how long is time

 

Wow, four months into the year and I haven’t posted a thing here, I am getting lazy, or maybe priorities being what they are mean these days my RL most definitely takes precedence.

When I have been on SL, and I still manage to log in at least once a day, even if only briefly, I’ve been mostly exploring, still hungry to discover the new, the old, the unusual, the surprising. Still, the weirdest thing these days is how quiet it feels. I don’t know how many active players there are now compared to when I was way more involved here, say before 4 years ago, since when I for one have certainly scaled way back, mostly because RL is way more busy and important, and of course obviously I’m older, priorities change.

Another reason I chose to shuffle off much of my responsibilities here is because they were beginning to cause me serious anxiety, so much so the only solutions were to, in a word, downsize, or leave. Well, I wasn’t going to leave having invested so much emotionally and time-wise into me in SL so that left me with taking my foot of the SL pedal car.

Generally, it feels so much better, psychologically for certain, my mental well-being has improved a lot since I have. But then, I had reached a breaking point having taken on far more than little old me could basically cope with. I pride myself on being able to multitask and being able to deal with most situations but back then I was totally losing the plot having falling into one responsibility after another because simply I didn’t want to let anyone down.

So, before I completely lost my fragmented mind I decided enough was enough. Nevertheless, I still miss those days when there was always something happening, when there felt like there was more of a community, especially in my vampire clan. Yes, if you didn’t already know from reading my previous blogs, I am a vampire, among other things. Those were amazing times and at least I took loads of photos back then, and still do, so have lots of memories to look back on.

Gosh, all this makes me sound and feel soooooooooooo old. I’m not by the way.

But all in all my RL is pretty happy, all things considered, so I don’t feel the same need or pull to always run away into SL, which sometimes is what I used to do. I’m not sure what use sharing any of this is but maybe it helps me. I mean, I have no idea even how many read my blog or even know it’s here.

Well, apologies again to anyone who cares that it’s taken four months to get around to posting what is effectively my first writing here of 2023. Crazy, isn’t it.

~Anan Eebus ©2023

 

Happy New Year 2023

 

fallen for autumn

 

I’m coming out of the cupboard because autumn is here, my favourite time of the year, definitely my favourite season.

I can’t say I am missing those baking hot days of summer, being of vampire skin, i.e. burns easily, I for one am pleased we’ve lost more than a few degrees as autumn, or Fall, depending on your preference, seeps into our days and our bones. Yes, it’s chilly, yes it’s a bit damp, yes it’s a bit more breezy and yes, possibly a bit more rain but not actually worse than summer rain as when we had it just made for flooding. So I welcome autumn with open arms as I always do.

And SL is all over autumn too, well, mostly. Or perhaps just where I visit as if you’re in the southern hemisphere then I know it’s not autumn for you but the beginnings of spring. Isn’t that just weird, you think, being on the same planet and yet here we are having not just different seasons but polar opposite ones. But I guess that’s what the poles are there for, to be poles apart. So now, as in RL I seek out Autumn in SL where also the colours are just so vivid and alive, even though technically they symbolize a slowing down, even death, as leaves change colour and drop to the ground to dry shrivel and decay, or get squirrelled, or wormed, away by worms underground, as that’s what worms do. Although I have to see if that’s also true in SL: do worms sneak leaves underground?

In fact, is there even an underground in any real sense in SL? We talk all the time about the ‘sea’ or the gap between sims where nothing exists, the Void Ocean, as it’s called, but rarely do we think about what’s under our feet. A bit like RL really, few ever wonder about what they’re walking on and what goes on down there which is just as much or even probably far more than what goes on above ground. An entire world out of sight and out of mind.

Anyway, here are some photos of my SL autumn travels. I hope to post more over the season, at least before winter gets a fingerhold.

~x Anan 

 

 

 

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

 

 

minding the gap

     It’s 2021, as if you didn’t know, and what a journey 2020 has been to get here. The time’s been both contracted and protracted, now we’re suddenly four months into this year and I’ve just realised how much has already gone.

     I felt it was time to catch up on my blogging here, and you, lovely readers, that’s if you’re still out there. So much has happened and is still happening to everyone it’s been too easy to get lost or mislaid in the noise of it all. RL (real life) time seems to have collided with SL (Second Life) time.

      For me, SL has always seemed to exist within its own clock, its own chronology, with usually more time passing there than actually had in the real world. Like dog years, a year in SL can feel like seven. Perhaps not as much as that but maybe you get the idea, that sense that you can live that many years in a mere actual 12 months- not only virtual characters and lives but virtual time.

      Second Life is a bubble into which whenever we log in we penetrate like tiny needles each time, not enough to pop it though. Or maybe it’s more like a virus, being absorbed while its integrity remains intact and like a virus we have an impact on events and actions which might result in changes or ripples for good or for bad. Oddly enough we never leave actual footprints for virtual archaeologists to find in the future.

      Well, I’m feeling very philosophical today, but in truth I’ve always been like this, thinking too much, a pocket philosopher (after all, I’m not very tall, in RL or SL). In SL we’re immortal, or think we are. I’ve known inworlders (SL players) who have vanished without a trace and live on only in my memory, not anymore even a profile. As we in RL return to dust, in SL we revert to pixels, maybe to be recycled, reused, becoming ‘preloved’, or even discarded into those vast oceans that exist between sims into which we aren’t allowed access, through which we have to ‘hop’, or teleport. They are the forbidden lands, lands of water, we’re tantalizingly teased but aren’t given the keys to unlock, or touch it, feel it, interact with it in any way.

      It is the nowhere, a final frontier. I think they should open them up, find a way, find the key. The future of SL I believe is there, joining the dots, so to speak. Then we could walk or swim or fly, take a train, drive a car, ride a bike between Sims, perhaps in glass bridges, causeways, following buoys or wandering stars, feel a freedom we’ve not yet been given inworld. I don’t think they’re reading this, those Linden gods, but if they were, that would be my suggestion.

 © Anan Eebus