Have a great Holiday Season, everyone!

Copybot 2.0 Image courtesy of Vint Falken

One of the things you quickly realise between being a blogger and a content creator is that you have to weigh up when to give coverage to such a tool as Copybot, and what the ramifications are to yourself as a content creator.

I’ve known about copybot clients for years now, but I’ve always refused to publish names and certainly won’t link to any. Ann O’Toole sent me a link to a copybot blog after yesterday’s article which is distributing entire builds. But by simply writing about them- even if you’re denouncing it – you still raise awareness of where they are and how to access them. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity – it’s all still publicity.

The converse is that the more coverage you give to something like this, the more people who will be geared into doing something constructive about it.

Copybot is one of those issues I always danced around, simply because to entertain it may do more damage than harm. Advocates would harper on about it being a useful tool to some, but that’s like saying torrents are useful tools. It’s true, but the number of people using it as a useful tool is overshadowed compared to how many utilise it for illict purposes.

I maintain that the vast majority of Second Life users don’t read blogs, so it may not be an issue – although a thief with a search engine can be a dangerous thing. And the bigger a blog is, the wider its sphere of influence, and with that comes a social responsibility.

My own social responsibility has always included to avoid naming names – when you start targeting individuals, you play a crass game which delves you into gutter blogging. And usually, said people are perfectly capable of identifying themselves.

Copybot clients differ slightly, as they’re not individuals. But by giving their name, are you not just enabling someone to steal? Would this not make you a co-conspirator? It’s not as if Google won’t find a link pretty quickly..

There are still some copybot clients out there which I know of, but nobody I’ve seen has mentioned. I’m sure there are others which I’m unaware of, and are under the radar. Thing is – does outing their names provide awareness to the SL community to protect themselves, or does it just enable those who want to steal to go forth and do so?

As someone who is constantly looking for models at random times to photograph, I have an eye for good looking avatars with flexibility and an ease of being able to work with them. Yet, in several cases, my friend (who’s the sweetest lass I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in SL) has been overlooked time and time again.

She IM’d me a couple of days ago in a small panic, as she had received a hint as to why she was being rejected.

She has two numbers in her name.

Now I’ll admit – I do avoid people with numbers in their name in Second Life because they make me a bit like I’m in a Yahoo! chatroom. Same with uncapitalised first names, and anything which is a “What the heck were you thinking when you registered that?!” sort of name.

But my friend taught me that these avatars are lovely avatars who are just wanting to experience and live their second lives to their full potential too.

Yet they’re held back by a name. To me, I ponder if this is our metaverse’s form of blanket discrimination. We shouldn’t prejudice against it, yet many of us do.

I’m interested in how the name we choose for our virtual identity can have such a large impact on how we judge and perceive a person to be. How, by creating an avatar which doesn’t “conform”, we have essentially closed doors and failed to give a chance to people.

It isn’t fair, yet it does appaear to be prevalent throughout Second Life.

That's me in blue. On arriving, I realised I was at least a foot taller than everybody else. When and how did that happen?

writing on a blog which, as it turned out, was about to be voted the most popular in Second Life. Just as I was feeling my writing feet, the person concerned decided he needed a hiatus (and some fish, apparently).

But hey – I still have access to this blog. So can get a word in edgewise while Prad’s not looking, and before he decides to take my logon off me.

Before finding out the fate of said blog, I’d just published a post which skirted around the issue of loneliness and friendships in Second Life. Prad has also published in his Hiatus post, about missing some people who have disappeared from in-world. It all felt a bit melancholic, to say the least.

Now, let me admit to something here. I’m almost double the real-life age of Mr Prathivi, and that term on this planet means I get to have some experiences (er, like giving birth, for instance) and with it, some applied wisdom – or not, as my legacy may well decide on looking back.

