I Think NWN's Analysis of How SL Should Grow Its Revenue Is Flawed

I think the reasoning in this article is deeply flawed. I don't wish to do an 'argument from authority' or something like that, but I have been involved in the strategic financial and business planning at the highest levels of a Fortune 50 company. So, I do have an inkling as to how you go about positioning the company for growth, customer retention, etc.

What I learned foremost is that if you have a handful of customers providing over 80% of your revenue, you do everything in your power to please them. You build features just for them, you continually meet with them to find out what their needs are. You analyze why they spend that much money with you and you make it easy for them to spend more money with you if possible. If they are big enough, you provide them with their own individual account managers whose only job is to keep that person happy, fix their issues, track down problems, etc. For the biggest, you send representatives and the account manager to where they are at to look at their workflow and find ways to streamline it or see how you can change things to help them. Gather their requirements and build things for them. Basically, you coddle them in every way possible.

These customers have already demonstrated they will spend large amount of money with you - the rest of your customers haven't. You give them specials, discounts, and every incentive you can create to allow them to spend more money with you. You do exit analysis and 'diving saves' when one leaves, offering incentives, even ones that temporarily mean you lose money on them just to keep them as customers. Hopefully things will turn around for them and they will start to make money for you again. The *last* thing you do is change things in a way that displeases them. And you definitely don't ignore them for the big pile of customers that provide you with less than 5% of your income. Those customers haven't demonstrated a willingness to spend anything appreciable with you.
Because of the analysis of 'what makes the big guys spend money with you', you can find the ones in the 'second tier' of customers that fit those models that you can grow into bigger customers using knowledge learned from 'the big guys'. Give them special benefits as well, this is how you replace the biggies on your platform when they do leave. Spend some people on this but not large numbers.

It'd be nice to know the percentage of new users that actually spend money in SL. It looks like the average 'low end customer' spends about US$6 per year in SL. If you estimate high and say 50% of new users spend money in SL, you'll see that you need to find about 24 *million* new users to replace the 5500. Even at SL's hey day of user growth that would take many years to accomplish. And anything you do now won't pay off in that large a number anytime soon. You spend a couple of employees in the entire company to worry about how to achieve that, it's a long shot bet. You definitely don't change things to please them that would in any way affect your most loyal customers.

You also analyze the new customer demographics and provide ways for them to mature into that 'second tier' of customers. Hopefully, one of those new ones will eventually grow into one of your biggies. But don't spend too many resources on achieving this, it's another long shot bet.

Given the analysis of who spends the most money with you in SL, you go out and market directly to those people who aren't already customers with you and who fit the demographics of the 'big spenders', hopefully you can attract a few directly into the 'big spender' fold. You offer them incentives, reduced prices and remove all barriers for them to become customers.

If the average big customer spends $11,000 a year with you, you know you can give about $11,000 worth of incentives to attract one of those - sure you don't make money on them in year one, but in year two they bring in more money for you than nearly 4000 new signups would. This could translate to something like, 'we will give you a free extra sim with no setup fees for a year if you sign a contract for two years.' Tweak this so you still make money, you might be able to squeeze that to less than a two year contract to attract more people willing to sign that contract. Find a way to lock in future recurring income as much as possible. The cell phone companies have that right. A diving save would also include a temporary reduction or hold on charges to give them a chance to recover financially, that little bit may be enough to fit their new financial status.

Sure, a lot of the biggest customers make their money by renting land, and for that you need new customers, you need to pull in more people to replace/grow their constituency. There are also a lot of people who make their money from creating content - improve content creation tools.

But whatever you do, don't piss off the people who actually spend money with you. Bend over backwards to please them, even reduce your profit margin on them if it means they increase their spending to compensate.

A company of LL's size needs to focus on their core and their strengths, rather than continually spending significant resources to reach out of that. It's like the apocryphal story of the American table tennis team that goes to China. After the US gets trounced, the US coach comments to the Chinese coach about how the Chinese players were all 'one trick ponies' using one or two swings all the time. He advised the Chinese coach to work with them to make them more 'well balanced' players. The Chinese coach responds, "Why would I spend time working with my players to improve a swing that wins 25% of the time to one that wins 50% of the time, when I can spend the effort to improve their best swing from a 96% win rate to a 99% win rate? They shouldn't use the swings that don't win as frequently as the best one."

LL should focus all their resources on reaching the point where diminishing returns make growing their biggest customers not worth it. I doubt they are anywhere near that. They shouldn't spend resources pursuing something else until that point.

There are a number of things that the number estimates I made don't take into account like costs to support them, but you get the general idea.

A Bimbo's Viewpoint on the highly charged 'Blonde Marriage' debate

Linda Strawberry outlines her viewpoint on the controversial subject of blonde marriage that has recently taken hold of the public discourse.

I believe that if we let people with Blonde hair get married it will cheapen the value of our non-blonde marriages. I define marriage to be between two non-blonde people. But don’t call me blonde-aphobic. I have a friend or two with blonde hair. I sometimes watch shows with people with blonde hair like Ellen. I just don’t think blonde haired marriages are moral

.

Many of you may be surprised to find out that I agree wholeheartedly with this viewpoint. Civil unions are more than enough, marriage is a religious institution and should be kept out of civil law entirely. I don't care what dark-haired people get up to in their religious enclaves, but the Constitution firmly guarantees a separation of Church and State. Let's keep it that way.

It's only because the dark-haired people controlled the early State that marriage and public law became so co-mingled. I know I'm a bit out there in my belief about this, but between the dark-haired people's desire to enshrine marriage in law and the deluded blonde's desire to mimic the poor dark-haired people who have been in control of the entire framework of society for too long, I think they are both fighting for the wrong thing.

I believe marriage should be removed from civil law entirely and not pollute it. Justices of the peace should only be able to perform civil unions for blondes and non-blondes alike and priests and the religious can have their marriages to themselves. I think it's a pity that so many blondes wish to ape their dark-haired counterparts, relinquishing their position as the people who push the boundaries of culture, breaking the molds of intolerance built into our society by the emotionally crippled dark-haired. We blondes embrace diversity and are accepting of all, regardless of their hair-color and fashion-sense.

This will serve both blondes and non-blondes admirably. The dark-haired and their regressive churches that refuse to marry blondes can keep to themselves, the churches that celebrate hair-color rights and diversity and allow them to marry may choose to do so, and everyone wins when old fashioned religious notions are removed from ensconcement in civil law.

Seeking marriage for all is a vane attempt by the blondes to achieve "equality" with the dark-haired people when, in fact, they are superior in every way. I call upon the other blondes to shake off the shackles of cultural convention and leave the dark-haired people and their quaint notions of marriage to molder with their rapidly obsolete non-light hair colors.

