Blackthorne™ ≠ inSL

31 Mar

08:40 am

Is First Life Real Life?

I still clearly and vividly remember the very first thing I saw, and what it looked like when I landed in-world and the first frame appeared for the first time in Second Life.

This was back in the day where Orientation Island basically was based on a simple ‘trail’ paradigm. You followed a trail and accomplished relatively simple tasks at each way-point. Of course one of the first things I did was to play with the body-shape sliders and then experiment with the profile widget. It was an exciting time. And since I already was deeply involved in computer 3-D technologies (I still have my copy of Poser version 1. Yes, really) I fit right-in and was on my way quickly.

That was back in May, 2006.

One of the interesting things I found in that profile widget were the additional tabs: web, interests, First Life. it was all pretty self-explanatory. Of course that Profile widget has changed a lot since then. For instance one of the hugely popular features was the ability to vote on a persons appearance, demeanor and creations and so on.

I actually got a bit of a chuckle at the First Life tab. Not that it was there, but that it was called “First Life”. It just made too damned much sense.

As I’ve become acclimated to SL over the years, it becomes easy to forget the wonder and excitement of this virtual environment. Our understanding of things change, we learn to create things over time, learn the idiosyncrasies of the grid and out language even changes.

Try blurting out to the uninitiated: “the grid is on the rocks today and TPs are failing and my sim is lagging like crazy!” But also, even those phrases we’ve learned as a method of ‘typical’ Second Life jargon becomes warped, morphed, even ‘bastardized’ if you will.

Linden Dollars are ‘officially’ symbolized as L$ and place in front of the numeral amount according to the SL Wiki. However, I’ve seen 100 Linden Dollars displayed as “L$100”; “100L$”; “$100L”; “100L”; and even “L100”. In my “Successful Business in Second Life” book, I actually recommend very strongly that you go with ‘number two’ and place the symbol at the end of your amount - and there is a strong business decision for (get the book and read it if you want to know why this helps your business success inside Second Life!)

One of the biggies in terms of “slang” or colloquialisms is the way we’ve change “First Life” around to “Real Life”. I’ve seen bizarre references to First Life (FL) such as “meat world” (which I personally find to be a disturbing reference of the macabre in my mind for some reason.) Guess I have a twisted sense of things. I’ve also seen it referenced as “Physical World”; “Round World” and so on.

The biggest is “Real Life” or “RL”.

I find it also just this side of hilarious to see people placing in their profiles the whole “RL is RL and SL is SL and never the two shall meet!” …or something along those lines. Especially when they put that statement in the First Life tab. My first wonder is why bother? Far fewer people will even bother to look at your profile, much less the First Life tab than actually ask you outright that which you choose not to divulge.

Everywhere you go, the term ‘Real Life”; truncated to “RL” is thrown around at every single reference to our “First Lives”. It’s as though there is “Real Life” and then there is … what… a cartoon? A video game? If that’s the case, why refer to First Life as “Real Life” in the first place? (no pun intended.) Wouldn’t it just be “Life” versus “Video Game”? But heated arguments have evolved out of the whole ‘SL is a game” (or not) business.

Is your Second Life any less “real” than your First Life? If it is, then I suppose “Real Life” is a good reference for the physical world and everything you think of, do and feel in Second Life is false.

However, based on that other word thrown around so often in SL, “Drama”, which suggests Second Life is “Real Life”, then why use the term “RL” to separate the two?

I think Linden Lab, way the hell back in 2006 when I first saw the term and certainly far earlier than that, got it right the First time. So, because I’m anal about the way I communicate, I’ll go with what I went with for the first few months of my Second Life and refer to First Life and First Life.

“FL” for short.

Comments

← Previous post […] Next post →

Blackthorne™ ≠ inSL

Is First Life Real Life?