Raul Crimson’s experiences in Second Life®
Second ramblings
Some are looking for a few “good” avatars…
Mar 5th
Some days ago Linden Lab, well, Slaton Linden published a post in the Second Life Blogs asking for:
…a few good avatars to help us with a new ad campaign intended to bring the tremendous diversity and depth of the Second Life community to the forefront of more people’s minds…
Since i have a dirty mind once i read the post i so needed to parody it, i mean the example ad.
I wrote a long essay of 500 words about all this but was boring and possibly not all fair, so since i don’t want to bore you and i try to be as fair as possible i’ll try to express my ideas about this in short and clear ways. First, even i agree Second Life may seem to some people only a game, a place to have virtual sex or to grief i agree the other side of Second Life, the one of artists, educators, musicians, creators… should be promoted and make public. But since both sides are the real SL if they want to show the diversity they should consider an ad in the style of the one i made. 
Second, they will find a problem since most of the SL residents prefer to keep privacy at some levels, and if they look for people in Facebook where the TOS clearly forbid to create accounts for “not real people” like avatars they will find only a small representation of the diversity they want to show. So even all together may be a good idea and i hope it works to bring new people to Second Life i think opening the discussion inside the SLblogs would be better than doing it in Facebook. Also i wonder… will those “good avatars” get paid for giving his both images for an ad? Because if they pay enough i can show whatever they want!!! *joking* 
Tied up… or free again…
Mar 2nd
Long time no blogging, well, one month… but anyway my blogging “rhythm” has been pretty slow in the last months. Well not only blogging, also taking pictures and editing them, or making anything inside Second Life (i’ve been doing stuff, but not making stuff).
Soooo… here it comes one of those personal blogposts about thoughts, feelings, etc… confessions on a virtual world.
In the last year everything started slowing down, don’t get me wrong, not sad about it, i just want to understand what happened, and sometimes the best way to understand is to try to explain. There are many possible reasons, first, i’m too self-demanding and often not happy with what i make. I took so many pictures and deleted them once edited, or wrote many blogposts or created many objects or builds and deleted them too only because i was not happy enough with them. When you have a period where you are not happy enough with most of the things you make you start to think that maybe you are good enough and after you deleted some number of things you wonder also if it worths it, the energy, passion and time invested. Then you just stop creating until you feel the need to do it again.
At the same time one feels sometimes like a slave of what one makes. You have to write blogposts, you have to take pictures, you have to do lots of other stuff and you have to live your life and meet friends and… and… and is not you have to meet your friends or live your life, is just you want to do it, but all together when you have a limited time becomes stressful because you feel tied, trapped, and at the same time you feel bad if you don’t do all you want to do… and i’m terrible organizing my time, he he he…
All this stress is because you want to please yourself… and at the same time please others too, but now i know i just have to please myself because is not possible to do it all at the same time for long. What i do and make in Second Life must not be a cage and that’s what changed exactly. All i want to do i’ll do it for myself, and i’m sure some others will like it… and some not, of course.
Oooof! I feel better now after saying all this! Thanks for listening-reading, finally it seems blog readers are the most patient listeners.
Social changes? Nah… just rambling
Jan 12th
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.
Only sometimes…
Sep 6th
Only sometimes one feels he has nothing to say, or just doesn’t want to say nothing. Only sometimes one feels he has nothing to share, or just doesn’t want to share nothing…
In the last months I was not blogging much for some different reasons. Maybe the first lines in this post are some of this reasons, is not I was bored, maybe only a bit. Only sometimes one needs to sit and try to focus where one is going, or where one wants to go. For a time i was feeling lost someway, wondering why I am in here and if those reasons were still there… And sure they’re still there, but some have changed a bit, life is evolution so they are exactly not the same.
Possibly all this may sound confusing, but some of you will understand me for sure, is difficult to explain some feelings or thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, is not I’m depressed or something, is just when what’s around you changes you need to adapt yourself. At the same time some changes in my “other” life needed some adaptation from me too, after all these “two lifes” are not separated, are only two sides of the same, at least for me.
