Today a friend sent me this article: Who needs the Metaverse? Meet the people still living on Second Life by Simon Parkin.
It was kind of sad to read the article on the same day I discovered my amazing parcel of land, my SL home, had finally sold. Someone got it for a bargain at $60,000. Protected corner of a mainland… I’d wanted that spot for more than a decade. Had my eye on it all that time as I had no less than 4 other parcels in that same area over the years. The following picture was just after I bought it and setup the station… it ended up looking quite fine. And for awhile it was the greatest of fun to own it and live there.
I also downgraded my account from Premium to Basic.
I basically just saved myself a bit of money every month and per year.
Funny, though, if you’d asked me in February, only four months ago, if I’d be disconnecting from SL like this I’d have tended to not believe it. I’ve always been a huge advocate for SL and, for the most part, with nearly 17 years on the platform, I still am. I’m not leaving it because SL changed or did anything wrong. I’ve always been there because, technologically, it fascinated me. I was one of those IBMers that article linked above mentions. That’s how I started in SL. We IBMers would have in-world meetings. It was fabulous. And from the office, T1 linked, so very fast. Cool stuff. I’ve always understood SL to be the Metaverse, the one as close to Snow Crash as it could be, and that’s why I’ve loved it. But everything changes.
With the two DJ jobs I spent a minimum of 6 hours a week on SL. So that’s a gap in my week that I’m filling elsewhere. Sometimes it can be smallest things that can manifest big, or at least, unexpected changes in life. At least, it works that way for me. I kind-of like change. It makes life a little more exciting, creates more adventures. I keep thinking that filling that 6 hours per week with something VR might be very exciting, indeed. I’ve greatly missed my HTC Vive.
Below is my AI art generated via Nightcafe. I asked for “End of an Era”. I like it.
Don’t forget to read the Guardian article.