But when speaking to other people my age, we are relatively of the same opinion – as you get older, it gets harder to make new friends. The whole world seems against this in many ways – we lead largely commuter lives, driving to and fro our workplaces, moving to find jobs, leaving behind our old school friends and even family members. Life is busy, busy, busy…

Then we go and get married (and divorced, if statistics are anything to go by) but at least partnered up, and children come our way. Generally speaking. With those responsibilities, old friends drop by the wayside, normally due to distance, and we struggle to find like-minded people quickly enough to work out if we could be ‘friends’.

This week in Great Britain some new statistics came out suggesting each adult has on average only three good friends.

As an ex-pat kiwi now living in a tiny village in middle Britain, I feel it perhaps even more than many. Finding real life friends is difficult. Finding similarly thinking second life friends is just as hard, if not harder.

Last week I got an invite for a surprise birthday party in second life. I was originally a little scared to go, given I knew no-one there, aside from the guest of honour (a tiny bit). But I turned up anyway, thinking that I might finally witness something about second life which gives me hope for myself. I had read about Second Life weddings and parties and large groups of friends before, but here was my opportunity to see it with my own virtual eyes.

Prad has his birthday today, and I don’t know how many real life people will be celebrating along with him. But of his virtual life, there were many people on that dance floor, and my quick snapshot can’t give you all the details, despite my wide-screen monitor. As I left, more people were arriving, maybe just for half an hour, maybe longer. The guest list would have crashed a couple of SIMs over.

What this shot says is one thing, and one thing which gives me hope that maybe by my first rezday, there might be a couple of people out there who might like to just share some time with me also.

Prad is loved. He has true friends. Second Life transcends the friendship barriers put up in real life in so many ways, and I feel honoured to have been given the ability to witness this. I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing this photo with you (and if he does, it’s too late).  My birthday gift to the man in question are these, my thoughts on what I did see there -from the perspective of someone who is often lonely, sometimes wise, and has celebrated her own birthdays worlds away from loved ones on many occasions.

Happy Birthday, Prad. Life is sometimes wonderful, is it not? Even second Life.

When in happens in First Life, we take a vacation. Or commit murder. In Second Life, we click that Red X and then we don’t look back for a period of time until we feel ready to go back.

We develop on emotional tie to Second Life which is what keeps us interested – whereby it be a particular person in the virtual world, a community or activity, or developing skills and exploring creativity.

The more time we spend in world, the more devoted we become, and the more attached we are to Second Life. And then, we begin to become frustrated.

Be it because of Linden Labs and their decisions, or failure to keep the grid stable. Or a relationship turns sour, or a community turns against you. A copybot kills your desire to create or you simply lose that passion you once had for the metaverse and move onto something else.

Some people go right into the hardcore depth of Second Life and spend numerous hours in world, to the point where they just burn out and get stressed by things going on in world.

Others find that their reasons to stay in world are gradually fading away and no longer have a desire to participate in Second Life.

The concept of a virtual identity also comes into play here – an in world persona or reputation that you develop on yourself. Usually it’s a reflection of your real world self, but not in all cases. When you feel you’ve lost a handle of who you are in the virtual world, and don’t see a point to Second Life, again you lose reason for being there.

A lot of residents will take a hiatus from Second Life at some point or another, when things in world simply stop interesting them. People will often say “it’s just pixels”, but it’s not the graphics and sounds that make Second Life what it is. It’s the emotional value that we stake into the virtual world which makes people invest a part of themselves into the metaverse.

Taking a break gives us space to re-evaluate whether we want a Second Life, and if we do, what we want it to be and what we want it to give back to us. It’s easy to become disillusioned with the virtual world when it appears to not be what you hoped it to be.

For some people, they invest too much time and emotions into Second Life, and their first lives suffer as a result, in which case a hiatus can help them remember their priorities.

Some of the oldest residents I know who are still pro-active in Second Life don’t hold a great emotional tie to the virtual world anymore. They see it as an outlet for what they want to do, rather than what they want to be. To me, that’s an important distinction when evaluation your place within SL – if you have a role or position you want to attain within SL, you set yourself up for a fall which can end your foray into the virtual world.