Blondes are happier, freer people when they are acting the most blonde. We lack the brooding, overly intellectualized and easily emotionally upset stereotype that haunts the dark-haired people. The poor, misbegotten people that go to ever darker haircolors with their 'Goth' and 'Emo' lifestyles and clothing especially need our acceptance. These people choose to ostracize themselves from even regular, dark-haired culture in an attempt to show their 'non-conformity' by coloring their hair black and dressing all in black like the other 'non-conformists'. They can't break away from their 'non-conformist' mold long enough to see that they have merely established another sub-culture that demands conformity to its conventions for full admittance and to be seen as 'one of them.'

Many of my friends are Goth and they have accepted me into their midst. I am truly grateful for that. They understand and appreciate oppression by the majority of the dark-haired culture, for they too have been rejected by 'mainstream' dark-hair culture. I fit in well there, they never prejudge me for not having dark-hair and all I need to do is show a bit of solidarity by wearing 'Gothy' clothing. And who doesn't enjoy 'walking on the wild-side' a little by wearing really 'out there' Goth clothing and it's taboo-pushing fetish styles. We blondes are often seen as overly sexualized and fetish ourselves.

Blondes are accepting and tolerant of many people with different hair-colors, welcoming them into our cultural refuges when we are denied entry into theirs. Our pride in our blondeness is evident with our very flamboyant Blonde Pride parades where even the dark-haired come to celebrate blondeness with us. And the acronym BDPR (Blonde, Dirty-Blonde, Platinum, and Redhead) has made it into the mainstream cultural landscape.

The poor redheads aren't mentioned much even by us, but they truly are the 'redheaded step-children' of society. Blondes have gained great cultural acceptance, able to hold hands and kiss in public for example, and many popular sitcoms now have a 'token blonde' to be the butt of stereotypical jokes. Whereas redheads are still mostly looked upon as rare 'freaks of nature'. Many comedians have dressed as redheads for a cheap laugh, but drag redhead performers like Bozo and Ronald McDonald have begun to open inroads into mainstream culture. But they are still laughed at and snickered at behind their backs as 'over the top' with their highly stylized makeup.

Only the foolishly serious, dark-haired people need marriage because that's they only way they can get regular sex - everyone wants to party and have fun with the blondes, not them. Marriage is only a trap created by the dark-haired people to capture a blonde and keep them captive so they can have regular sex with one of us. Keep the blondes free where they belong.

Even when married, the dark-haired people often sneak away from their partner to have illicit affairs with blondes. Many public figures have been caught with their pants down with blondes and their political careers have died because of it. Going so far as to hire blonde escorts or having frantic sex with a blonde in a dirty, public bathroom to avoid being seen as 'closet blonde' themselves.

So many people go through their "college blonde" phase and their "blonde-curious" stage of development, but we all know it's only a rebellion against their parents. They eventually return to their drab brunette ways, unable to cope with the blonde lifestyle and the disapproval of friends and family.

Blondes take better care of themselves, often looking and dressing better than brunettes. We dress in sexier clothes and wear better makeup than them. I fully support the metro-blonde fad with their blonde tips and highlights, their increased attention to personal hygiene, and their progressive fashion sense. Who wants to look at fat, ugly, dark-haired people anyway? This at least makes them publicly presentable. But that has it's problems, everyone thinks they are closet blondes and not as 'serious' as other dark-haired people.

Blondes define fashion and culture, often being the creators or modelers of the best and newest fashion. We are sought out to pose nude in 'blonde' magazines, which we know almost every dark-haired person has a subscription to and hides from perusal by others. Especially by their non-blonde spouses.

I deeply regret the attitudes of the conservative, religious dark-haired people who think they need to 'cure' blondes with re-education camps where they try to show us how 'unnatural' blondeness is and to brainwash us into accepting the drab, boring dark-haired lifestyle and convince us to abandon our blondeness and 'pass' amongst normal culture by dying our hair dark. Thankfully, we blondes often lack enough brains to wash.

They try to demonstrate that 'blondeness' is only a recent aberration brought about by the development of hair dyes and bleach when any person with a knowledge of history knows that blondes have been here all along.

I personally belong to the very progressive 'Blonde Bimbo' movement, with our increased emphasis on happiness and acceptance of everyone. Unhappy emotions are tiresome and unnecessary and we promote the appreciation of rainbows and butterflies as objects of true beauty.

I applaud early Bimbo pioneers such as Mae West and Marilyn Monroe who bucked the standards of their day and were open, obvious blonde bimbos paving the way for the rest of us to follow in their high-heeled footsteps. Especially Marilyn, who in the highly charged 60s Civil Rights era, made the culturally landmark 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' movie, asserting that blondes have a place in society and that we will no longer be ignored. Her performance of 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend', cemented her place as one of the blonde bimbo icons, expressing what we all hold dear to our hearts - shiny, expensive, pretty things.

It is a shame that she died during that era like many other notable civil rights icons, killed by a society eager to stick with the old ways and fearful of what it would become if bimbos were allowed equality. Perhaps her dying at her peak has set her up as a martyr for the bimbo cause and a pinnacle of acceptance, happiness, and bimboness that many of us can aspire to.

I Want A Computer Engineer Barbie!

Okay, it's been a long time since I bought a Barbie doll (maybe 6 months *blushes*), but I want this one. Even though I don't like the glasses or the shirt or the bluetooth headset or the ... You get the idea.

Computer Engineer Barbie

As everyone knows, I don't mind being called a Barbie Doll, it happens all the time, often in a derogatory attempt to make me feel bad. But it never does. I like being tall, blonde, and fashionable. I always thank people when they say it, even if they did it sotto voce or as an aside to a friend thinking I couldn't hear it.

In my previous post I think I made a convincing argument why anyone should be happy to be called Barbie. I'm a weird combo many days, I work in the technical world and dress well, wear makeup, and often have some level of heels on. And I work deep in technology, not at the periphery, able to discuss technical matters at the most geeky level. With my extensive background in science and wide range of knowledge, I often surprise people with what I know.

This is one of the first Barbies that really get into the geek world, I can't wait for 'Molecular Biologist Barbie', although I won't hold my breath for that one.

This Is Considered Good News Analysis?

Reuters makes some interesting conclusions from Linden Lab's economic statistics. I just happen to think that the analyst didn't think it through enough to give reasonable causes, or rather they preferred to reach conclusions that were sensational and would sell more newspapers rather than boring and reasonable ones that people wouldn't get worked up about.

Here's a relevant excerpt:

Second Life had 88,585 of the subscription-paying accounts at the end of May, down from 89,845 a year earlier.

The overwhelming majority of avatars use basic accounts, which are free. Premium accounts, which cost US$10 a month, come with additional privileges including enhanced support and the right to own virtual property on Second Life’s mainland.

Even as Linden Lab’s base of paying customers shrinks over the past year, the total hours spent by avatars inside Second Life has increased dramatically. In May of 2007 total usage of Linden Lab’s virtual world was about 20.8 million hours. A year later the number spiked to almost 32 million hours, a gain of 54 percent.

