Me here now

It has been so long since that first day I found myself here, in Second Life, unsure of myself, not even knowing why I was here at all.

It was a radio program I heard way back on 2008 where SL was mentioned in glowing terms as being “the next big thing” in virtual reality since when it was launched back in June 2003, about five and half years before I discovered its delights. Not sure if I did so out of curiosity or maybe even boredom, although I hardly ever, if ever, get bored, but I was going through a rocky period in my life so if I’m honest, that was probably an impetus, an escape from the real sometimes seemed a good idea at the time.

Apparently, by 2013, SL had over one million users of which I was one, and still am, and now this year, in fact this month on the 23^rd it’ll have reached its 20^th anniversary. Nowadays its user-numbers bobble around 800,000 to 900,000, so they say, though how many of those are active, as in log in at least once a month of not more frequently, is hard to say. I know for a fact there are numerous dead accounts, avatars that still exist ‘on paper’, so to speak, or inworld, but are no longer accessed by their real world selves; effectively abandoned. People move on and don’t bother or remember to actually delete their inworld avis (avatars), simply walk away or even lost their password and rather than faff about trying to find it again they make a new avatar, while some people seem to drop in once a year maybe for whatever reason.

Whatever, many I think, we can become quite attached to our avatars, our inworld selves. The longer we’re inworld with our inworld persona the harder it can be to just erase it from existence. The thought of doing so might elicit feelings of grief, the idea of maybe losing a part of yourself, this you that is you while at the same time isn’t. It’s a weird psychology and potentially a huge personal dilemma.

Now, I know of some who make avatars and throw them away regularly, never get attached, move on, and seem to have no problem with that approach. Personally, I’d find that impossible. Is it healthy to become so attached to something that’s on the face of it little more than pixels, ones and zeroes? I don’t know.

I was SL born on the 8^th February, 2008 which makes me, as I’m writing this blog, 15 years and 4 months of age, a total of 5603 days since I first ever logged into this alternative world created, founded, invented, whatever, by Philip Rosedale. It feels kind of like time in a bottle. Even though for now I seem to do less inworld I’m in no rush to leave, it’s still a part of me.

I remember how I felt when another virtual world, Inworldz, actually closed down completely, and quite suddenly, so much so most of us had little or no time to properly finalise our affairs there or even say goodbye to our inworld selves, many actually lost real money. As with SL I’d invested quite a lot of myself, not so much financially but emotionally, and as such felt, in a way, grief-stricken. I know some people might think it potty to be like this, but it’s no different from anything you put a lot of yourself into to have taken away.

These places can get under your skin, you have to be careful sometimes to get the balance right, which as I’ve said in previous blogs I’d got wrong numerous times, but I think finally I’ve found a kind of equilibrium, for now anyway.

Then again, I seem to keep changing my mind on this, some days I want to get more involved again, others am happy to keep connected but also a distance. Either way, RL rules! For all it being stressful and not being able to fly unaided, like you can in SL.

© Anan Eebus 

dead zone

Where do all the avatars go when they’re no longer are here?

I know, I know! Into the dead zone (cue the dramatic music!)

Second Life (SL) is littered with so many phantoms, or what I call fleeters, those who were there once and now not but have left their ghost in names, accounts and avatars which exist and don’t exist at the same time in a limbo. Once upon a time they’d run away to join the circus and then run away from that, the circus being SL, never to be seen again and yet their tantalising breadcrumbs are still to be found going stale.

Second life is becoming a graveyard of empty lives, of echoes, traces, corpses pretty much, the dead existing in name and statistics only on friends lists, on prims, in profiles: are they undead, in a coma, in hibernation, abducted by aliens, avi-napped?!

I know, I know! They’ve moved into Second Unlife, a holding pattern, a waiting room, stasis, perhaps an anteroom to a Second AfterLife. After all, some of them might come back one day though the longer they dn’t the less likely they will, while some most definitely won’t being that they shuffled their mortal coil in the real world leaving no clues as to what should happen to their SL-self, or Slelf, should they have pre-deceased their avatar. These are the spookiest, you know they’re gone and yet. Perhaps this is just like real death in real life (RL) where even though the person is gone they are still here in their photos, their old possessions, image, the things they’ve done, and in the minds and hearts of those closest to them.

SL is perhaps one of the largest graveyards in the virtual world, but without any actual graves, just a few with real names with most being merely facades, macabre playgrounds, impressions.

Fleeters are the lost boys and girls inhabiting a dead zone, a land of echoes, a shadowland consigned to forever do so, suspended on the cusp of a black hole not escaping and yet not vanishing utterly inside to be crushed to nothing.

All these names with no one to claim them, that’s what I’d call an existential crisis.

© 2019 Anan Eebus