further isolation tales

Isn’t it strange how some in SL just want to mimic exactly what’s happening in RL, which I find a bit baffling as I see SL more like a bit of an escape, of a sorts, or a holiday from it.

I think the oddest thing lately is facemasks. I don’t enjoy wearing them in RL even though in some circumstances in these times of lockdown and Covid and social-distancing I have too, so why would I wear one in SL, especially as virtual worlds are pretty much the only place on the planet, apart from Antarctica, where there is no coronavirus. We should revel in that freedom to move, explore, mingle, ‘touch’, not have to socially-distant and not get locked down there too.

Although there are times in SL when one feels incredibly isolated, exploring lands where there is not a soul, or at best some mannequins or bots, but no actual ‘real’ people. It’s eerie, although it can be fascinating too traversing these shadow lands, dusty corners, forgotten swathes. Apart from ‘abandoned land’ it’s obvious someone somewhere is paying for it and yet there’s no sign of life, activity or anything. This is when it really feels dystopian, even more so than those sims that actually are meant to be and designed specially as a dystopian-theme. It’s these accidental and inadvertent ones that truly have an atmosphere and ambience of some kind of nowhere, end of the world scenario, probably because they weren’t intended to be so. They sit like a shock on the landscape, a moment frozen in the last moment anyone spent there, an intimate anonymity.

I still wish we could travel between sims without having to teleport, to actually, walk, or drive, or fly, or sail. I know this can be done with many on the mainland where they are joined together, but, there are still what feel like huge expanses of nothingness, impassable. What a shame they aren’t connected by the same sea and sky, because if they were then any new sims could appear tectonic-like kind of simulating volcanic activity, as in Iceland, throwing up new land in dramatic ways.

I suppose that’s probably a bit too much to ask of SL, who seem a bit stuck in their ways and still mostly unimaginatively focused on making money rather than making experiences. We may have funky new skins and mesh Christmas pubic hair (it’s absolutely true, the other day I found this for sale!) but the ground on which we stand still seems stuck in its ways.

I am still here though, isolated and not, still me, still looking like me, not yet turned into a dragon or a walking tree, still got blue hair as I have had from my very SL birth, pretty much, give or take a week, and here I still am, gosh, how many years later? Over 12 years! Madness!

 © Anan Eebus