The Kindness of Strangers

I had a rather uncomfortable experience yesterday, I let someone down.

The issue is the new user experience and the title taken from a comment by Yordie Sands on Botgirl's post, a second posting on the issue mentioned above.

It started a couple of days ago with Nightflower (aka Nightfire...:))) posting a blog on NWN about making new users belong by joining them to a group or clan like other games do.

Botgirl made a video showing her 'new user' experience....here..

My experience happened last night at my IBM build where I was sitting playing Hostess With The Mostest as the visitors popped in, spurred mainly by Wizzy cracking the Destination Guide forms and getting me listed.
So, someone said, "where is the quest?"
Me: ermmm...quest?
Other: yes
Me: which quest is that then?
Other: The Quest.
By now the mythical nature of this convo got me to check out their profile, leaving my other IM's flashing. It was a fresh, very fresh noob.
Me: Ah, you have just arrived?
Noob: Yes, how do I get back to where I started?
Me: What was it called?
Noob: It was a big building with lots of windows.
Pause ... as I am actually stumped for what to say, brain in overdrive (it is probably over a year since I 'mentored' a totally fresh noob.
Noob: Never mind I have to go, thanks for talking to me.. [noob poofs]

Now, it is due to the Kindness of Strangers that I and many others are here.... and here I let someone down, quite simply because I was totally unprepared and didn't think on my feet fast enough.

Yesterday is a good example of how good people are generally, both Gianna Borgnine and Indigo Mertel taking the time to teach the slow girl at the back of the room (and benefitting the other 150 people in class) for no other reason than the desire to help people understand. So it has always been, and always will be, I think.

Anyway, now that the Mentors have gone, and you and I can be called upon at any time to fill that role, I was wondering what is the first thing I would say to a Noob. Bearing in mind they may not have mastered Chat even, should I give a Notecard?

I decided that the first thing I should have done was to offer friendship and then teach them to take a landmark (Could I do that, not having used Viewer 2.0?), so that even if they got lost they could speak to someone and find their way back to somewhere they had been.

But I figured that, maybe we could get a few ideas together....

What do you/would you do?

..and how can we get the Mentors back?

Can anyone get a Linden's ear?

Are all lines of communication with the Lindens now cut in their new One-Way transparency drive?

eeeek!

:))

Avatar Culture...and identity.

Now, as with any Culture, avatar culture is marked by, amongst other attributes.... a shared language (e.g. prim, rezz, lag) and...

... as Lalo Telling puts it...."One aspect of virtuality in general, and Second Life in particular, about which Dusan and I have never parted company is its culture (I'm tempted to capitalize the word -- Culture -- because it carries that much weight). My guess is that, if you were to ask each of us what we mean, we wouldn't answer the same way... but that doesn't mean that we don't grok [?] each other. So, what do I mean by culture? Commonality: shared experience; shared symbology and language; shared worldview; shared purpose; shared philosophies of what is "right behavior", and why, and how to coax it from people... in the case of Second Life, I'll even borrow from archaeology and include a shared "tool kit". The operative word, obviously, is shared."

and......by the need to ask the question "Who are we?" ....

now... Botgirl's quest to make some sense of the subject of Avatar identity is fascinating...(..here..).... possibly more than fascinating.

Identity is, for all of us, of primary interest. There are many theories, models etc constructed to explain the various ways in which we create our own immersive storyline which we call "me" and "I". Avatar Identity is, on the surface, no different to Identity in general and is informed by the theories/models we have accepted and can relate to. ....but....

The Digital Person, when not killed off by the Typist's Angst (for 'honesty', 'truthfulness', 'disclosure',) is a new and vital link in identity research. We have, for the first time the possibility to see our identity from 'outside'. The avatar is a monumentally important research tool, (if it is allowed to be) a mirror.

Jung hints at the enigma of a consciousness which lays outside of consciousness, i.e. in the unconscious. He didn't pursue this too vigorously in print as he knew that it was, by definition, impossible to defend this paradox. He pointed to the way in which the process of Individuation (as he called it) seemed to be guided by a consciousness wiser and older than our ego-consciousness, and, of course, his well known work on Synchronicity implies a level of consciousness which is, as yet, not understood at all.

I have the feeling that this strange and difficult identity issue that we have to face and deal with is, possibly more than anything else, what makes us avatars, what makes us Us. The duality is not even negated when people decide to reveal their RL names. I find that in the long term it makes no difference to me who Botgirl is, or who Dusan is....they will, most likely, always be Botgirl and Dusan to me.

As I believe I have said before, the one person I have met in RL, Pixi Cosmos (was wearing wings when we met),...I called her Pixi in both worlds and she called me Soror. The name game is NOT the point...... the name, any name is nothing more than a sign, a title. (" a rose by any other name.." or "Goodness is just another name"), (it just gives me another set of words to forget).

This shared, totally new, dual role of avatar and typist is just not possible to explain fully or understand unless.....unless you are one of Us.

Dusan Writer (recommending highly his post here)...."We create variations on our identity – even when our avatars are tightly coupled to who we are, and look like us, and act like us, we’re still one removed from, well, ourselves."

He could not possibly have written this if he were not one of Us...


So..... this thing we have, this Culture....tends to separate us slightly from those who are not part of our tribe?
..is this why the Boys just haven't understood SL? ..
because they don't live and breath it?
because they are actually not one of Us,
even tho they know the words prim, rezz and lag??


..and while I applaud the ongoing efforts of everyone involved in the rather intellectual attempt to explain it all...

....well....we know who we are.

That means we have a Cultural Identity.

YAY! Us.

:)))