a place of my own– nekopolis tails

I joined Second Life (SL) in February 2008, and wow, that was so long ago in a world so different from what it is now. I’m not sure what the age-limit is for SL but by US standards I might have not been old enough but as I am in the UK, I was and still am most definitely an adult here.

For the first year I didn’t have anywhere of my own to live, as such, I’d never thought about it until I saw that people did have homes of different kinds. Once I’d become a vampire I made my ‘home’ the land of whatever clan I was in, but it wasn’t ever anywhere I could call my own private space.

Then, while on my random travels I discovered a sim called Nekopolis, and while there met someone who is even to this day still on my friends list told me about a block of apartments with rooms to rent for 1L a week for 10 prims. I thought, brilliant! Until I remembered I had absolutely zero money/lindens. I’d even become part neko at the time, I had a very cool blue-shaded tail.

So, I took up a combination of camping, which was boring and didn’t do for long, and hunting out places where magic chairs or lotteries, whatever, were giving away lindens if the first letter of your first name landed just right. This got me 1L here and 1L there but it was incredibly laborious and tedious. That’s how it came about I started pole-dancing for money.

I went around the various pole-dancing clubs and places, like beaches and bars and anywhere really that had a tip jar you could freely log in to and just go for it. But then it also had to be somewhere for people otherwise I wouldn’t have earned many tips with no one there.

Now this was a lucrative occupation, at least for a while anyway, and fun, again, at least for a while. What I hadn’t realised was how exhausting it could be, and a steep learning curve though I did take to it quite well, I thought. I was earning sometimes hundreds for an hour or two’s work.

It was mad, but I worked hard for it, it’s not as easy as it looks even though some dancers just seemed to get on the pole and let the anims (pre-programmed animations) take over, like it was they weren’t there in RL. I didn’t do that, I was present all the time and interacting with any audience and happily chatted with customers, some of who were really nice and not all creeps as one might imagine in these places, and respectful too. Some places though did have so-called bouncers who ejected anyone rude. Pole-dancing doesn’t have to be seedy, even though I did do partial striptease with it down to lingerie for a while until I was brave enough to go topless, but only for the right tips and if it felt right. I never went total nude though, had to leave something to the imagination, surely.

Consequently, I was now earning plenty of L’s to get one of those single-room apartments in Nekopolis, finally, all I had to do was go there every day and keep an eye out for one to come free. Lo and behold, after a few weeks one did and I got it and moved into my first own place where at least I could rezz some seating and a pose stand, which pretty much took up all the ten prims. But that was all I needed. I loved the novelty of it and I set home there for a handy low-lag place to log in.

I stayed there for ages, more than a year, which in SL is a long time. The only reason I left was that, sadly, the sim closed down, as so many do. Such is the nature of place. It was a shame and I do miss it because apart from it being inexpensive to live here, it was just a cool place with plenty of hangouts, and shops! Who knows, if it was still there now I might also still be living there.

As for the pole-dancing, I carried on for several months, adding chair-dancing among other related things to my CV, including some perhaps less respectable skills. In time I moved on from the pole work into other stuff inworld. To this day it is still the best earning job I’ve ever had. 

 © Anan Eebus

 

wherefore art thou

Where are they all?!

All those tens of thousands of people on SL inworld at any one time, where do they go? Frequently I’ll log on and see on the opening screen the numbers on how many avatars, or avis, are inworld right now which can be usually anything between 25,000 and 50,000 and sometimes even more, yet I barely see, meet, bump into a single one of them. Although, that’s an accidental lie, I do, a few, but literally only a few on my travels, in ones and twos, threes and fours here and there, sometimes tens of people, occasionally a few dozen at best, but that’s pretty unusual.

So, even if you add up these avis scattered across the plethora of sims that exist in SL there’s no way they can account for the tens of thousands, surely. It’s baffling, a conundrum, an enigma, a Mobius strip-shaped wrapped up in a Schrodinger’s cat sat a box wearing a hat.

But then, what I’m really wondering is, where are all the real people? Where are those who aren’t bots or zombies? I’m not talking actual zombies, by the way, that although being real people with real accounts, they don’t actually do anything other than stand or sit around, often just to camp for money or goods or whatever. I’m convinced their real-world owners are often not even at their computers, logging in only to go afk (away from keyboard).

Many of those I see around aren’t actually anyone at all but Bots, or SmartBots, but are nevertheless included in the numbers online because they are actual accounts. They are usually of one of two types of Personal Bot, ‘Standard Bots’ which function as such things as greeters, AI support, inviters, notice-senders; and then there are ‘Model Bots’ which are those used as mannequins, dance models, beautification, and usually moving in some way. These tend to do less than the Standard ones, but, in saying that with respect to both, they are actually real avis, it’s just that there’s no one behind the keyboard, no one at the wheel. Some can even be set to automatically log in and out like being on a timer. But, like I say, being actual accounts as such, they are included in the number inworld at any one time.

But these bots aren’t anyone you can have any meaningful interaction with, and that includes another relatively new thing I stumbled on the other day, another kind of bot in a way, “Smart-Mates”. There really is such a thing, I know, weird. They may sound a bit rude or naughty but nope, they aren’t, sorry to disappoint. They hang out with you, follow you, always want to be with you, which can be regarded either as welcome company, or, a bit creepy and clingy. Some have been lovingly called, ‘bodyguards’. Like the other kind of bots, they too are actual avatars with real SL accounts and also like them there’s no one at the wheel, so to speak, and you rent them as opposed to buying them. I think anyway, I am not totally clear on how it all works. How much control you have over them I’m not sure but might feel a bit like owning a blow-up doll.

Some days can really feel you’re wandering around an abandoned world where all the people have been stolen, kidnapped, abducted. So, where are they all? Or, have I got it wrong and in fact we the real people are actually outnumbered by the bots and zombies, and now, ‘smart-mates’?

© Anan Eebus