Second thoughts on Second Life

I checked into SL just before midnight last night, for a quick look-around before going to bed, and was pinged by a blogger who happened to be online, and who had read my "First thoughts on SL" post some weeks back. M2 teleported me to one of her favourite places, a snowy, foggy mountainside, where we stood alone and talked until after 3am.

Second Life is like a party in that the most interesting people hang out where it's quiet, for instance in the kitchen (for certain values of "interesting;" your mileage may vary).

It's odd how effective the avatars in SL are at adding emotional resonance to conversation: I would not have stayed up until 3am if we had been doing a pure-text chat. One associates oneself very quickly with the image, I actually found myself thinking "I'm not dressed for this weather" as we stood in the snow!

She had joined SL after I did, because my post made her curious about it, but has clearly spent much more time there than I. She gave me many pointers to places, events and resources which I'll investigate in coming weeks.

Thank you, M2, for your generosity—and for your openness. It was nice meeting you.

And now it's a sunny, warmish (13°C) day so I shall walk downtown for a cappuccino, possibly under the plane trees at the Café Eberhard if there's no wind.