Believe me, this picture has much more to do with the post that it my seem at first. I adding a cut after it, but World of SL users will have to excuse me, since the cut doesn’t seem to work there.
There are mainly two ways to keep in contact within SL: you meet people when you visit the same places, or do you have them in your friend list and IM them from time to time. The second is obviously the more efficient, and means that it is very hard to become somebody’s friend without being added previously to his/her list.
But that also means that a friend list is not truly a list of friends, only (mainly?) a contact device, and removing people you don’t talk with anymore shouldn’t offend them. So, please, consider this:
- Being into somebody’s list doesn’t make you authomatically a friend.
- Being removed from somebody’s list shouldn’t mean you stop being his/her friend.
Ok, let’s accept we are justified to remove people we don’t talk with anymore, since we are only cleaning a contact that can be rebuilt anytime… but what about the people we still talk with?
There is little sense about removing somebody you like, somebody you talk with from time to time, and that is just what I did when the Openspaces mess happened. I defriended most of my list, cutting myself from more and more chunks of my already diminished reality.
I could say it was the deppresion that moved me, in a kind of small virtual suicide. I could pledge temporary insanity, but the truth is that I had wanted to do it, even tried a pair of times, but never had the strength to be so rude with so many nice people. Until now.
I’ve becomed more and more tired of SL in the last months. It is a phenomenom whose almost cyclic nature has been blogged to saciety, and I am not going to bore you with my own experiences; let’s simply say that I have little interest in exploring, shopping, or working; ideas for new products lurk in my mind, periodically nagging, reclaiming my attention, but I seem to be unable to sit and work on them.
SL has becomed a gray desert where there is little to do or to talk about and, even if friendship can survive that circunstances, it isn’t easy and it takes a lot of effort. Logging so scarcely as I do, I only have time for my closer, loved ones.
Well balanced people only need scarce contacts to mantain a friendship relation, but I am not well balanced, or I whouldn’t write so much about myself. A friend list that isn’t made only of my closest friends, the people I truly love, exerts a big pressure over my weak, silly psique. And just now, I don’t want anymore stress in my life.
I know that this actitude keeps me from making new friends and, worse, that I have abandoned nice, sweet people that whould had been intimate friends if I had gived them the opportunity. I am sorry, but I am not strong enough; thats all what I can say.
By now you probably wondered why did I titled this post sex in a desert city. Well, the gray, empty of fun Second Life explains the desert but, where is the sex?
The same problems that affect friendships affect lovers, with a main difference; you may have sex with them (I know, I know, you may make love with with friends, too. Let’s keep the example easy, all right?).
In real life, if you make love as a way to fulfill empty spaces, rutinarily, it quickly will become meaningless. You will fill the chill of “we don’t talk, we only have sex” and, with time, you will kiss goodbye your sex drive (to your information it never happened to me, but maybe, and only maybe, I was close sometimes).
In SL you can talk about your real life, and it is nice, and sometimes it does you good and makes you feel warm, but it doesn’t give you enough inmersion to feel your virtual self, or his/her virtual self. If the virtual world isn’t lively anymore, you may feel detached from it, from your friends, from your lovers.
When your world fails you, when you know so much of your beloved there is little more to be said, sometimes the only way to express your love, to keep in touch with the reality is to make love.
I don’t mean sex is everything; as I said, it can become empty pretty quickly if we abuse it (also, I have grown older and after a late night orgasm I am almost unable to keep awake, and typing :-p).
But, just now, while we look for ways to give our identity, our love, an enviroment to live at, it helps. It helps to keep us real, and alive.
The “friends list” is one of the great annoyances in SL. After last counts, my list is close to 300 people, however the vast majority is work related: clients, translators, editors. I recently tried to clean up some of the clients who did not give me jobs for a while, but even before I started one of them IMed me with a new job…
The number of people I would consider friends in the truest meaning of the word is probably well below 20. Add another 20 who are aquaintances with the potential to become friends… I wish LL would finally give us folders for the freinds list (or contact-list as it would be better described).
I have been unfriended a few times, and probably even more times without me noticing it. Whenever I noticed it, it hurt, as I had wished for at least a word of explanation. The way you removed me from your list – and I deliberately avoid the word “unfriend” here – had style. It was the best way to do it, and while it left a feeling of sadness, it did not left a feeling of anger or injustice. The sadness feeling again resulted more from the fact that – though we spoke on occasion (and each time we did I have positive memories of) – we did not manage to build a stronger friendship. The reasons for that are manyfold, your time constrains probably being the major one, the end result however is the same.
/me smiles
The last time we really talked long, you told me some hard and unpleasant truths about the way I deal with things, and about the self-illusions I have for myself. It helped back then, and the reconciliatory hug you offered me afterwards was well appreciated.
Anyways. Being removed from each others lists makes – as you state correctly – keeping in touch even harder. Comforting for me is that you started blogging again (for now), so at least you do not vanish fully from the radar.
As I wrote in my notecard to you: you know where you find me, and there will be an outstretched hand and a smile.
Take care – and don’t give up blogging please!
Hello, Peter, it is good to have you here again, and to be back. I don’t promise I will stay forever; there whould be little sense in doing it if I run out of things to write about but, by now, there is a lot in the bag :-)
I am sorry, and a bit worried, that the truths I said where hard and unpleasant; it wasn’t my intention but, when you had been born with a mouth as big as mine… let’s simply say I have becomed very good at apologicing :-p.
Whatever happens, I will never run out of hugs for you.
**** Note: Peter, it is possible that you lack one of the most important instincts of a blogger? When a comment grows big, do a post instead! *winks*
Hard and unpleasant truths need to be said. The courage to say them is what seperates a friend from an acquaintance, and which might promote and acquaintance to become a friend.
Thank you, but probably you are mistaking courage with bluntness *winks*