Don't Be A Nasty Newbie!

I pretty much live in the Morris Welcome area. I don't own land so I park my butt on the wall and talk to my friends and go from there to a store, or dance club, some other event, or wander down to the sandbox to try my hand at building.

Being a welcome area, there are always tons of people here, oldsters and newbies. My friends and I like to help newbies. We talk to them and help out with their questions. We give out landmarks to clubs and beaches and freebie stores. We'll help you change your appearance and give you clothes, hair and skins.

We will help anyone usually, except for the nasty newbies. What is a nasty newbie? A Nasty Newbie...

• Bumps people repeatedly. Either he doesn't know where he is going or doesn't care.
  
• Asks the same question over and over again. Yo Dude! Listen. I told you twice already.
  
• Sends friendship requests before talking to someone. The purpose of friendship is SL is to be able to easily communicate with your friends and IM them even if you can't see them. The Contacts tab lets you see when your friends are online.

I have made friends with newbies, but it is usually temporary. I help them for a few days and then usually drop them as they have moved on to make real friends. Most of my current friends I have known inworld for 3-6 months before friendship was offered and accepted. I have lots of aquaintances who I am friendly with, but we haven't added each other to our lists yet.

• Asks or begs for money. Dude I'm not your daddy. Ask him for money. Either buy some Linden$, or get a job.
  
• SHOUTS EVERYTHING WITH THE CAPS LOCK ON. You only need to shout if someone is outside your normal chat range and ALL CAPS is not necessary, just rude. Besides if you know whoever you are trying to talk to then IM them.
  
• Asking personal questions to someone you just met. It's ok to ask where you are from, but don't expect to be told more than the country. What age am I? I don't get asked very often (it's in my profile) but the ladies do get asked a lot. They may not tell you or they may just lie. Why bother?
  
• Ask for sexual favors in open chat or IM. I have seen a newbie walk up to three very lovely friends of mine and ask each one in turn for cybersex. One, these are ladies. Two, you are a newbie and, face it, not that attractive, and three, Dude, you don't ask for sex in a welcome area. Go to a sex sim where you will fit in.

Good manners work no matter what country you come from. Be polite and others will be willing to answer your questions and enjoy a conversation with you. Be rude and people will mute and ignore you. Keep bumping and harassing others and you risk being reported and banned. Don't be a Nasty Newbie.

How Do I Play This Game? - Part 2

My first post on this topic was really about manners and the rules of behavior. Today I want to talk about what to do in Second Life.

"Why am I here?" "What do I want to do?" The answers to those two questions should be your guide. Are you into fantasy, orcs and elves, dragons, and monsters? Do your search for the keywords that will lead you to those sims. Space and science fiction? You can become a Star Fleet Academy cadet. If you know what kind of character you want your avatar to be, search for the sims inworld that fit your character. The stores and malls in those sims will also be a good place to find the apparel and equipment that you will want for your avatar to fit in.

What about if I want to become a builder or designer? Then you need to take classes. Learn how to use the tools. Find a mentor. The basics of building is fairly simple. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Once you learn the craft, you can design and build for yourself, or if you can come up with something truly unique, you can start your own business with your own products.

Do I need to be a builder or designer to make money inworld? No you can operate a business and sell other people's products. Just like the real world you will need a good location in a high traffic area, and attractive products that people will want. Easy isn't it?

What about a job? Ok if you are a real newbie who has never played before, face the facts, you don't have much to offer at first. You are learning the rules and getting your feet wet. There are jobs available. Here are a few:

• Clubs are always looking for host and hostesses to greet their guests and make them feel welcome. Anyone with a sparkling personality can fit into a job like that.
  
• Clubs need DJs. If you have a large music collection and talent in choosing music that your audience will dance to, that might be the job for you.
  
• Designers need models for their clothes. The key to that job is to have a good looking avatar which means you need to invest in high quality shapes, skins, hair and clothes. The nice thing is that you usually keep the clothes you are modeling. But like all good models you will need a portfolio to show potential clients.
  
• The are other jobs too - event planners, wedding planners, artists, musicians, and land managers. The world's oldest profession is alive and well in Second Life, but this is a PG blog so we won't discuss it here.

So how do I play this game? Look, Listen, and Learn. Spend time in the welcome areas, orientation Islands, malls, and shops. Visit the freebie stores, explore. And ask questions. Some people will make fun of a newbie. Ignore them and walk away. Look around and you will spot someone who is answering questions. Speak to them. There are lots of mentors out there, even more volunteer newbie helpers, and just friendly folks who will take time to answer your questions, offer you landmarks, advice and even free clothes and skins.

