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by Bananadine 01/14/2011, 9:18am PST |
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In 2006, I tried Second Life. I started out as a tourist, and gradually grew into a skilled artisan. Then I quit because it was stupid. These are the screenshots I saved.
 Here I am on Orientation Island, designing my avatar. I'd decided to be a guy, because I'd read something about Second Life strip clubs that ran on real money sort of, and I thought it would be funny to patronize one. The default male avatar was a rounded-off Jason Priestley, visible at left. I immediately puffed out my own Jason Priestley, taking care to make his face asymmetrical because it delighted me that they let you make your face asymmetrical.
 The puffing continued. Also the flying.
After this there's a blank spot in my records. I think I played around in the noninteractive ocean for a bit, and then trolled some people in the Welcome Area. I know I found a strip club, and spent most of my starting Linden dollars on a lapdance administered by a live person (but using a canned animation), which was indeed funny. Also, I bought some ridiculous new clothes and turned myself into something like a pink version of Star Trek's Odo.
 After that I visited some furries.
 I went to some kind of Gorean camp as well, but there aren't any shots of that. It would have been mostly empty, anyway. Almost all of Second Life was mostly empty.
 Here I am, stoically watching some people who appear to have fallen into some kind of a dance trap.
 I also succumbed to the dance trap.
 At some point I learned that you could put scripts into objects--that is, you could program the world. I got excited and tried to make a fractal tree that would grow on command. Eventually I succeeded. Here I am, hoversitting with my tree-bearing wand, in an attitude of wary triumph.
 Jupiter was not impressed.
 Here I am testing some commands. I thought I would make this into an item that people could control just by talking to it, and sell it as an extraordinary novelty. I'd actually started out with an interest in trying to make a bit of real money by building something--I guess it was actually possible to do that--but programming in the laggy, restricted world of Second Life was such a hassle that I pretty quickly settled for the plan of just making a thing that some people might like to use as a decoration in their houses or something, regardless of whether they'd want to pay anything for it. Because making things is entertaining.
 As a non-paying user, I had only an extremely low allowance of L$, and no land of my own. The public sandbox areas were especially laggy, so I often worked on other people's land. Most landowners didn't allow foreign scripts to run on their property, but some did. Here I am, for instance, in the floor of someone's house.
 I probably came to this place to work on my thing, but I guess I got distracted.
 I don't think my Second Life client ever got around to downloading their shirts.
 Eventually I gave my tree some proper polish. The color variation was semi-random.
 I also made it possible to customize its size via speech.
 I had to make it grow slowly, over the course of a few minutes, so that it wouldn't hit the "gray goo fence", which was an object-creation-rate limit that the developers had added to the world to prevent people from taking over all space by giving an object a script that would tell it to reproduce itself, script and all (which was exactly what I was doing).
 I guess it could indeed have taken over a zone or two, if I'd lost control of it.
 In fact, I've just learned that gray goo outbreaks were still possible at the time. I actually don't know why I never caused one. The lands I worked in seemed to have no trouble resisting their tree infestations, anyway.
 Once the tree was done, I held a public showing of it on some unused land, and invited people from the scripters' interest group to come see it, and to take a few complimentary copies.
 We had a civil and enriching party.
 My tree was better than the natives.
 The competition showed off its own wares.
I sort of tried to figure out how to sell my tree. I forget what happened but it didn't work out for some reason. I think I needed real money to rent a stall in somebody's store, or something, and I had no hope of actually making a profit that way. So instead I started giving copies of it away. Not that I knew anybody to give them to--I'd just fly into some random area, pick a few random people, and give my items to them, with no explanation. Most of them probably didn't even see me. Some of the people rejected my offer, but some accepted it. I didn't really care anymore.
 The final public resting place of my tree was a small, mildly interesting art museum that I found somewhere. I had to briefly correspond with the lady avatar who owned the place to get it installed there. I made sure it was set up to respond to museum patrons' voice commands (although I figured probably nobody would ever actually use it), posed in my formal wear (blank shirt, one piece of a battle mech costume) for one more screenshot, and signed out for good. |
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Here I am on Orientation Island, designing my avatar. I'd decided to be a guy, because I'd read something about Second Life strip clubs that ran on real money sort of, and I thought it would be funny to patronize one. The default male avatar was a rounded-off Jason Priestley, visible at left. I immediately puffed out my own Jason Priestley, taking care to make his face asymmetrical because it delighted me that they let you make your face asymmetrical.
The puffing continued. Also the flying.
After that I visited some furries.
I went to some kind of Gorean camp as well, but there aren't any shots of that. It would have been mostly empty, anyway. Almost all of Second Life was mostly empty.
Here I am, stoically watching some people who appear to have fallen into some kind of a dance trap.
I also succumbed to the dance trap.
At some point I learned that you could put scripts into objects--that is, you could program the world. I got excited and tried to make a fractal tree that would grow on command. Eventually I succeeded. Here I am, hoversitting with my tree-bearing wand, in an attitude of wary triumph.
Jupiter was not impressed.
Here I am testing some commands. I thought I would make this into an item that people could control just by talking to it, and sell it as an extraordinary novelty. I'd actually started out with an interest in trying to make a bit of real money by building something--I guess it was actually possible to do that--but programming in the laggy, restricted world of Second Life was such a hassle that I pretty quickly settled for the plan of just making a thing that some people might like to use as a decoration in their houses or something, regardless of whether they'd want to pay anything for it. Because making things is entertaining.
As a non-paying user, I had only an extremely low allowance of L$, and no land of my own. The public sandbox areas were especially laggy, so I often worked on other people's land. Most landowners didn't allow foreign scripts to run on their property, but some did. Here I am, for instance, in the floor of someone's house.
I probably came to this place to work on my thing, but I guess I got distracted.
I don't think my Second Life client ever got around to downloading their shirts.
Eventually I gave my tree some proper polish. The color variation was semi-random.
I also made it possible to customize its size via speech.
I had to make it grow slowly, over the course of a few minutes, so that it wouldn't hit the "gray goo fence", which was an object-creation-rate limit that the developers had added to the world to prevent people from taking over all space by giving an object a script that would tell it to reproduce itself, script and all (which was exactly what I was doing).
I guess it could indeed have taken over a zone or two, if I'd lost control of it.
In fact, I've just learned that gray goo outbreaks were still possible at the time. I actually don't know why I never caused one. The lands I worked in seemed to have no trouble resisting their tree infestations, anyway.
Once the tree was done, I held a public showing of it on some unused land, and invited people from the scripters' interest group to come see it, and to take a few complimentary copies.
We had a civil and enriching party.
My tree was better than the natives.
The competition showed off its own wares.
The final public resting place of my tree was a small, mildly interesting art museum that I found somewhere. I had to briefly correspond with the lady avatar who owned the place to get it installed there. I made sure it was set up to respond to museum patrons' voice commands (although I figured probably nobody would ever actually use it), posed in my formal wear (blank shirt, one piece of a battle mech costume) for one more screenshot, and signed out for good.