With hours up but premium accounts down, the data suggests that while Second Life is failing to attract to new users, existing customers find the virtual world more engaging than ever, spending ever-greater amounts of time there.

The facts of a 50% increase in hours spent in SL and the falling number of premium accounts led the analyst to conclude that the increased number of hours spent in Second Life is due to the old users using it more? Huh?

Did the analyst bother to read their own paragraph talking about the vast majority of users being basic not premium? Linden Lab states there are over 14,000,000 accounts in Second Life and growing at the rate of over 1,000,000 per month. Did the analyst not even bother to think that many of the new sign-ups over the last year actually used the system? Nope, they'd rather conclude that SecondLife is atrophying.

Following that dubious conclusion, Reuters, goes on to talk about OpenSim.

A wild card that Linden’s statistics cannot account for is the rapid development of open-source Second Life variant OpenSim. The zero growth among premium accounts may represent a shift in the most die-hard avatars.

Avatars unable to find a home within Second Life including banking institutions and ageplayers have already migrated to OpenSim.

Doom! Gloom! The sky is falling and I'm selling more newspapers because people want to read about the non-existent rock about to hit their head.

I think a simpler explanation for the drop in premium accounts is that there are few benefits for having a premium account. First land is gone and the stipend no longer covers the cost of the membership. Two big benefits have disappeared.

Mainland/Sim ownership and access to better support are the only benefits left. Could it be that people are realizing they can buy/rent on the non-mainland sims and have parcels that look the way they want instead of being next to ad-farms? As people flee the mainland for the private sims, the benefits of being premium go away and now they can use that US$10 per month to pay the tier on their new parcel.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I think the dramatic growth in private sim land-size and the current freeze in new mainland (or is that over already), are far better indicators of where people are spending their money. Not that they are going to OpenSim.

And why on earth would the bankers go to OpenSim? There aren't very many people on it to make banking a viable business.

As usual, simple use of logic shows that most "news" is actually "hype" designed to sell more "news".

Eminent Psychologist Calls Lillie A Whore

It seems that a number of people have taken exception to Lillie's article about men and why they go to prostitutes. It's weird, all of this controversy over an article that basically boils down to "Show appreciation for what he does and don't use sex as a weapon."

I don't know how anyone can argue with that. I wonder if they've even read my assertion that blow jobs are useful relationship preservers? That'd really get them going.

They also seem to have problems with the word "training", probably because it's an ego issue, but we train children, we train people for their jobs, we train each other all the time. This is just raising the awareness that you could also be inadvertently training men to respond in ways we don't want.

Evidently, some psychologist got his nickers in a twist and posted a blog post about it calling Lillie a whore - on his professional blog. Yes, he definitely looks pretty professional after that.

Let's look at his argument's against Lillie's article. His argument against her has many holes, all of them common logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is an argument that commits various fundamental reasoning mistakes.

Perhaps his inability to form a coherent argument is why he is writing on a blog instead of doing meaningful psych research. That kid's is an example of an ad hominem attack or a genetic fallacy, the same sort of fallacy that Dr. Grohol uses when calling Lillie a whore. I called the argument into question, by disparaging the person giving the argument.

Using a disparaging term to call into question your opponent's judgment is a tried and true tactic of people with little behind their own argument. That dear readers was an example of a sweeping generalization, similar to his assertions that her observations must be flawed because of the nature of SecondLife.

If he had anything to his argument, he'd have better proof, that is a moralistic fallacy, stating how things should be and using that to convince people, like he does with his appeal about how men and women should be acting and appreciating each other, thereby she must be false, because as we know people always act out of selflessness and honesty.

Finally, we get to the meat of his argument, a list of papers and research, purportedly backing up what he says. That is an appeal to popularity as well as an appeal to authority. By giving a series of articles that he knows no one is going to go read and refer to, he is giving a false sense of authority. I have no idea what those papers state or if they even exist. He could be making them up or they could already be discredited in the psychology community.

By throwing a bunch of various theories around, he's trying to muddy the waters a bit to show that all of those other ones are more credible, more likely, etc. Rather than addressing the question, he is saying that since those other arguments are possibly true, Lillie must be wrong. That's actually a rather interesting fallacy, sort of a, "We already have enough theories, we're all full up here and don't need any more. There's no room for your argument."

He ends up with more moralistic babbling about how things ought to be.

His entire argument is a false dilemma, though, he is saying, "You can either believe Lillie or you can believe me, and only one of us can be correct". Hold your horses, there are only two options? No "door number three"? No compromise? No synthesis of the two?

Finally, my own argument here is entirely a fallacist's fallacy, I'm stating that his conclusions must be wrong because his argument is wrong. In reality, all I'm really trying to point out is that we have no idea if his assertion is true because he provided no credible evidence to support it.

Try again.

I bet you didn't know I was a Master Debater ;)

The Power Of The Blow Job

Lillie has a great post on "Men: The Missing Manual". She talks about how to keep a man from straying in a long term relationship. In essence, she gives suggestions on how to drive her out of business.

A quick summary would basically, go: "reward men for the things you want them to do, and not for the things you don't want." She makes a good argument for how we train men to stray in a relationship, rather than train them to stay. How sex and our moods train men to behave in certain ways and not always to our benefit.

Even though I'm not in a committed relationship right now, I do have a number of "friends with benefits" relationships going in RL. And I can offer my support for her thesis.

It's nice to have all of what I do naturally explained to me ;)

Generally, I reward the men around me when they please me. I flirt a lot with them and all men like attention. I flirt more conspicuously when they've done something extra, like flowers, presents, extra-nice dinners, etc. I make it obvious to them that they've pleased me and that I appreciate that. I touch them more, look at them more, laugh more, and basically give off all of the "signals" more. Consequently, I get *lots* of presents, flowers, and invitations to nice dinners :)

I don't live with anyone and I suspect that "the daily grind" causes some of this to wear off after a while.

However, we expect men to notice when we do something for them and reward us with appropriate attention. I suspect a lot of this is just lack of attention to what he is doing and a presumption that he *should* be doing things for us. I bet it rankles if he expects you to cook, clean, and pick-up for him without appropriate reward. The same is true for him, don't take anything for granted, he probably dislikes that feeling just as much.

If he has problems picking clothes up off the floor, one of Lillie's examples, try noticing it once when he does, stop to comment, "You know, I really appreciate it when you help out and keep the house looking clean, thank you, you're wonderful." Follow that with a passionate kiss and you've begun to train him to do the things you want since you showed physical appreciation.

Finally, never disregard the positive benefits a blow job. I know, some of you are "ewww", "ick", "gross", or "only on special occasions". Even when I am not in the mood for sex, the occasional blow job for "being so great" is a quick and easy way to keep his attention and show appreciation. It doesn't take long, can be done fairly impromptu, and satisfies his sexual urges, while giving him a big ego boost and a Pavlovian reward. It's amazing what taking a few minutes for a quick blow job can do for a relationship.