A lot of my friends in Second Life have taken a hiatus to get back on track and work out what’s important to them. Although it is sad to see some of them leave, it is an important step in working out what is fundamentally important to us.

I think I like this tatoo. Perhaps I'll keep it.

sometimes I hit problems with others around me not, er, appreciating it so much.

Fine, you get to a certain age where you realise that you can’t change particular things about yourself, and you ease into something poets would call karma, but most of us reserve as ‘acceptance’. As for our external ‘me’s’ – well, there comes another time – it was possibly when I hit thirteen, that I had to accept I was never going to be model-beautiful, or skinny for that matter. Or tall, or have lovely glossy hair or…[fill in other hang-ups on appearance here]…

Once I turned to social networking (and before that, community forums or boards on the web) I found a renaissance of my inner peculiarities. How to get my own message across, in a way that people would ‘get me’? Living as a New Zealander in the U.K. I had already struck communication problems with many British people taking a little time to understand and throw aside the fact I was talking with a different accent, before noticing what I was actually talking about. On the internet things should have been more blissful.

In some cases they are, in others they aren’t, such is life.

In real life, once I was married, and with a child, things changed again. Our efforts to provide for the next generation, and an income to provide for a house over our head saw my family – and that of many others, move away from home, and long-standing friends. Now, with nothing much else in common from my neighbours other than the fact we all have children of varying ages, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find new people who I might consider legitimate ‘friends’, with similar interests and a common framework of values (and humour).

I turned once again to the internet to seek those friendships out of what might be considered a relatively domestic and often boring life.

But on the internet I had only the one way to communicate – and to gauge other people’s reactions. I couldn’t see their smiles – or frowns – or even work out if they were actually listening. We get around that with various methods, developed for such communications. But many didn’t suit my own life. I didn’t like IMing, even though it was huge in the circles I trod. And although I am on Facebook, I do not feel it’s a natural environment for my written communications.

As a writer, I spend a lot of time communicating in the written form. And a life of solitude is often actually sought after. I’m a natural hobbit anyway, but even that proverbial man in the cave up a mountain needed somebody to know he was in that cave.

Things like Twitter suit me, as do blogs. Blogs let me write and spend time drafting my thoughts so that I can hope my own voice does get across as best possible. From these devices, came an acceptance of my own inner beauty, and a publication of some of it – even if many would reserve the right to question the difference between beauty and ugly.

On Second Life, beauty is a very different matter. So far, the communications channels allowed have left me feeling a little more lonely than is healthy. Although I am friendly and welcome all IMs from strangers or will chat quite readily in stores, I have to admit to finding it difficult to find real friends with some commonality within SL. I say things, meant as a joke, and people don’t stay around to think about it.

Second Life for me is made up of writing appointments – of an hour at a time – normally set outside of my timezone, and finding me tired and really wanting to get to bed. And then there’s the shopping experiences, where I very rarely am approached by strangers in chat – but if I am, I have a paranoia about what they are after, because previously it’s been basically for sex.

As much as I’ve enjoyed those brief conversations with others in public in SL, it’s become apparent that the majority aren’t interested in truly getting to know me, as an avatar, and the person within. Second Life seems a rushed life. Going somewhere, exploring somewhere, shopping, dancing, accepting yet another group push to signup for updates or freebies…moving onto the next place. Perhaps if there were a bus service or train forcing you to share time with strangers…instead teleporting makes for a quick movement from both predicaments and potential pleasures. I love teleporting, but it’s a solitary act, isn’t it?

All I want is a few legitimate friends who care if I don’t appear on Second Life for a few days, and who might like to go shopping – or dancing with me, or come see my chicken-growing experiment on my home turf. I know that most people, no matter what nationality or interest group, hold similar needs (perhaps not the chicken-growing experiment), and would understand this within first or second lives.

But as with real life, finding friendships takes time – and effort, and must be something from both sides, so I am reserved in my expectations there. Until then, I am aware that my inner beauty – something I’ve worked for many decades to accept within myself, has much less to do within Second Life than I may hope for.

