January 29 -- Second Life

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I visited Second Life on January 29 for the first time in months. Can you see the snow falling, over on the left?





The UM SL brownbag group went to something that was called The Bronx Manhattan.

It was the grittiest place I've been.

It's a mark of my shallow nature that I don't want gritty icky stuff in my fiction.

My view is that there is (WAY) more than a gracious plenty of gritty icky stuff in reality, and I don't need to take in any more of it in my spare time.

Someone clearly spent a lot of time/energy/money building this space. There were lots of people there, not just the UM group, including a couple of people one of our group accurately described later as trolls............

To me it is odd that people would choose to spend time in a place like this. I hung around out of politeness to the organizer of the expedition, but if I'd been by myself, I would have left after about two minutes..........

I'll spare you the trolls and the dead bodies................





One could, in an academic sort of way, admire the amount of work that was done.....





There were some interesting things to look at.





The long tan pipe-y thing is the arm attached to the hand in the prev.





We found what looked like a shopping area, where, oddly, all the signage was in German............

I decided to get some altitude, to see what I could see...........





I wonder why the texture never showed up on her arm.....

When you first get to a new place, it can take quite a while for it to load on your computer. It is often the case that things begin as gray shapes, and then the color and texture that clothes the shape shows up later. This looks like the Lady never quite finished loading.............





After a bit more looking around we went back to Wolverine Island, and debriefed.

It was felt by some that there was value in taking a group of students to experience a slum in a safe way.

I don't know if I have too much imagination or what, but sheesh. Doesn't everyone watch tv? Movies? Haven't we seen the dead bodies and the trash and the grafitti and, yes, even the trolls?

I don't choose to watch icky stuff on tv, and I don't choose to read about it, and I don't choose to go to see it in Second Life, either.

Not sure what visiting a slum is teaching me that I don't already know...........


Remembering many (MANY) conversations of yore about Art, and about whether icky stuff is more properly the subject of Art than pleasant or beautiful stuff........

It's clear that there are people who find some kind of value in voluntarily exposing themselves to ickiness, but I don't get it.

Spending time/money/energy to make people go "eeuwwhhh" -- I don't get it. I mean, I can imagine that people want to do that to others, but why do people want to expose themselves to it? If everyone felt the way I do, there'd be no market for it and fewer people would do it................

Baffles me.

In any case, all of us were relieved to get to Wolverine and breathe some nice clean Michigan air!

(Interesting that all of us felt dirty after virtually! being in that icky place......)



Anyway.

A couple of weeks ago they went to Casablanca.

So I went there. Nice and clean and empty (of trolls, or anyone else but moi).

Lots and lots of cool tiles...............











Now this makes sense to me. Someone spent time and energy and money making this, so people can see it and go "ahhhhhhhhh."



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