I bet if he's getting a couple of blow jobs a week, an investment of less than an hour of your time, the relationship will stay much happier. He won't go off to have cybersex with a trollop like our Lillie :) if he's just gotten a blow job for picking his clothes up off the floor. He'll be running around trying to clean the house more.

I Will Not Have My Voice Stilled

A number of prominent blogs are "going on strike" against the new policies Linden Labs has made about use of their trademarked material. This is the post I made to the blogger's community. Edit: Woo Hoo! Someone else thinks the same as I do about not being silent.

I won't stop posting, depriving the world of me for three days would be a crime worse than anything Linden Labs has done.

But seriously, I plan to continue to post - the more we rabble rouse and actually post using terms, names, and icons that Linden Labs has stated they will not tolerate - the faster we will force them to take action. The faster they take action, the better - it will cause *something* to happen, which is better than a silent stalemate.

If both sides are silent, Linden and us, that isn't helpful. People don't notice voids, they notice activity. In real world strikes, the strikers picket and make noise. They stand around and force the world to take notice of the inequities of the situation. In the virtual world, silence is the *opposite* of what picketing and participating in a strike in the real world is like - it's like all of the workers went home and stayed in bed, it's more like a "sick out" than a strike. No one would notice because no attention was being drawn to the situation. The only ones hurt are those who actually go out and picket and have no support.

We should raise our voices in a cacophony of violations against their new terms, forcing them to speak up or risk losing their ability to enforce their new terms. Imagine if they started to send out Cease and Desist letters - and we ignored them. Then they would be forced to act on their own policies and suspend people.

Imagine the press that suspending well known and popular avatars would bring to this. It would bring more attention to this than being silent ever could. However, being silent incurs no risk.

If we don't force them to act and act decisively, they can be quiet about it and enforce it whenever they feel like it or hold it over our heads. This situation does not call for inaction, it calls for *more* action.

I plan to continue to stick my virtual neck out and continue to post. If the rest of you want to do what LL wants, which is to obey their new terms and not use "infringing" material, go ahead and don't post.

But then, I'm a rabble rouser who tends to be mouthy towards authorities.

Eudeamon

Veyron gave me a story late Sunday night, Eudeamon, it's available for free from the author at that link. It's over 75,000 words long, but I read the entire thing in one sitting and stayed up far too late. The story is very well written and I highly recommend it to anyone. It made me laugh and cry, but most of all, it made me think. In other words, an excellent book.

In the story, a reporter investigates a new method of criminal punishment being used, Banishment. Exclusion from society is an old form of punishment, but this had a new twist, the criminal was placed in a special suit that prevented all forms of contact and interaction with others, an AI in the suit monitored the criminal and punished them if they violated the rules, then, the criminal was allowed to roam free wearing the suit. Isolated from society, but forced to be amongst it, the criminals, called a Bane while in the suit, were able to watch others enjoy their lives and yet be unable to participate. When their sentence was over, they were released. Nearly no criminal relapsed.

A very spooky kind of punishment. The reporter was trying to find out if it was inhuman. Were the makers of the suit subjecting the criminals to permanent mental and emotional harm? The program was only a few years old, so little was known of the long-term effects. She wanted to find out. The only problem, no one, not the makers, the city council, the police, not even the ex-Banes themselves would talk about it. She kept trying to interact with the Banes themselves, but they were unable to communicate with her and usually ran away since they were punished if they tried to interact.

Then, she discovered two things that drove the rest of the story of the book and made all the difference. First, some of the Banes who had been in the suits the longest, for more than a year, were beginning to commit petty crimes, lengthening their punishment and requiring them to stay in the suit longer. Second, in a park, in the middle of the night, one of the Banes communicated with her, writing a few words in the mud with a stick, replying to her questions about why it didn't want to be let out of the suit.

She cleared the silt and wrote slowly and carefully. You cannot understand. Only bane understand. Beauty beyond words. My perfect Eden. She stopped writing for a moment to hug herself again. Pleasure you’ll never know. Love you’ll never know. She underlined ‘love’ several times.

The story is good with action, excitement, humor, romance, and drama. A good plot, solid characterization, and numerous twists, turns, and surprises to keep you interested.

Now, if you've stuck with me this long, you're probably wondering what this has to do with Second Life. A few people have made their own Bane suits and one person has set up a Banishment program in Second Life, trying to replicate the book as well as possible. The suits in the story, made of a black latex like substance, along with the isolation appeal to certain types of subs and they have tried to duplicate the experience in Second Life. A few who have tried it, not knowing how it would affect them, have written about their Bane experiences.

As for me, while I'm curious, I'm more curious about how much of the experience of the book they have been able to replicate. I naturally isolate myself enough on my own and I don't want to make it more complete by doing the Banishment program for a week or more. Part of what I like about quiet and solitude is being able to watch the world, and I don't think SL has enough depth and detail to keep me from being bored.

No Promises Relationships

After taking a spirituality in SL survey, Kean reflects on how she makes SL relationships work.

One thing I found that works very well is the 'no promises' frame. It would be so easy to cheat, run away, make another alt. But all that is not needed if you really set the ones you love free. It takes balance, honesty and huge buckets of empathy to make it work. And it takes refraining from scheduled meetings. 'No promises' has the good point that you won't get disappointed because there’s no promise to be broken, and when you meet up its just icing on the cake.

Another benefit is the presence. When you don't know when you will meet again, all you really have is the present moment. And to be present together is really the greatest gift...

I agree that this model of relationship seems to work well in SL. While I try to be on during a regular set of times and I coordinate with a few other close friends times to meet, I do have RL things that come up and I won't make it online. Moving to a "I'll see you when we are both on." seems to work well.

These virtual relationships remind me most of phone/email relationships. I have a number of people I've moved away from over the years that I keep in touch with via phone or email. While we may try to have regular conversations and times, what often happens is that RL intrudes and we end up calling "whenever we have time" or exchanging emails "whenever something happens."

What I need is a quick way to interject a message to friends in SL, the "I'm running late, but will still meet you at the restaurant" phone call that you do in RL, but that I find hard to do with SL meetings since I can't fire up the client "on the run".

The Governor Is Dead! Long Live The Governor!

I didn't do it, I swear.

Because you are used to coming to the site for hard-hitting news that is up to date, (hah!), let me tell you that Phil is stepping down as CEO of Linden Labs.

I've complained about the issues in Second Life before and made amusing references to the death of the Governor, but this comes as a surprise to me.

I think one comment sums it up well:

I guess at this point - until I've had more chance to think about the implications - it could be summed up as "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst".

I think there's a pretty good chance that this will light a fire under the asses of those responsible for stability and user retention, but I also think that it's just as likely - if not more so - that it will end up evolving into a Second Life where so-called "non professional" content creators like myself are even less valued in favor of attracting the "big players".

