Social changes? Nah… just rambling

Sometimes, from time to time, i like to sit and think about anything. I would say i have some like a passion for analyzing almost anything, or to try to look back and see how everything changes.

Most of the times i keep my thoughts for myself, sometimes i share them with some friends and sometimes i write about them, like i’m doing now, so it seems this will be a rambling post…

Last October was my third rezday, three years in Second Life, wow, that seems a lot, and someway is. Lot of things changed, not only technically (i mean how SL works and all that), also the people, how people lives SL. Three years ago i saw Second Life as a world of fantasy, a world where anybody can be anything and do anything. Also saw it as a world of freedom and coexistence, with his issues, of course, but only small ones. And even always there were some conflicts, some “racism” (against furries, tinies, whatever…), most of the people was pretty open-minded. There was… how to say it?… some respect to others, some feeling we all were pioneers exploring different paths. I presume this feeling was even stronger in people really old in SL, i mean older than me. Maybe all that was that way, or maybe i was just too naive, who knows? Anyway, then the number of active residents was quite lower and the maximum number of residents in the grid at the same time was maybe 8000 or 10000.

With the time all this changed. More and more residents came, with different views about things and the social structure of Second Life changed. Someway the Second Life society became more “mainstream” and the “minorities” became real minorities since most of the new residents were “Augmentationists”. This is an old SL dilemma, “Augmentationists” vs “Inmersionists”. I’m sure most of you know what these words means, but well, in short, “Augmentationists” are the ones who feel and live Second Life as an extension of the “Flesh Life” (or Real Life, but well, both lifes, SL and FL are pretty real) and “Inmersionists” are the ones who consider Second Life a different world and life, isolated and individual, totally independent, with its own rules and existence. Personally i consider myself an “augmentationist” with some “inmersionist” streaks. This two definitions are pretty extreme and i think most of us are somewhere in the middle but they are interesting as definitions.

This process where Second Life became more “mainstream”, as i said before, reduced the presence (in relative terms) of “alternative” cultures-communities as Furries, possibly because they were not enough attractive for the new residents. Does this process damaged Second Life as a community? Well, i don’t think so, just made it slightly different. But made it better or worse? Ah! That’s the big question!

I think is not worse, but is not better either. I love some things of how Second Life society is now and i dislike some others, exactly as it happened always. I miss more diversity, but at the same time i think a lot of people are creating right now amazing stuff. I dislike that feeling of living in a eternal high school year with gossip and drama some blogs use as main topic, but we can consider it a Role Play that takes itself too seriously (OMG! Just found the connection between Gor and SCD! ) and have fun with it.

OK… i know all this long text can be written in a few words: “I love Second Life as i loved it always, but i miss some more diversity and that feeling of being pioneers, but that feeling can’t come back since time passed and things changed. I miss also some respect to others.” So don’t get upset with me for making you lose some minutes reading 500 words of something that could be said in 40… i said in the beginning i was rambling.