dearest friends into your real life” and to explain this you said you let them contact you on your Plurk and your Facebook, lol that strikes me as a bit funny. In any case good luck with RL it can be dangerous and very lonely.
Eric
Apr 28th, 2015
I believe that most people go through what you have gone through to one extent or another. I have made some really great and close friends in sl, but most of them either log on less or simply do not log on at all. What I also find is that most people eventually break the second life addiction, and they find a balance – or they simply cease to log in at all.
I have no patience for drama in any form whatsoever in second life, which is maybe why I steer clear of large groups/cliques in second life, and I have ceased involving myself in sex or romance. There are aspects of second life that are emotionally and spiritually draining. Involving yourself deeply or intensely (sex or not) with people who are very emotionally unstable or have rocky rl’s is a recipe for disaster – and unfortunately sl is stuffed full of those people.
The ones who stick around usually find a creative or constructive way to exist in second life, and who are perfectly fine being on their own. They also come into sl for relaxation and they tread carefully. They also realize that anyone who they meet may simply vanish at any point, and for any reason one can imagine.
tony cinco
Sep 11th, 2015
Sl is a harmful addictive… thing. It’s caused numerous problems in my relationship and continues causing issues. My wife is addicted and will spend more hours a day interacting with fake nonexistant people than she will with me. I keep hoping she will realize how harmful it is to both of us and give it up. But i dont see that day ever coming.
Ivy
Feb 28th, 2016
Deleted my SL and my alt. I’m never looking back. The site is filled with fakes who won’t voice or show images of who they are because their ego rather live the lie, or they or disassociating, or lost in la la land. I know I was sucked into the false “feel good” feelings and instant gratification of buying useless crap or having a fan fake life causes. But half the women are men or trannies, or liars/sociopaths. The rest are just generally screwed up people – people unhappy with their headspace or bodies etc. Many SL people failed in RL or don’t have the guts to manifest their reality in, well…reality.
Good riddance to loneliness, false friends, heartache, stupidity and most of all wasting time. The time wasted is thee worst. The sooner we understand our intrinsic value as individuals, the sooner we can get back to nature, humanity and each other, for real.