I hope the nice, Libertarian bent of Second Life stays with an emphasis on grass roots growth of content. We saw how the emphasis on big corporations worked out for the Lindens.

This may be the beginning of the big push for a broader appeal like what happened on the Internet during the late 90s. It appears Phil will still be at the center of the "vision" of Linden Labs, which may be what keeps the focus on allowing hobbyists to thrive.

The Quest For Perfection

Vint 'lost' one of her notecards the other day. It was a configuration notecard for her AO. When she clicked on it, the dreaded "cannot find in database" error came up. She lost it and its not recoverable. I recently lost a very important item to me, something worth a bunch of money, time, and sentimental value.

Guess what? I don't expect to ever get it back. Am I annoyed? Yes. Do I expect it to happen again? Yes. Do I think LL can prevent it? No.

I don't want to go into Apologetics, but I will a little to explain my reasoning. Linden Labs cannot prevent it, they can minimize it, but they cannot prevent it. Loss of data and things breaking is a fact of life. Just because it is inside a computer does not mean the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply.

When your plumbing breaks in your house, do you expect the plumber to fix it so that it *can't* happen again? No. When you buy a new car, do you expect it to *never* break? No.

Why do we hold Linden Labs to a higher standard than everyone else around us? Because they deal with money? Because we spent $5 on a nifty widget?

Banks and brokerages have the same problem. Money goes missing, accounts lose transactions, and financial records are lost. They do two things LL needs to work to achieve, one, they work to make their systems as 'accident proof' as possible, something that LL is actually good at considering the huge number of assets created and destroyed all the time, and two, they have good customer service to resolve 'claims'. This is an area that Linden Labs needs to become far better at. There needs to be a better customer service 'claims' system

So, I miss my stuff. I really wish I had it back. Do I expect to see it again? No. I've begun the process of rebuying better versions of what I had before. I'm taking this opportunity to do it better. So, I'm trading my old car in for a newer model, as it were.

I can sit around with a sour puss on my face because of the lemon I've been dealt complaining to LL to take the lemon away, or I can make lemonade. Right now, I'm enjoying a nice glass of Lemonade wondering why I didn't do this before.

The SexBots Are Already Here

Well, it turns out some people have already written sexbots for a profit motive - to steal your personal information.

According to a recent piece in the Guardian, Russian software developers recently unleashed a program called CyberLover, which roams chat rooms posing as flirtatious women, then duping users into giving them personal data—phone numbers, addresses, even sexy photos.

The author of the column on cybersex, remarks about the amazing repetitiveness of of most of it and wonders if most guys would notice or care if it really was a sexbot on the other end of the "conversation".

Still, the idea that a computer program could fool even the most desperate lover in cyber bed makes an online sex enthusiast wonder: is some cybersex so predictable that it could be done by a robot?

I’ll admit: some days I feel like a sexbot myself. Camping out for research in the AOL Big Flirt chat room, where online love is practiced 'Wam-bam-ty-mam!' style, it’s not hard to get cynical. After the third guy in an hour has asked “Do you swallow?” within moments of introducing himself, the repetitiveness of uninspired cybersex makes itself strangely clear. Descriptions of the same-sex acts with the same outcomes (“First I’d lick you, then I’d fuck you, then I’d cum all over your face”) pop up on the screen again and again. A girl can’t help but think: if cyberers are so uncreative, maybe they’d be happier with a machine.

Finally, she does a little research of her own, by using stock responses copied and pasted into a chat room to see if people would notice that she wasn't being "creative".

Still, inspired by my Russian brethren, I decided to head back into the AOL chat rooms and test out the idea myself. Armed with only 30 responses (see below), ranging from the harmless (“Not much. Just horny”) to the hardcore (“I’d love to take your cock deep in my throat”), I stuck it out for ten conversations with ostensibly male counterparts whose screen names alone—HardCock, BigDick4U—were enough to make me consider turning in my human skin and resigning myself to life as a computer. Each of the conversations lasted at least half an hour. Most got pretty down and dirty into the cybersex act—though some guys got excited, orgasmed early, and disappeared half way through. Classy.

Unsurprisingly, I found my lines worked 95% of the time. “Mmm” and “Oh yeah” came in handy often, as did “I’d like that” and “I’m rubbing my pussy.” No one asked me, “Are you sure you’re not a sexbot?” In every conversation though, there was at least one moment when my lines just weren’t enough. One user asked me where in New York City I lived. Another asked me whether I’d ever taken it up the ass and what specifically I liked about it. A third wanted to move the chat to webcam, and I had to explain multiple times why I wanted to stay put—without sounding like a broken record.

Her list of 30 "stock" phrases could keep most of her "partners" busy for up to 30 minutes! One scary thing about her list of phrases is that it really doesn't include much hardcore in it.

When I did escorting, I definitely found myself using some of the same words and imagery again and again. I even found myself copying and pasting certain phrases I said into a file I kept of "good phrases". A particularly good turn of word or a phrase that struck me as particularly sexy would go into the file so I wouldn't forget them. Later, if I was feeling uninspired or at an impasse over what to say during a session, I'd glance through the file for ideas.

I also kept a file on most people I met, and not just clients, so I wouldn't forget who they were or why I knew them. Linden Labs even have a feature for this, the 'notes' tab of a profile - a place to put comments and notes about a person. When glancing down your list of friends, it is nice to be able to look someplace and remember why they are on the list. Those files I made, in the case of clients, also recorded their particular kinks and which phrases seemed to turn them on and which ones didn't.

Lillie comments on a different column by the same author that also speaks about the repetitiveness of cybersex. She hints that a good story is coming. I can't wait.

Do Robots Dream Of Electric SLex?

Bots are becoming more and more popular in Second Life, to boost traffic numbers or even dance with guests.

Yes, dancing with guests and even holding a rudimentary conversation. The complexity of the bots is increasing and they will only become better at responding to others as time goes by.

While others debate the considerations for a parcel's 'traffic numbers' and whether or not this is giving an unfair advantage to certain merchants, I think unrestrained 'bot experimentation in Second Life is incredibly promising.

The Turning Test was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer program to fool others into believing that they are interacting with a human instead of a machine. Simple programs like Eliza can fool people for a short period of time, whereas more complex ones can fool people for longer. Eliza is a simple program that simulates a therapist speaking to a patient. It is surprising how a little bit of pattern recognition can mimic simple human interaction.

In the past, the tests have been largely academic. Commercial exploitation of artificial intelligence has mainly been limited to expert systems that are good at their designed task. It has always been a challenge to find a situation where people interact with each other without knowing that the other 'person' may not be human. Robotic technology has yet to make something that significantly resembles a human well enough for them to replace something like an order taker at McDonalds. For example, replacing phone support with a software system runs into the problems of speech recognition and natural language processing. However, online chat began to offer an area for software systems to begin to interact with people in a way that computers can easily understand.

Online chat never really had a commercial driver behind it, until now...

