Month: May 2009

A bit ago my sister and I were walking and talking and laughing. I was reflecting on Life. Well, really on MY life because, as you should know, it IS all about ME. *grin* I see life as a series of specific events. You either pass these events or you fail. You get letter grades as well. I mentioned one such incident to my sister, saying that I thought I got a C- at best because although I “passed” it, I really could have done better and learned more. On the other hand, I gave myself a strong A for another rite of passage. She was quite amused at this concept: that Life is a curriculum. Apparently even though we are sisters, we don’t view Life in the same manner. But we started playing with the idea of the University of Life, where there is a core curriculum – things we ALL must do. We identified core courses and electives. It seems to me we could play this game here, too. We are enrolled in SL. There are certain courses we ALL must take. There are electives. I suspect that this topic would be best in the hands of someone like Prad Prathivi in his Metaversally Speaking blog. Actually, he probably HAS had a post on something like this – he had so many truly funny posts on life in SL. *grin* My apologies if I am treading old ground. I am too lazy to go back and read all of Prad’s humor posts (although I would probably laugh all over again, and laughing is good). And I’ve been thinking on this topic for the last few weeks.

So here it is…. Ahuva’s curriculum guide to the Univ of SL. I know it’s incomplete – PLEASE be sure to add to the course list. I am NOT telling you which courses I have taken. *grin* After all – I am still a matriculating student. I have time ……

Orientation Island 100:

Okay, I’ll admit to failing this one. If you are one of the 5 people who have been with me since Day 1 of this blog, you already know that I failed OI. This course allows the new student to learn to walk, talk and “do things”. Since I failed this and was tp’d out of OI in less than an hour, I really DON’T know what happens in this course. LOL. I ultimately took an equivalency exam so I could move on……

Inventory 100

You have to learn how to open your inventory. How to buy something and open it to your inventory, how to make folders.

*grin* Okay, here’s the truth. Those aren’t really the kinds of courses I meant at all. Let’s get right to the nitty-gritty. I’ve left out sooooo many. But these are the first that came to mind. *grin* Oops. What DOES that say about me?????

Cyber 100

Have your first SL sexual experience. Everyone has to at least try cyber. There ARE harmless ways to do this, you know. This reminds me of a wonderful book by Willard R. Espy, The Almanac of Words at Play. He does a WONDERFUL example of porn writing for people who have no desire to read porn. He describes cooking an egg. *grin* But he does it porn-style. So. You CAN learn to cyber straight up (all puns intended) or you could get someone to help you learn “cooking-egg” style. Requirements: LOL. An active imagination??? The proper pose balls??? A VERY good friend??? A total stranger????

Drama Queen 200

Meet your first drama queen. Be part of the emotional storm flung through the local chat and all known IMs. Have people IM’ing you to report back on the drama queen. To tell you the ripple effect. Waste hours and hours on the Drama Queen’s story. Requirements: Make 3 friends. At least one of them is a drama queen, trust me.

Drunk in SL 210

Logging in to SL while you are inebriated. This course is closely related to Drama Queen 200. The most successful strategy for navigating THIS course is to be sufficiently drunk that you are unable to actually work the keyboard or mouse, and therefore you fall asleep before you do too much damage. Requirements: /me blinks. whatever it takes to get you to an altered condition where you are going to say things you really shouldn’t and where you will do something equivalent to dancing on the table with a lampshade on your head in RL. But – in SL – dancing on the table with a lampshade on your head is everyday behavior. *grin*

Live Mic 300

Oh yes, a VERY popular course. Leaving your mic open. It’s bad enough when it’s just feedback. But when you actually start talking over the performer/speaker….. that’s a fail. *grin* Requirements: no headset, open mic, refusal to read chats and IMs where people keep saying to you: please close your mic, we can all hear you. please close your mic- you are causing feedback.

Failed Love Affair 400

You are in love. You shout it to the world. You partner. It fails. Your heart breaks. I’m not even making fun here, folks. It’s a course. It’s life. I’ve watched too many people enroll in this one. Despite the grueling course load – this course always has standing-room only enrollment. Course requirement: the willingness (or stupidity) to trust your heart to another, to let yourself feel, and to learn that SL is like RL – things don’t always work out. Duration of course – much shorter than it takes in RL.

Learning to Create 100

Whether you take on scripting or building, you must try to create something sometime. Either you are hooked and you have found your electives, or you need to find a different vocational path. Course requirement is that you must create something other than a wood cube. *grin* At least change the color of the cube and make it a sphere!!!!!!!