So I suddenly found myself with the need to have some control over my slice of SLife. And I found myself turning outward. Only in a metaverse can you actually make changes in all your realms.

There are so many tales of people who are somewhat less than beautiful in real life falling in love with avatars in SLife, and admitting to feeling a virtual attraction to those avatars. With the majority of avatars being aged 20-something in appearance (and only if you’ve suffered through lots of plastic surgery), beauty in Second Life is a sought after commodity. There is a huge business around it, as we all know. From modelling agencies to the best photo-real skins with a baker’s dozen of must-have make-ups. Clothes, hair, prim lashes, prim nails, photo studios, fashion blogs…

I therefore decided I needed to purchase some new skins as my bit of control measure to how I was feeling. My old skin was wonderful, but it only came with one skin. It took me a couple of months to realise that other skins came in packs with different makeup, and my peach-coloured lips bothered me. Shocked by the cost of skin packages, I took my time wondering some of the talked-about stores, trying on demos, and wondering what I might look like out in the sunshine. Have you ever noticed how dark most of those skin stores set their decor at?

Not all skins are made alike, however, and unfortunately it was only one truly expensive set – which wasn’t purchasable individually, which made me look anything other than a barbie doll with inflated lips. After mortgaging my house (quite literally – as I’ve sacrificed my next two week’s land tier fees for the sake of the purchase) I walked away with a set of skin I hope makes me outwardly ‘more beautiful’.

Who for, I sometimes ponder? But that’s something not worth losing sleep over, as I drift around second life hoping my new face-lights and pert little nose (which really doesn’t look any different from my old nose) and red lipstick say something to everybody about looking into my inner-self a little more.

1. You think the best feature on your Avatar is:
   A. The Boobs or Shoulders. No one can help but notice you because of how big they are!
   B. Your feet. Size 0 to fit in the best shoes!
   C. Your hair. You paid good money for that hair.
2. Someone mentions that your shape looks a little off. You…
   A. Ignore them, they don’t know what good shapes look like.
   B. Make the offending body part smaller. If you keep going, you won’t have that part at all.
   C. Tell them that the shape’s no-mod and if they have a problem with it, they can contact the person who made it.
3. If you were to have a slogan about your shape it would be…
   A. “Big Boobs…Big Shoulders…umm…I forgot the rest…”
   B. Protest the Bias towards Giant Avatars!
   C. Slogan? I’m too busy to come up with a stupid slogan about my shape. There are other more important things.
4. How close to your RL shape is your Avatar’s?
   A. This is what I look like in RL! I be teh sexxxxxx!
   B. SL is purely fantasy, I don’t look like this at all.
   C. I don’t know…I bought this shape.
5. Do you have problems fitting into clothes in SL?
   A. Yes! I’m always busting out the top!
   B. Yes! Everything’s always too big!
   C. Um…no. Always fits, never made adjustments in my SLife!
6. What do you think about when you log in and see yourself for the first time every day?
   A. I be teh sexxxxxxx! Wowowow! Nice boobs / ass / chest!
   B. Awwww…I’m so cute and cuddly small!
   C. Oh, there I am! HOW many IM’s do I have today? Did so-and-so finish with ….?
7. If you could change your shape past what SL allows, what would you do?
   A. Make my boobs / ass / chest more like my RL self…big and juicy!
   B. Make myself tiny and elfin. I wanna be a pixie!
   C. Anything past what they’ve already built into SL is kind of extreme, dontcha think?
8. If your shape had a theme song it’d be….
   A. “I like big butts and I cannot lie….” (Sir MixALot)
   B. “Short People” (Randy Newman)
   C. “Your Body is a Wonderland” (John Mayer)
9. Have you ever gotten stuck walking through a door in SL?
   A. Happens all the time…Everybody gets stuck, don’t they?
   B. Nope…I fit through everything! Even cracks in the floor!
   C. That’s not ever been a problem for me. People honestly get stuck in doorways?
10. Do you use prim body parts to augment your shape?
    A. Those bouncy boobies are the best thing since Freeni!
    B. My whole Avatar is prim! Naked I’m scary looking.
    C. Wings, tails and ears, yep…or if I’m a furry, sure…but nothing really weird.