Second Life marries a chat environment with a profit motive. Businesses can now interact with people through a virtual environment completely described in terms that a computer can understand. Natural language processing is now the only barrier to having effective simulation of a person. Businesses will not have to solve the speech recognition and robotic simulation problems as well as the natural language processing ones. More importantly, some of the particulars of Second Life such as traffic numbers are actively driving businesses to consider 'bots an effective business tool.

The 'barrier to entry' has been made very low, you only need a compiler and an Internet connection and you can begin to write your own 'bot, but Second Life added that magical twist, money. Now, people will have an economic incentive to develop better general artificial intelligence rather than expert systems. And this goes far beyond just having dance partners in a club, this can now strike at the very thing that drives most human technical innovation, sex.

Soon the ranks of sex workers may be joined by truely virtual escorts - no human involved. Have it press some XCite! buttons and go, "oh god, yes! you are *so* huge," and you are halfway to doing the 'bread and butter' of escorting in Second Life. Guys are already flocking to Second Life for virtual sex and paying money for coordinated chat and XCite button pressing.

It will start small, with a couple of incidents where it was discovered that an escort was a 'bot. There will be calls for more verifications, bot registration, etc. Linden Labs will wisely say nothing while the crowds of 'regulate everything I dislike' call for more bans and restrictions. Later, a 'big' scandal will unfold where it is revealed that a well known escort uses a 'bot to handle the 'tedious' parts of SLex. Linden Labs will resume having interactive help support in the client, while behind the scenes 'bots will handle the simple stuff and only escalate the issue to a human if it gets to a point it can't handle.

Eventually, the town halls where everyone gathers to complain about the bugs will be run almost entirely by 'bots replying, "We are actively working on that issue at the moment, we saw that it was important to the community, so we have dedicated developers to work on that and resolve it as rapidly as possible." Wisely, the complainers will soon begin sending 'bots to the town halls to repeat the same old, tired mantras. 'Bots will be talking to 'bots.

The men who are insecure now about possible having SLex with a guy pretending to be a woman are really going to have their egos crushed when they learn that 'SexyHooker69 Cummings' whom they've had a crush on and have spent thousands of Lindens on is really a 'bot.

Seriously though, the days of being able to tell if you are talking to a human or a 'bot without significant interaction are coming to an end. My original 'Only In Second Life' post pointed to a dramatic blurring of the lines where human pretended to be robot and the robot pretended to be human. It makes the issue of whether or not the 'bots are artificially inflating traffic numbers seem insignificant when half of the escort business could be replaced by them and few guys would notice.

What Meaningful Thing Have You Done Today?

I love Second Life for a number of reasons, but one of my favorites is that it gives disabled people a place to interact where they are not limited by many of their disabilities. Early last year I wrote that one of my Second Life neighbors was in a wheelchair in Real Life and that I had SL friends who had MS, were deaf, were shut-ins, and had all manner of disabilities. In SL they could fly, dance, chat with people, meet lots of new people, and "go places" that would never happen in RL. It still brings a tear to my eye how wonderfully liberating Second Life can be.


Via Lillie Yifu, again, is a wonderful post all about The Heron Sanctuary, a community for the support and aid of disabled people in Second Life.

The post puts it well:

...people with disabilities want the same things everyone else does: we want companionship and friendship especially with people who understand the limitations placed on us by our disabling conditions; we need to learn more about our own conditions, about health and wellbeing, and about resources available to us to make our lives better; we want a chance to be employed or to do volunteer work since both give back to our community; and we want to have fun.

This was really no surprise, nor was it a surprise that these things were difficult to achieve in the world outside our homes.

Those of us who are disabled are often socially isolated, even physically isolated, within our geographic communities.

So three of us from LoveByrd decided to explore virtual reality as a setting within which to build a supportive community. We began to collect medical research about the benefits of operating in virtual reality that accrue to people with different kinds of disabilities.

We visited the websites of a half dozen different virtual worlds, and chose Second Life as the one to colonize, since it seemed at the time to be the richest cultural environment and the most fully developed.

The coming of voice to Second Life disturbed me because I didn't want my deaf friends to be stigmatized or relegated to 'voiceless ghettos' because they couldn't use the voice client. I'm glad Second Life exists so that my friends can lead fuller, richer lives.

It makes me look at myself and go, "What meaningful thing have you done today?" Thankfully, most of my days I can answer, "I may not have been an advocate, but I had fun with a lot of people and hopefully made their lives better by just allowing it to be 'normal'."

The Secret Of How To Get Paid For The Work You Do

Via Lillie's blog, I read a post by Eshi about her experiences with being cheated by corporations out of the money she was owed. Update: Eshi says she was actually paid, just not given credit for her work.

The story is familiar, at least to me, you work hard producing a labor of love only to have the people who commissioned it not pay you, then treat you like a pariah. It is horrible how she was treated and this problem is not isolated to Second Life, it happens all the time in Real Life as well.

Calling for better regulation from Linden Lab won't really work either. The only solution to this happening is contracts, lawyers, and common sense.

When I worked as a consultant (both as part of a firm and as an independent), there were many people who wanted 'something for free'. They truly didn't seem to think that you were making money to live, eat, and have a life. Somehow, your time was all free.

After being on the losing end of this many times, I ended up becoming very good at negotiating deals and writing contracts out of self-preservation. It's lousy and I hate doing it. I like being Pollyanna where everything just 'works out' and the world is all rosy and full of smiles. In other words, I like being optimistic and naive. Someone would ask for my help, sell me on their vision, we'd agree on the price, and then things would all go wrong after that.

It is heart-breaking to become emotionally invested in making something, producing that 'great work', or bringing a truly great vision to reality only to have the real world of money and broken promises intrude. I've been in tears over projects that failed because the other side were lousy business people with more hope than money.

Part of the 'secret' of getting paid for your work is to negotiate a schedule of payments. You need a deposit and clear intervals of payment or clear deliverables after which incremental payment is expected. You deliver some, they deliver some money; you effectively hold the 'end product' hostage.

This is truly a rotten part of life. I'd become excited about working on some project, do a lot of preliminary thought on it, and become attached to it. Then, the deal would not happen and I'd be crushed. In the end I had to learn that there were tons of good ideas out there and that a new one would be along very soon. Sometimes, I had to take the risk of not eating for a while instead of getting involved in a project that wouldn't make certain I was making enough to live - and more importantly was willing to negotiate appropriate payment at appropriate times.

If someone is not willing to put down a deposit for your work, walk away. If they are not willing to pay you regularly or at specified milestones, walk away. If they are not willing to sign a contract, walk away. If they are not willing to provide you with a letter of reference or a case study when the project is complete, walk away.

I had to learn self-respect and self-worth. I had to learn that I didn't have to jump at every chance that came along, hoping it would work out. I had to learn to 'trust but verify.'

Why can't life be as simple as I once thought? Because some people are jerks and cheats while others are merely clueless optimists with more hope than money.