We all have wondered how to play the game at one time. We all have been newbies. It wears off quickly. In the meantime, enjoy the confusion!

How Do You Play This Game?

If you have read my previous posting, this is a typical newbie question that Second Life residents hear nearly everyday. I may put this on a notecard and hand it out to newbies. I might need to give it to some of the older Second Lifers too.

A game? No, this is not a game. You can play games here, but this is a virtual world. I live here (at least part of my time) and my friends live here. We are all have different reasons to be in SL. Some of us run businesses. Others are gamers. Still more are builders, and thank God for them. They design our clothes, our homes, all the HUDs and attachments we use. The main thing is that Second Life is a community. This is my community. I live here.

Any time you put people together the need develops for social order. Some people think Linden Labs just arbitrarily made up the TOS, but the Terms Of Service come from the need for people to interact in a fashion that is acceptable to the group as a whole.

So in a PG area you are not allowed to run around naked. Vulgar and obscene language is not tolerated. What you say in IM is one thing, but in Local Chat and Voice Chat anyone and everyone can hear you and frankly dude, I don't want to know how big your pixel dick is nor do I want to see it.

Mature areas of SL have different rules and they are much looser. So if your vocabulary is so limited that you have to used profanity as an adjective and verb in every sentence, then go to a sim where that is acceptable and cuss to your little, slimy heart's content. If you want to try out those new sex poses your found in the freebie shops, try them in a mature sim not in the middle of Morris Welcome Area.

Funny thing though. If you go to a mature sim, one of the first things that often happens in the landing zone is you get a notecard of specific rules. I don't think there is anywhere in SL that is completely lawless. I may be wrong, but if there is, I don't want to go there.

But back to the SL community in general. Like I said, we residents live here. We have invested part of our real lives here. Most of us just want to live in peace. We are tolerant of others and put up with newbie questions. We all come here with different religious and political beliefs. I might state mine from time to time, but I don't expect you to agree with me. I hope I can learn something about your background and culture while you are learning about mine. The fact that, on a daily basis, I can talk to Americans. Canadians, Brits, Scots, Aussies, Kiwis, as well as people from Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, and Japan is fantastic. We come from different places, but we all have the same human needs and we frequently discover that we have some of the same interests and share the same fears and hopes for our planet. Second Life is not a game. It is so much more. We live, and love, laugh and cry. I am here to enjoy life. I hope you are here to do that too.

“Never try and teach a pig to sing..."

"It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

That's one of Lazarus Long's* rules of life. I started thinking of what are my rules of life were after a conversation In SL recently. Many of us go through our lives without any conscious thought of how we want to be treated and how we treat people. Others have spent a good deal of time examining their world view and philosophy of life.

Our beliefs and value systems come from a variety of sources, our parents and siblings, our religious institutions, our culture, and our peers, just to name a few. For some of us our rules of life are set in stone early in life and we don't change. Myself, I have tried to grow and change and improve myself as I have gotten older.

I grew up in a small southern town in the 1950s and 60s. I grew up in an environment that was racially stratified. I grew up Southern Baptist, white, and privileged. But I was lucky. My parents were not overtly prejudiced. My father particularly taught me to respect a man for what he says and does, and not judge him by the color of his skin. My mom, who was Catholic before marrying my dad and moving to the South, taught me to be skeptical of religious dogma. My parents, both Army veterans during WWII, also taught me to share what I had with others. I guess that is why I became a teacher, to share my knowledge and experience with my students.

I still am a Baptist and I believe these things. Jesus Christ died for our sins and was resurrected. I believe the the priesthood of all believers. I don't need someone to interpret the Bible for me. There are other points in my religious beliefs, but let's get back to rules. In Matthew 7:12 Jesus says "Do to others what you would have them do to you". That is my basic rule for behavior in real life and Second Life.

There are other ways of saying it. John Wayne in "The Shootist" said, "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I require the same from them."

I don't have a whole long list of rules for my life. I just want to be nice to people and have them be nice to me. I know that doesn't always happen. Some people are not nice. Some people are rude, dishonest and untrustworthy.

Lastly sometimes people make mistakes. They say or do the wrong thing. People get hurt intentionally or otherwise. I didn't speak to my brother for ten years because he ruined the paint job on my car "decorating" it on my wedding day. It took a long time to forgive him, but I did. You can have have all the rules to your life that you want, but if you can't forgive people, you will end up with a very short list of friends.

*Lazarus Long was one of Robert A. Heinlein's most popular characters in his science fiction books.