Your results:

Mostly A’s:

You maxed out the sliders: Never one to argue “Bigger is better,” you have some serious issues in RL. You feel small and you’re overcompensating for something. Yes, we know, your male isn’t anatomically correct, but no one’s going to mistake your giant shoulders and head for a penis…unless you walk around spouting nonsense and otherwise acting like a dick. Giant boobs? You’re probably either a male in RL acting out your cross-dressing fantasies or Mother Nature never gave you a proper chest and you want to see what it feels like, without paying for RL Surgery.

Mostly B’s:

You’ve got your sliders completely minimized: “Big things come in little packages” or “It’s just shrinkage!” You’re happy to be beneath everyone’s radar, and you enjoy looking up people’s skirts…you perv.

Mostly C’s:

“You are unique, just like everyone else”: You probably actually took some time to personalize your Av. Either that or more likely, you bought a shape. You and just about everyone else on the grid are not the risk takers the Mostly A’s or Mostly B’s are. You also look better than everyone else…or at least you think you do.

Except in Second Life, where you can also choose your family.

Unless you’re me, in which case your family will choose you. No kidding.. I’ve been adopted more times than a cute pup that bites you while you sleep. And no – I also bite you while you’re awake.

Rrishanna’s post on Roleplay got me thinking that she only touched on the obvious aspect of the subject – sims which are dedicated to fantasy roleplay. More subtle forms of roleplay within Second Life include family. Case point: Me and Rrishanna are siblings within the metaverse, but yet in the real world, we’ve never met one another.

Oddness, no?

Spend 5 minutes with us, and you’d probably be left in little doubt we’re exactly like siblings – we indicate many of the same characteristics, we poke fun at one another, we argue with one another, we support each other and ultimately, (very grudgingly) deep down, we love each other in the way siblings do.

Initially the brother/sister thing arose because we had a close bond that wasn’t *that* sort of bond, so we needed some sort of label to stop our friends thinking there was something going on, when the mere idea was so far from the truth, it was orbiting the grid.

Eventually, it became a label in itself – the Prad and Rrish team. Where so many partnerships and teams have failed, we’ve always prevailed – like family. Family sticks by each other because that’s what family does. And so although it’s a form of roleplay, the concept of family in Second Life works well for me.

The family roleplay extends further into more complex angles though – like when we start looking at kids, babies and talking tummies.. and there’s more than enough negative connotations about them.

Zooby’s sculpty babies have got a bit of press recently, and some people have been a little freaked out by them, whereby others have found them extremely cute.

I think children in Second Life represent a whole new level of family roleplay to Second Life, as there are so many “adult themes” associated with the virtual world. The introduction of innocent children to the corrupted aspects of SL bring about a mix that some are uncomfortable with?

And why not?

Perhaps because they’re living out their own roleplay in SL, and it’s one which may run along adult-orientated themes. Maybe it’s because they’re uncomfortable with a thought of a grown adult playing the role of a child around them, and expecting them to respond as such.

I have no issue with kids in Second Life. I will admit though that prim babies freak me, and talking tummies annoy the living hell out of me.

Which is a stark contrast to the Real World where I like kids until they learn how to talk. That’s when they learn to back chat, and ask you for money all the time.

I like to think cope well with change, but getting used to not seeing someone around, and not being able to share experiences with them in the same way anymore is hard.

But in the words of a great man, “Ya gotta do, whut ya gotta do”.

It’s generally accepted that Second Life will affect your first life in many various ways, most of all emotionally. It’s only natural to develop emotional ties to a metaverse which, although digital, holds strong sentimental value to us.

And it’s very easy for it to become addictive, as I’ve said in the past. MMOs like Second Life pose a real risk of destroying relationships and livelihoods if you don’t know where to set your limits.