My main reason to start a blog more than one year ago was to express myself, to show what i like or what i’m interested in, all within Second Life. That’s why i’m writing this, as part of this need to express myself, and someway is, at the same time, an apology for the one who use to read this blog. I will keep blogging, speaking about what I like or dislike, showing clothes, places, whatever… and I’ll do it with more energy and new reasons.
Thanks to all the ones who read this, thanks for giving me all that energy… Only sometimes one says thanks… even he should do it more often…
Smile… is the best thing to do
Jul 5th
Some times one have to wonder (I do it often) what attitude he has towards life (first and second, but let’s talk about the second one in this case).
Let’s face it, as a friend says “Life is 4 days… and 3 of them is raining”, so… you know. I’m sure SL is about a lot of “serious” stuff, at least i consider serious some things, and i love to enjoy them. With “serious stuff” i mean the things i really care about, like friends, but even they are “serious” that doesn’t mean they are boring, they are just things i like to care about. So let’s smile.
About the rest of stuff, things that seem sooooo serious but actually have absolutely no importance or even meaning like dramas, rivalry, “i’m-so-good-and-i-can-say-whatever-i-want-because-my-freedom-of-speech-is-over-your-image-and-your-right-to-be-respected” stuff and so and so… let’s smile too, because actually there are not important at all.
From time to time i have to write something like this, because, even i try to smile, sometimes… for some seconds… the smile get broke and then there’s only a feeling of repugnance, specially when i read some posts or comments on some blogs, or some plurks or tweets. Yeah, i know i just should not read them… and i’m in the process to not do it… is like smoking, you know is bad for you, but is soooo easy to get back to it when you quite.
But the smile is back… becuase i know how stupid is this together, because i just shouldn’t care about all that shit, so is better to stay with a friend that loves anal than to read some things.
Ramblings about SL6B and the vision on Linden Lab team
Jun 23rd
Today was the opening of SL6B (Second Life 6th Birthday) celebration with a speech of Philip Linden, the founder and creator of what Second Life is (well, actually himself and his team). The picture above was taken during that speech. Just after the speech i started to think about how residents see Linden Lab and its events, specially when a friend said to me:
Wishing i was that enthusiastic about a Linden event.
In the last couple of years Linden Lab had a “tense” relationship with the residents, specially about one issue: the maturity of content and the grid, there was also quite a bit tension about the land prices but that was occasional. Nipples, child avatars, etc… all those were quite a conflict in some Linden events, at least in Burning Life and SL5B. At the same time, in this period, it seems Lindens are away from the residents and possibly this can be one of the reasons of this conflicts. Of course there are other reasons, like the pressure of some media and politics and the image of Linden Lab as business, possibly they don’t want to look like a sexual service, or a place where perverts have their games. Of course i understand their position is not easy, between the residents and the media + politics, but in the past i think they didn’t do thinks as good as they would.
After some time i presume i feel “in peace” lately with Linden Lab although all those mistakes, or at least after all those actions i think were not right. And i feel this peace because i think they are doing it better, or a few better. I think is a good idea to promote SL as an education tool, i think is a good idea to give the Linden Prize to organizations like Virtual Ability (with a program of help to real handicapped people in SL), i even think is not a bad idea to concentrate all the “sex industry” of Second Life in an special continent. At the same time, with this last action about “Adult” content the limits are clear and are not particularly “narrow” for what i saw and read. One can agree or not, but at least the statements are quite clear, or at least clearer. After this times feeling a bit upset with Linden Lab as resident and as customer it feels weird to talk good about them. 
Of course this would never be “the last word”, Linden Lab can do it better… or worse. Anyway, while i was at Philip’s speech, i was wondering where M was. Well, i don’t like M much, you know it, actually i think things were quite worse after he started being CEO. I don’t know if the last actions i talked about are part of his strategy, but someway i see him as an administrator more than as a “president”. M doesn’t has the charisma Philip has, M is more “grey”, more like an office man in a dark suit and white shirt. So i wonder if M was not there because this lack of charisma, because he was on holidays or because things will change again at Linden Lab soon. Well, i presume we will know sooner or later.
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