Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/21/snow-crashed.html
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Second Life is still up and running?
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My corporate overloads built a SL site. Once they annouced it I never heard of it again. Now I’m kind of curious is it still there?
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They bought an add on DuckDuckGo!
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Oh, those crazy hipsters!
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This reminds me, I once met someone who was writing their dissertation–in a humanities field–about Second Life. I wonder if they’re a professor now, perhaps at one of these abandoned SL campuses.
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I think we’ll look back on SL as being ahead of its time, someday. I would imagine by the end of the 2020s, once “MR” technologies have matured a bit.
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I visit Second Life many times a week 
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Really? Somebody still plays? The idea sounds kind of fun.
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Road trip!
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I do too.
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I can’t tell if you’re serious or not. If you are, then can you explain why and what you do there?
Second life always seemed to me to be an interesting idea, but ultimately pointless. But, I also always thought I was missing something. So, I am honestly curious about it.
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The company behind SL has gone on and started a service called Sansar, actually.
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School’s closed due to GRADES.
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At the most basic level, I suppose SL is, for me, a 3D chat room with avatars and as good a soundtrack as the DJ can provide.
It’s a way for me to maintain contact with people I’ve known for over a decade. I have many genuine friends in SL, some few of whom I’ve met in RL.
I get to meet people from all over the world, hear music I would never even know existed otherwise, and build a little personal space that I can enjoy (in a virtual sense) and that other people can hang out at also.
I have jokingly referred to role-playing within Second Life as “Third Life” (The joke is in the initials RL, SL, TL).
Some people in SL are always “in character” you never know much about the person behind the avatar. Other people are never “in character” they’re just online, using an avatar that may or may not be even vaguely representative of their real self. I personally switch in and out of “character” depending on the circumstance.
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I still spend several hours a week inworld and still spend a stupidamount of money there just for the fun of it. I was redesigning my sim for the millionth time. (Also the articles from 2015.) Participation seems have steadied out at between 40-50,000 at any given time.
As for why, well, it’s still interesting, and there’s still a lot of seriously creative content there (even outside the retail end of it.). You can still find a fair amount of “Live” music on and off, and as above for me…The stuff I can play with and do in 2nd Life is nothing I could ever afford in real life. I get a huge kick out of virtual landscaping on my sim there (it’s very soothing and calming.) I’m constantly awed by the skills of the content creators from the simplets bunny in the woods, to your very own Beauty and the Beast Castle. There was and always will be a certain amount of crap…95% of everything. But at times, that 5% is worth it.
Unlike most video games there is no competition and no end prize - it’s entirely a social creative thing. And while spending facetime with some of the friends I’ve made around the world (both via media fandom and 2nd Life) is awesome, it can be difficult to juggle…whereas in 2nd life we can, in a weird way, be together while talking. Dancing, shopping, trying on the stupidiest most outrageous avatars we can find. It really is what you bring to it.
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I’m visiting it nowwwwww wait. Nope. This is First Life. Drats.
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Given the, um, definitely mature and viable, state of VRML; I can’t really blame people for going with the proprietary thing that actually kind of worked; but it’s worth remembering that Second Life isn’t really ‘the web’. It is a lot more user-modifiable than your average game; and since it’s nearly dead it’s charming rather than threatening; but it’s a walled garden with centralized access control and a landlord(and fees on all internal transactions); and a list of rules for 3rd party user agents.
It runs over IP; but it’s a lot more like one of the pre-web services(or, were it not mostly abandoned, would probably be counted among the post- web services that may use some HTTP; but do everything they can to keep things inside the official app and interoperate only as it suits them).
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Why not? I’m on a MOO at this very moment.
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Short version of something I wrote elsewhere but can’t find… SL was too early in terms of technology - their tech worked but they required users to have a graphics board that was not something great masses of people with computers were going to buy. If SL had started when motherboard graphics were adequate to the task, they might have a robust base of users now.
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