It’s not to say that Second Life is of any less value than reading, watching TV or some other hobby – after all, it presents a means of entertainment, and indeed for some, it gives a means of income.

But to people who have psychologically dependant personality traits, virtual worlds can be especially harmful when they become reliant on them.

It can be difficult to term metaverses as being addictive, as there is no physical aspect to it, as there is with alcohol, drugs and tobacco. However, the addiction is very real, in terms of emotional attachment and psychological need. There are more than enough people who are in Second Life because there is something lacking in the social aspects of their First Life, and the metaverse offers an avenue to fill that need.

But again, there are limits.

Both of my close friends who have left have realised that those limits were crossed, and they needed to back away from Second Life in order for it to stop affecting their first. Sometimes, a little evaluation can be a good thing.

There are many aspects which can cause someone to reconsider Second Life as being part of their life, and indeed, we shouldn’t be in SL if it’s affecting us negatively. Take a few pointers:

• Time is a biggie. There are only 24 hours in a day, and the clock is ticking on how many of those days we have left.. if you have ambitions which lie outside of SL, then is it really worth spending so much time in-world?
• Fatigue - if Second Life is tiring you out when you don’t even leave the chair, then maybe it’s time to think about a break. It’s a very intense metaverse, and sometimes we all need a breather to put things into perspective.
• Personality awareness is another key point – anonymity enables us to do things we might not dare to do in the real world. But that isn’t always a good thing. If you’re shocking yourself and others by your actions in SL, maybe it’s time to take a look at yourself.
• Flogging a dead horse – if you’ve been running a failing business and nothing you try to do to get it going seems to work, maybe it’s time to call it quits and cut back. Second Life may just not be the place for your creative outputs, but you might find something better suited in the real world.
• FL Commitments are paramount – if you’re neglecting your first life partner in favour of SL, or getting into work/school later because you’re in world until 3AM everyday, then perhaps your priorities need a rethink.
• Look at what you’re doing in world – a shocking amount of time will be spent by the average avatar in a state of boredom, waiting for something to come along that is fun. If you’re wandering around aimlessly all day, looking for fun things and not finding much, then why not find something which makes you feel entertained in a more efficient timeframe?
• Are you getting anything back out of Second Life? If you spend several hours in world and you don’t feel like you’re having fun, learning or doing anything productive, then why bother?
• Drama - if the virtual world is bringing you down and causing you grief, then is it worth it?
• Does everything feel “meh“, and fails to excite you anymore? A change of pace may be needed, perhaps?

I’m not saying we should all plan a mass-exodus of Second Life, but if you’ve been thinking about stepping back like my two close friends have, then maybe you should for your own health. You don’t have to quit or cut yourself off from friends, but simply use Second Life in moderation, as you would any other addictive substances.

I’ve seen the notion that “internet friends aren’t real” bandied around before, yet it feel incredibly real. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is because any friend has to fulfil two criteria:

1. Someone whom you have entrusted with a secret.
2. Someone who has accepted a favour from you.

My definition here is based around the concept of giving, rather than recieving. If you’re someone who picks out their friends by what they have to offer to you, then you probably don’t have many friends at all.

To tell somebody a secret about yourself entrusts them with an intimate detail of your life. You become more vunerable, and the person you told becomes a protector – and thus a bond is formed.

Secondly, we accept favours from strangers fairly often. But we don’t entrust these strangers with our secrets, so it’s a combination of the two which allows a friendship to bond. The other person will usually reciprocate, as is human nature to. The strength of the friendship is reliant on how willing the other person is to reciprocate.

Obviously this is simplistic and there’s more to it than that – similar interests and complimenting personalities are always important too. But these aren’t traits which you can control – the two I stated are.

Second Life offers us the opportunity to talk to many people, and interact directly with the personality. We are all accessible and easily reached when in world, and we’re all capable of making good friends here, exactly the same way as in the first life.

Strong friendship isn’t reliant on face-to-face human contact. It can be as simple as a secret and a favour, which is just as possible in a virtual world as it is in the real one.