Why I Quit Second Life

So, I figure it deserves explanation.

I quit Second Life because:

A) My inventory was completely Huge and unmanageable. I'm ADD, am not very organized, and I came to loathe this massive inventory I was carrying around with me. Since I don't have excellent organization skills or the ability to delete things without pondering their meaning and significance, I just gave up.

B) I run Second Life on an Intel iMac. It's a pretty good computer, never really had a problem before, but I don't know what has happened. The current viewer runs like peanut butter on my computer. I can barely move, textures don't rez for ages. It's just horrible. I'm just enough of a computer nerd to get on the internet and work through simple problems, but not enough to figure this shit out.

C) Second Life drama making me feel like shit in real life, i.e. the Lucky Kitty Crew debacle. See previous posts.

D) I found World of Warcraft. Actually this should be the first reason, but this is a stream of consciousness post.

World of Warcraft is everything that Second Life is not. There's shit TO DO, a storyline (lore) to follow, Quests, Achievements, EXCELLENT customer service via the Game Masters, Manageable inventory system, and Moving around in-game is no problem. Lag? What lag?

If I could take my Bare Rose decked out avatar from Second Life and walk straight into WoW with her, I'd be happy. But, it has turned out to be a better online experience for me.

So, that's my reason. And my free time, my leisure time away from work, is MY TIME. I really don't owe anyone anything. If you want to hang with me, feel free to sent a /whisper to Ailadra on the Onyxia PvP (Player vs Player) realm.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

-Kira

Bare Rose - Light in the Void

I've skipped over this outfit several times while shopping at Bare Rose, and I'm glad I decided to splurge an extra L$140 to check it out, because I really like it.




Also featured:

Shunrai Moonlit Pond Katana Sword

House of Munster - Glitch (Hair)

Lionskins - Zulu

Katat0nik - Ghostfire Boots

Follow up to Lifting the Yoke of Oppression

I believe my previous post needs some clarification. I left The Lucky Kitty Crew, because I felt the application of the group chat rules had become intolerably homophobic, and I felt it was a hostile environment towards LGBTs.

I am an out-and-proud Married Lesbian iRL, but I was being asked by group owner, Serenity Semple, to not speak about my life, for fear of offending someone.

The three verboten topics were Religion, Sexuality, and Politics. Apparently, my life resides in the Bermuda Triangle, as it hits on all three of these in her opinion.

And I understand the point of having rules for group chat, but, as Rebekah stated in the comments left on the original post, other people were free to discuss an open range of topics, whatever was on their mind. However, each time I discussed my life, what I was doing outside of Second Life (unless I was talking about my kitty cat), I was told that my chat was "Off Topic."

This created a hostile environment, not just for me, but also for other LGBT members of the Lucky Kitty Crew, who were also subjected to this hostility, and who witnessed free-flowing relaxed chat get shut down, time and again, anytime chat steered towards LGBT topics.

There is a fine line between maintaining order and creating a hostile environment, and that line was crossed.

I would have liked to maintain my friendship with Serenity, and thought that... I don't know... she would see how upset she had made me, her friend, and would apologize, and we'd, eventually, be fine. But, I honestly don't think it's a possibility. I'm sure that if you spoke with her, it would be ME who had wronged her in some way. That's just how she is.

-Kira

Gear Belt

Gear Belt
Originally uploaded by Kira McCallen

This outfit needed an accessory, so I tried my hand at actually MAKING something, rather than going out and buying it, like I usually do. I had some pretty cool gear sculpt maps in my inventory, courtesy of PREFABRICA, and a rusted metal texture I had bought previously. This is the result.

I want to script the gears to actually turn; I think that would be cool.


-Kira

Mentor Superstars

Mentor Superstars
Originally uploaded by Kira McCallen

May 22, 2009, was Second Life Volunteer appreciation day, so I stopped by Eventopia to check it out. Lots of really cool things to look at, some fishing, dancing, hidden caves, but overall the coolest thing were the Mentor Superstars.

I had to set my draw distance to about 112m, but once I did, WOW.

Here's my Star!

They were set to L$0, so we could take a copy of our star. Very cool. Thank you Mia Linden and the other members of the V-Team!

-Kira

Lifting the Yoke of Oppression

So, I decided to do something today that I never thought I'd do. I left a Second Life group that I've been a long-time member of, that I loved dearly, blogged for, and offered up my land for free to (for a long time).

Why you ask?

Because for my own mental health, I can no longer live in the SL Closet. I was being asked to NEVER speak about my life, because MY LIFE is considered to be political. MY LIFE is considered to be a taboo subject. Because I'm gay.

You know what? That's fucking bigoted. So, I left that. And I de-friended that. And I'm moving on.

-Kira

p.s. I've removed myself as an Admin from the Group Blog, NOT deleted the blog. I've removed myself from the Group Flickr, NOT deleted the group flickr. I do not have any plans to Mute or Ban or any other such nonsense.