SL Ennui 500

No one loves me. I hate everyone. I’m bored. I’m going to eat worms. SL is the pits and I’m leaving forever. You should too, you know, because SL sucks. I’m leaving. I’m never coming back. I’m never talking or thinking about SL ever again. Course requirements: you need to tell this to everyone you know, everyone you meet, everyone you don’t know. You need to post it to every medium possible. This course lasts 48 hours, at which point you return to SL and pretend you never said any of it. *grin*

Grid Hunts 100

Freebies!!!!! Hunting the grid for freebies! Learning to spot hidden packages. Luring your friends out to join you, getting THEM to waste hours on the hunt as well (you get extra credit for every friend you seduce into wasting time on the hunt 🙂 ). If you haven’t hunted, you cannot graduate. It’s really that simple. Requirements: None. Show up on the hunt. Click on the object. You are hooked. Your inventory is doomed. (See inventory picture above….. I have over 30 Bunny Hop folders. That I still have not organized. Plus all the stuff I also BOUGHT from the stores that I was in while I was wasting hours chasing eggs.)

Live Concerts 315

You must attend a live concert. See the local chat spam. Observe the idiots who feel compelled to shout, scream and perform obscenities in local chat while the performer is singing or talking. Feel the excitement when you realize that there is indeed a real live human being on the other end of your computer. That person is really singing and playing – for YOU!!!! And you get lost in the music and the glow. Requirements: None. Just try it once, that’s really all it takes. You’ll do it again. Really – you’ll take electives in this field, we all do.

SL Blogging 230

Ah, my favorite. LOL. EVERYONE in SL bogs. You must create a blog. You must tell all your friends about your blog. You must send the blog link to EVERYONE you know. Put your blog link in your profile. On every page in your profile. Pontificate to the world about the meaning of life. About the meaning of SL. About your personal hopes and dreams. About why you are so brilliant and wonderful and talented and everyone should take your advice. Requirements: ROFLOL. It’s like making babies unfortunately. They let ANYONE do it. Even Ahuva……

By now you know me. I will study and think and ponder an issue until I can reach a place where I feel I understand it. I’ve been having great difficulty with people saying “SL is full of THESE people” or “SL is full of THOSE people” or “Everyone I meet in SL behaves SUCHandSUCH”. But I don’t SEE that. I”m not denying that THESE and THOSE and SUCHandSUCH exist. I’m saying that my world is NOT oriented that way. First I got annoyed – stop painting me with your brush. But then I wanted to understand WHY we are all so sure that our view of the world is correct. So I’ve been chatting and emailing with friends.

I’ve heard some very interesting takes on what kinds of people come to virtual worlds, what kind of people come to SL specifically. Almost all the conversations I’ve had contained at least one insight that helped me understand more clearly why I don’t recognize YOUR world. The following idea comes from a friend who declined to guest blog. She told me to take her email and present it. So that is what I am doing. *grin* I take no credit for these ideas, but I will say that they resonate with me, and perhaps I can finally let this topic rest.

What I would suggest is related back to Rheta Shan’s blog on why people come to SL–that they find something they need. And I would also suggest that the friends they make are related to what they need. So for example, one person finds other people who, like him, need a few hours/day to escape from some trauma or issue in their RL which is so overwhelming that it colors their entire real world. Of COURSE those people would be friends–who else would REALLY “understand” him, and thus “connect” with him long-term? He has undoubtedly met MANY people who do not fit his paradigm, but they aren’t his friends, they are just other people in the same room.

You, Ahuva, found a business environment which you saw as an opportunity to enrich your RL business environment (with which you have been bored and underutilized by for years). You connected with people who are creating the kinds of things YOU would like to create–not the concrete things, per se (i.e. a specific business product) but a “bigger picture”. So it’s no accident that the friends YOU made are very intelligent, high-achieving, creative people who are inventing new ways to interact in a business environment and expanding the opportunities for others to do the same. Those were the people YOU needed to have in your life, hence those are the people you found, and friended.

People find what they need. If they have been damaged and need friends who understand them, then they find other damaged people. If they need to be loved and appreciated and desired, they find a lover. (Obviously so many people need this, that is why the Internet is renowned for sex!) If they need a challenge, they find a challenge. The posts and comments say more about the people who write them than they say about SL.

I think that her words make sense to me. We find what we need. We may need more than one thing, so we will have many friends. But we fill our world with what we need. Our world is what we make it. We all have a different view out our front door.