Where Is Everybody?

Your second day in Second Life, you walk around, see houses, clubs, roads, waterways and you see nobody!

Even when you turn on the mini-map you find yourself in an empty area.

You discover some green dots, you search very hard to find them, in the sea, and they do not respond to anything. Not to chat, not to IM's, they appear being dead.

WHAT IS GOING ON???

At any given time there are about 50,000 avatars on-line. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

An unknown portion of those are the ocean dwellers, the semi dead green dots in the water. My guesstimate is that those pollute the numbers about 50%. So, take it from me, 25,000 avatars are hanging around somewhere, one of those is you (if you are on-line that is).

The ocean dwellers are avatars that serve no real purpose except to pollute the oceans. Forget about them. The more experienced people have opinions about them and these are not very positive.

Before I (try to) help with finding people let me explain why everything is empty.

It's no glitch, not a failure or a fault, that everything is empty.

This is Second Life, not meat life.

We are just hanging around and are having fun! 

That is the true purpose of Second Life.

Life is good to us.

The houses and clubs, parked boats and cars, are not real.

We don't sleep in a bed, eat bread and milk when we wake up, we don't travel to work, we don't have to work long hours in the prim mines to bring home some L$.

The houses don't serve a purpose at all!

Ok, it serves a few purposes. It's nice to log-in at a place that looks familiar, it's nice to have a bed that has various functions that don't include sleeping. But that's about it.

It's decoration!

It's like your Facebook page that you make look good so that you look good. Nice profile picture, interesting CD collection, interesting pictures, amazing interests. The same is with that house you see in Second Life. It reflects something about the owner, it's character, desires, loves and hates.

Most houses (visible from the ground) are free to enter because most like to show how nice they can decorate. When the owner arrives, apologize for being there and compliment about the decorations.

Same goes with the parked cars and boats. Decoration, but it does tell something about the owner.

The clubs, with flashing lights and disco floors, you can find all over the place are most often also just decoration, though sometimes the owners throws a party and invites friends over. The empty bars, same.

It all is decoration, because we like to be surrounded by things we like and love. Also a car costs less then high quality shoes. (yes ladies, good shoes are expensive. A wig cost less then a full furnished house) In this world we can own a house that is impossible to afford in the real world and call it home.

Nobody is there but it all tells a story about the owners.
It's a big profile page you can walk through.

Once you figure it all out you will understand, and you will purchase a plot of land and decorate it to your liking so that everybody can see what a nice person you are, because you are.

I have already explained where half the population is, those are the ocean dwellers (feel free to hate them). But where is the rest??

Well... Second Life is BIG! It's HUUUGE! It's gigantuously BIG!

If you zoom out the map to the max it still doesn't fit the screen.

So the 25,000 avatars are scattered around there somewhere.

To find them, use Search. One place to look is the Destination Guide, not a guarantee to meet people though but you'll find nicely decorated places and things to do.

Another place to Search is Events. Live Music is a great way to meet people.

Once you figure it out, you can always find people you will like. Trust me.

Reporter Vick Forcella

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