The DMCA And Evil Ad Spammers

I don't think I've ever mentioned it before, but I hate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Recently, a number of people have taken to posting pictures on Flickr showing 'Ad Spam' places around Second Life and their owners. Attempting to shame them or inform others about who they are so that no one supports them monetarily.

The example to the left in this post is a mega-prim ad spam. Oh, and it spins. Yes, you too could be the lovely recipient of that in your backyard.

The ad spammers did not like the fact that their name and their handiwork were being splashed all over Flickr. They invoked the DMCA and Flickr pulled down three of the pictures in that stream.

Over on New World Notes, they are reporting about how Rik Riel is trying to provoke a DMCA takedown notice. He is trying to force the issue of intellectual property and fair-use in Second Life. New World Notes makes a good point:

If you're a photojournalist reporting on the news in New York's Time Square, you don't need to get the permission of every business owner whose logo and trademarks will surely show up in the published photo. That's because there's already an established legal precedent of fair use.

I suggest all of you camera mavens and people who live next door to ugliness like this, post to that Flickr group, it would be very hard to takedown everyone.

This also raises the interesting point of what these ad spammers mean for Second Life real estate. The spammers own tiny parcels of land, 16m2, and they try to sell them for large amounts of money. Having them next to you drives down your enjoyment of your land and lowers its resale value. All sorts of things could come about:
1) People move to private sims because you don't have to deal with this.
2) You try to sell your mainland parcel, but can't because of the ads, you have to abandon it.
3) Mainland occupancy goes down, Linden Lab makes less money based on tier.
4) Ad revenue for these things dwindles as traffic dwindles. Eventually the ad land is abandoned due to lack of money.

Basically lots of economic churn, both good and bad.

Pontiac Is Closing Up Shop In SL

The SLNN and the SL Herald are reporting that Pontiac is leaving SL and closing it's sim. Like I was saying the other day about the cement plant, companies are going to be coming and going until they figure out what SL is for, just like they had to find out what the Internet was for a decade ago. The article makes a couple of interesting points:

Motorati was one of the few corporate builds that seemed to get SL right -- offering not a ghost island, but regular events and races and offering free land for people who were making contributions to Second Life car culture.
...
Sad but probably true. Until corporations stop thinking of SL as an advertising billboard and start actually building something of lasting value the metaverse is is going to be in Neutral and the gauges are going to read Fail.

[Updated since I accidentally hit the 'publish' button instead of the 'save'.]
What do you want in a corporate sim? What do you want in a corporate website? Well, if I ever thought of buying a Pontiac car, I might go to the Pontiac website to learn more about their cars, their company, and their service plans, all of which can be presented very nicely in a website. What can't I find on their website that can be provided in SL? Live help and advice? A 3D view of what their car's look like (although really good photos would possibly be just as good).

I don't know anything about car culture really, so this is all conjecture, but one thing that SL can provide is live interaction - and I don't mean by driving the cars. Perhaps they could have live help, but that could be provided by phone or taking your car to the service station. Perhaps they could provide a 'build options' thingie where you could put together your own car and see what all of the options/colors/etc look like. (Although a flash based picture on a website is still pretty good.) Most of these things can easily be done on a website or over phone as well.

The real advantage SL may have is in providing a place for a Pontiac community, where people who like and drive Pontiac cars can go to be steeped in all things Pontiac. Club meetings, shows, and public question and answer sessions with Pontiac engineers and experts are all possibilities. Anything where a group would like to interact. To build that community, they'd need Pontiac info, cars, events, etc. it sounds pretty much like what they had - although I don't think I was ever there and can't tell from personal experience.

A website can provide information readily, but it can't provide good, live interaction, especially with a group. Pontiac could have used their sim as a public face for the company to communicate with their customers. Not as advertising, but as public relations. For example, if Apple wanted to build a sim, they could put all sorts of nice displays and give away free objects modeled after their computers. But that would only be the surface, the real value would be in providing a Genius bar, learning sessions, Mac group meetings, and, basically, a place for Mac-heads to hang out and be Mac geeks together and talk all about Macs. Also, public announcements that don't warrant a full stage show like MacWorld or that you want to interact with people who can't make it to a big stage show like MacWorld.

SL is good at group interaction at a level of the proletariat, not at the level of reporters and insiders.

Bait Shops, Cement Plants, And Dogfood

Over on Girl Meets Second Life, Caterin spent an afternoon at an SL Cement Plant. A cement works in SL? Is it part of an urban role-playing game? Evidently, the cement works is from FLSmidth, ‘FLSmidth is a Danish world-leading manufacturer of cement and minerals plants’. It's like a cement plant theme park. What do they expect out of SL?

This reminds me a lot of the early pioneering days of the Internet. Back then, everyone was jumping on the bandwagon - they didn't know where it was going or what it meant, but everyone was talking about it, so they had to be there.

The Internet was a heady, confusing, eclectic, mixture of sites back then. There were new forms of money, dog food was being shipped at exorbitant rates, and everything was free. How do cement companies figure into this? Well, small business was trying to get on the Internet or the Information Superhighway as the press was hyping it back then.

Small companies, who had no other desire or need to get on the Internet except that their CIO read about it in a magazine, were trying to make websites. Most of these failed.

Friends of mine who, at the time, worked building websites for companies tell me about small businesses coming to them and asking for websites. When asked what did they want it for, what purpose did it serve, and fundamentally, what did they expect, had no idea other than, "we need a website, if we don't have one, we'll be left behind."

"Left behind" of what, they had no idea about, but everyone was raving about it, so like greedy little kids, they wanted one and they wanted people to go to it. They thought it would drive real world sales. Website builders kept telling these small companies that you needed to "be different", to make the site like "a game" or to "give something away for free." The common logic was that you had to provide something that consumers wanted so that they would come see your real world products and then go buy them. I don't know about you, but I didn't sit around going to big name brand web sites playing cruddy games and then thinking, "I want a Big Mac."

To this day, some companies still think like that, have you ever been to Pepsi's website? Me neither. I've heard they run contests and they used to provide games to play, or something like that, maybe that was Coke's website or was that any of a number of other big, real world brands.

I've been watching Second Life since I came to it over a year ago and it bears much resemblance to the early days of the Internet. The graphics sucked, really, a child with crayons made better icons than what passed for cutting edge on the old websites and the first things in Second Life also look like anyone could make it. The ease of writing a simple web page and throwing together some graphics so that nearly everyone did it is very similar to how the simple prim and texture objects that we build with in Second Life are right now. Do you see many of those types of websites floating around on anything other than hobbyist pages? I didn't think so. You either spend lots of money to have an IT department to have a site or you use an internet application like Blogger or eBay Stores. If you are really fancy you use a "website in a box" on a rented server, like WordPress.

If we look at Second Life to determine what it will look like ten years from now, we will see that big corporate sites like Pepsi are only useful for finding the phone number so you can call to complain about their real world products and not much else. I think that Playboy and other sims are going to end like this. The real winners are sites that allow you to find what you are looking for or to buy those hard to find things. But, perhaps the most successful will be like the unforeseen winners of today. Perhaps, there will even be a new revolution in user content, like what you are reading right now, a blog.

The big counter-point to the "all websites are professional" is that most of what we do on the Internet outside of shopping is social networking, blogging, and watching videos and it's created by amateurs for consumption by amateurs. That is remarkably like Second Life. Is Second Life a YouTube, for person to person interaction, or is Second Life, like Linden Labs would lead you to believe, a platform like the Internet? I think it really is a platform and you are going to see more "Bill Joe Jim Bob's Bait Shop" style sims until both big and little business figures out what it's doing.

Eventually the real selling will arise and we will be using Second Life to buy furniture and clothes online because now we can actually "see and touch" them. You wait, open registration is only the beginning, Linden is probably thinking about registration-less Second Life, so that Ikea can point its website to a sim in Second Life with models of all of their furniture where you can see how it looks next to all of your other furniture and then purchase it. Or enter your measurements, an avatar is created and now you can see what an outfit will look like on you. Some sites are already doing something like this with your picture and trying out new hair-cuts before you go to a salon.

Then will come the "new media", similar to blogs or YouTube, what will we be trading around? 3D models, animations, toys and gadgets? Maybe. All I know is that for Second Life to realize its potential as a new "platform" it will have to become more open, not less. Less like a pay-per-month game like Warcraft and more like a browser - always there. Will Linden Lab go the way of Netscape, giving us a browser and a server for free, then dying? I don't think so, the asset server, lindens, and a few other things prevents that.

Anyway, enough pontificating and conjecturing, now I really do want to go find small businesses like the cement one and get any freebies they are giving away. I missed out on the "big freebie giveaways" of the mid to late 90s. Give me my free loot!

Fear Of Barbie's Big Boobs

Melissa Yeuxdoux writes about her fear of being labeled a Barbie for being tall, thin, and having large breasts. Although I never had a Barbie with proportions like hers in her recent forays into the realm of massive breasts.

I enjoy being labeled a Barbie both in Real Life and Second Life, here are my reasons why:

All the kids love her

People recall their time with her wistfully and with a smile

Her wide selection of clothes

She's a princess, a veterinarian, an astronaut, a diplomat, and so much more

She has pet cats, dogs, horses, pandas, lions, and zebras

She is about to turn fifty and doesn't look a day over twenty

She has a pilot's license and flys commercial jets

She is into BDSM

Every guy has looked up her skirt at one time or another

People spend lots of money on her

With all that, how could you *not* want to be Barbie?

I'm glad Melissa is enjoying her time with massive breasts and has the guts to do it. Maybe I'll buy a set and we can form a Big Boob Solidarity movement. Perhaps I could sell advertising on the side of them like the Goodyear blimp.

The Adventure Continues

Second Life can be the most sublime of places at times. One of the neighbors of my first land is a girl who is in a wheelchair in Real Life and loves that in Second Life she can fly and walk. I have friends in Second Life that are disabled, suffer from MS, are deaf, or are shut-ins for various reasons. All of them can live a rich life in Second Life, abandoning their limits or problems when they log in. This is one of the things I love most about Second Life.

Then there are some who are very self-centered for various reasons and cause turmoil in the lives of those they purport to care about. They bring jealousy, selfishness, rumor-mongering, and worse into Second Life. While professing to love or care for others, they instead allow their own petty worries to mar the lives of those they most wish to be near. Upset and melodrama occur all around them. Like in Real Life, these are the people who spoil the fun for the rest of us. I pity them, they often lead sad lives consumed by their problems. In a perfect world I could help all of them, as it is, I can only help some of them, because helping them exhausts me.

Through all of this runs the relationships that we build in Second Life, the friends and the sometimes more than friends. The infatuations, the moments of lust, the camaraderie, and the sharing of common burdens and experiences enrich us with their variety. I am surprised at how attached I am to some of my friends when I consider I've never met them in Real Life, only chatted with them, and only shared part of a virtual world with them.

This past week has been filled with highs and lows, combining all of these experiences into an emotionally uplifting and draining week, not fully cathartic, but close. I learned that someone I know suffers from severe head trauma with blinding headaches and basically "lives" in Second Life because of this Real Life condition. The actions of a few drama-laden individuals caused lots of commotion in the group of my closest friends in Second Life, my friends at Paradise Lost, hopefully everything will return to normal there eventually. Finally, a growing infatuation/friendship of mine changed dramatically last night. She changed, wanting more from Second Life via her craft, and isn't satisfied with the relationship that I thought was blossoming.

I wear my heart on my sleeve, I can't help it. I enjoy the rush and the excitement of love and the learning about someone on a deep level. That also sets me up for a lot of pain. Each time the relationship ends, I'm crushed. What surprised me most about this one, is that its in a virtual world. I truly looked forward to spending time with her, flirting, talking, etc. it felt electric. Now, she's moving on and I'm faced with the loss and the emptiness that always follows. I didn't think my feelings were so intense about someone I met in a virtual world a month ago, but when she told me, it was like the floor fell out from beneath my feet and the world was no longer stable. No one was more surprised than I was about my reaction.

Now, I'm usually pretty bad about break-ups, I don't take rejection well, and my usual responses include anger, the cold-shoulder, pathetic attempts to convince them to continue the relationship, and worse. Contrary to historical record, I'm trying to change that behavior of mine. I would truly like to continue to remain friends with her, I value her insight, her humor, and her experience; I just hope the awkwardness of the change in the relationship doesn't prevent that. Having seen what self-centered behavior causes in the prior days of the week, my usual responses of causing drama to deal with the pain seem trite and highly unappealing. I've abhorred drama for years now, but have been unable to fully wipe it from my palette of reactions.

It would be easy to sulk, to take out my pain on those around me, to be angry at her, to beg her, or to do any number of stupid things. I plan to remove those options from the ones I will do, but that leads to a huge uncertainty in what to do next. The obvious actions to further my self-centered concern are removed and a new vista rises before me. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do next and my fear of losing what remains of our friendship is paralyzing me. I don't know what the healthy actions are, what is too much or too little.

So, if I seem a little unlike my normal self for a while, its because I'm growing and changing. Internally, I know that all good things must come to an end eventually and that a virtual world seems to have even more potential for rapid and unforseen change. On the bright side, all bad things must come to and end as well. If Paradise Lost recovers and returns to the way it was or better is unknown. If my friendship continues or gets better is unknown.

What is certain is more pain and more joy will happen, often in unforseen ways. The stable will crumble and the unstable will turn out to be made of firmament.

No matter what happens, no matter how much I dislike change sometimes, the adventure will continue and I look forward to what will happen.

If I keep telling myself that, someday I might believe it.